Feminist Science Fiction: Cherie Priest's The Clockwork Century Diploma Thesis Petra Nováková Abstract Marleen S. Barr, one of the pioneers of feminist science fiction criticism, is an outspoken commentator on gender inequality in this genre. In Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction and Future Females: A Critical Anthology, Barr defines feminist science fiction as metafiction about patriarchal fiction. She speaks out against both authors and critics who recycle narratives restricted by a patriarchal view of the world in which women are silenced and/or relegated to the position of an accessory of the male hero, made to behave in a stereotypically feminine manner. While Barr does not include steampunk fiction but focuses on science fiction oriented towards the future and space exploration, her analysis of the female character's plight is nonetheless applicable to the steampunk genre. In this respect, feminist steampunk fiction can be read as a meditation on established gender norms. Cherie Priest's work is a prime example of such an innovative re-examination of gender stereotypes that Barr calls for in her critical work. As both a woman and a writer of science fiction, the author has adopted a feminist approach in her steampunk series The Clockwork Century. Among other things, Priest examines the role...

Mémoire en recherche-création / Ce mémoire de maîtrise en recherche-création examine la façon dont la forme du recueil de nouvelles permet la construction d’univers narratifs riches et originaux, particulièrement dans le domaine de la science-fiction. L’axe central de la réflexion concerne les effets unificateurs que peuvent avoir les dispositifs de mise en recueil de récits dont la matière et la manière sont pourtant diversifiées. L’essai se penche sur La Manufacture de machines, recueil écrit par Louis-Philippe Hébert en 1976, et apparemment peu homogène, mais dont l’examen révèle la présence d’une mécanique textuelle qui tout à la fois segmente et unifie la matière narrative. Tyché, le texte de création, consiste en un ensemble de six nouvelles racontant les bouleversements qui suivent l’arrivée d’une planète sur l’orbite de la Terre. Malgré des tonalités, des espaces et des temps différents, le recueil trouve sa cohérence dans la présence de Tyché, à laquelle est liée – directement ou indirectement – certains aspects de l’existence des protagonistes. / This master’s thesis in research and creation examines the way shorts stories cycles allow to elaborate rich and original fictional universes, specifically in science-fiction. The central theme of the reflection concerns the unifying effects that can be found in a collection of short stories despite its diversified narrative content. The first part of this thesis, the essay, analyzes La Manufacture de machines, a short stories collection written by Louis-Philippe Hébert in 1976, which, at first sight, does not seem homogeneous. However, a closer examination reveals the presence of textual mechanisms that simultaneously segment and unify the content of the narrative. Tyché is a set of six short stories about the shifts caused by the arrival of a planet in Earth’s orbit. In spite of different tones, spaces and times, the collection finds its coherence through the presence of Tyché, to which is linked – directly or indirectly – specific aspects of the protagonists’ existence.

This thesis investigates the figure of the cyborg as conceptualised by Donna Haraway in The Cyborg Manifesto (1991). The figure of the cyborg, as a transgressive figure in the late twentieth century within socialist feminist discourse, is problematized with regard to its efficacy as a creature that challenges the constructed nature of gender and contests the boundary between human and machine through its ambiguous nature. Haraway’s notions of the cyborg, which she bases partly on cyborg characters from Science Fiction literature, deny the ocularcentric traditions that have structured gender and the body. Similarly, Haraway does not engage adequately with the figure of the cyborg with regard to situating it historically. This thesis unpacks both the visual and the historical aspects that have structured the cyborg body. By engaging with these concepts, the cyborg emerges as a figure that is identified through visual signifiers of female deviance and pathology. By reading female deviance and pathology on the body of the nineteenth-century hysteric, similarities can be drawn between the hysteric and the cyborg. Through a reading of Alien (1979); Blade Runner (1982); and Star Trek: First Contact (1996) key cyborg texts of the late twentieth century, the figure of the cyborg, and its relation to the deviant pathologised female can be understood when read against the body of the hysteric and how it was visually coded and communicated

The purpose of this thesis was to explore the boundary between human and other created by virtual worlds in contemporary science fiction novels. After a close reading of the three novels: Surface Detail, Existence, and Lady of Mazes, and the application of contemporary literary theories, the boundary presented itself and led to the discovery of where the human becomes other. The human becomes other when it becomes lost to the virtual world and no longer exists or interacts with material reality. Each of the primary texts exhibits both virtual reality and humanity in different ways, and each is explored to find where humanity falls apart. Overall, when these theories are applied to real life there is no real way to avoid the potential for fully immersive virtual worlds, but there are ways to avoid their alienating effects.

Cette thèse de maîtrise propose une analyse discursive du stéréotype et de sa participation dans la rupture entre la réalité et la simulation tel qu’il apparaît dans deux romans et une nouvelle québécoises : Kuessipan de Naomi Fontaine, Le pavillon des miroirs de Sergio Kokis et « Base de négociation » de Jean Dion. Ses objectifs principaux sont d’abord la mise en place d’une base théorique alliant la compréhension du stéréotype en tant que phénomène diaphragmatique de Daniel Castillo Durante et les principales théories sur la relation entre le sujet et le réel/la réalité, puis la mise en application de ces théories sur les récits étudiés. Notre cadre théorique comprend l’étude de la relation ontologique de Buber, les recherches sur la simulation et le simulacre de Baudrillard, celle portant sur l’image de Serge Gruzinski ainsi que de multiples études sur le réel, autant d’un point de vue sensoriel (Palo Alto) que social (Guy Debord, Walter Lippmann). Cette thèse veut montrer l’étendue de la mainmise du stéréotype dans le discours des figures de l’« Indienne » et de l’Immigrant pour ensuite présenter les techniques utilisées par les altérités discursives afin de remettre en question ladite mainmise.

Critics and historians of science fiction widely recognize the genre's importance as a forum for political ideas during the 1950s. But the political role of science fiction diminished during the 1960s, overshadowing the ongoing involvement of sf writers in future-related debates. This paper employs biography, autobiography, memoir, archival papers, recordings, and secondary sources to demonstrate that sf writers continued to discuss the future and its potential problems after the 1950s. Judith Merril and Isaac Asimov, two giants in science fiction, form the core of this paper's focus. Merril and Asimov began to discuss the future in essays, interviews, and documentaries in the 1960s. By the early 1970s, Merril and Asimov were examining the then-emerging problems of overpopulation and planetary ecology in mainstream non-fiction. Merril and Asimov demonstrate that sf writers still addressed political and social issues in the 1960s and early 1970s - even if their involvement increasingly took place outside the boundaries of science fiction literature. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

Orientador: Márcio Orlando Seligmann Silva / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T09:32:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 AmsbergdeAlmeida_Aline_D.pdf: 2414928 bytes, checksum: a2de1de008fab71b5cbdfa9fc0ad9efa (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / Resumo: O elemento técnico e a carne se unem para formar o corpo. De acordo com os conceitos de ciborgue e de híbrido, pensados aqui como facetas do pós-humano, pretendo mapear as manifestações desse corpo em algumas obras da literatura de ficção científica publicada a partir do início dos anos 90. O recorte temporal se deve à finalização do auge do movimento conhecido como cyberpunk que, por um lado, deixou resquícios na literatura de ficção científica e, por outro, ainda não pode ser dado como terminado. Utilizo para estas reflexões principalmente as ideias de desterritorialização e reterritorialização (Deleuze e Guattari), de antropodescentrismo (Roberto Marchesini), e de hospitalidade (Jacques Derrida), além do conceito de ciborgue (Donna Haraway) e de híbrido (Bernard Andrieu). O método rizomático e alguns princípios da Teoria do Caos permitem a problematização das manifestações corporais nas obras escolhidas para o corpus. Os conceitos de "corpo", "carne" e "elemento técnico" são esboçados com a finalidade de tornar esse híbrido possível no campo conceitual e, assim, na prática de análise / Abstract: The technical element and the meat/flesh join to built the body. According to the concepts of cyborg and hybrid, here conceived as aspects of the posthuman, I intend to map the manifestations of that body in some works of literary Science Fiction (SF) published since the early 90¿s. Such a choice of the date is due to the down of the cyberpunk movement which, on one hand, left marks and residues in SF literature and, on the other, cannot be declared dead. For these thoughts I use mainly the ideas of deterritorialization and reterritorialization (Deleuze e Guattari), anthropo-decentrism (Roberto Marchesini), and hospitality (Jacques Derrida), as well as the concept of cyborg (Donna Haraway) and hybrid (Bernard Andrieu). The rhizome method and somen of the Caos Theory allow to question the bodily manifestations in the chosen corpus. The concepts of "body", "meat/flesh" and "technical element" are sketched aiming to make possible this hybrid on the conceptual field and, therefore, the analytical practice / Doutorado / Teoria e Critica Literaria / Doutora em Teoria e História Literária

This thesis is a queer theory analysis of the feminist science fiction novel The Kanshou by Sally Miller Gearhart. After exploring both male and female authored science fiction in the literature review, two themes were to be dominant. The goal of this thesis is to answer the questions, can the traditional themes that are prevalent in male authored science fiction and feminist science fiction in representing gender and sexual orientation dichotomies be found in The Kanshou? And does Gearhart challenge these dichotomies by destabilizing them? The analysis found determined that Gearhart's The Kanshou does challenge traditional sociological norms of binary gender identities and sexual orientation the majority of the time.

Speculative fiction allows an expanded view of literature and so allows scholars to explore new boundaries in the way words and ideas work. In the titular character of The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, the reader sees an expansion of self through liminality while A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick explores its collapse. In order to portray each of these the character examined must move though one seems to move upward and the other downward. This idea of movement is only part of what expands the idea of liminality past the traditional idea of a doorway to create a hallway that the character might traverse on the way from place to place. This is not a redefinition of the term but a revision, a change in the way that we look at the concept as we accept and explore newer genres.

This thesis expands upon Philip K. Dick’s philosophy surrounding ‘androidization’, a process of degradation leading to the devolution of individuals into what he termed as ‘reflex-machines’. Often used interchangeably with Dick’s reference to the human-android, existing criticism has applied the ‘reflex-machine’ label broadly to characters throughout his work. This thesis aims to clarify the implications of such a state through a close reading of his three works, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, A Maze of Death, and A Scanner Darkly while detailing the processes that comprise the androidization which produces it. In doing so, it proposes that androidization is made up of a series of stages. This distinction is vital for understanding what Dick suggests for the potential recovery of the individual from the state of a reflex-machine and his hope for humanity at large. Split into two parts, this essay first examines the production of the reflex-machine with the support of theories by Louis Althusser, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard. It then considers the solutions that Dick proposes for the individual undergoing androidization by referencing theories by Carl Jung, as well as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.