Escape Velocity 2017

In the wake of the inauguration day Women’s March and chilling book-to-screen adaptations such as Hulu’s new retelling of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, science fiction narratives exploring gender, both within the constraints of the traditional gender binary and in the postmodern mode of gender as performance, are in high demand. This discussion will explore unique (and not-so-unique) representations of gender throughout science and speculative fiction literatures, and ultimately debate the extent of the progress that contemporary authors have made in the direction of gender equality in science fiction.