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In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction

eBook publication of the book which was awarded the prestigious MLA Emily Toth Award (1990).

The title of this book comes from a line of dialogue in ‘The Women Men Don’t See’, a short story by the late great James Tiptree Jr (aka Alice Sheldon and Raccoona Sheldon): ‘What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine.’

So you thought science fiction was a boys’ own zone? Think again! In this classic work of science fiction criticism — winner, when it was first published, of a prestigious MLA award — Sarah LeFanu looks at the work of a whole range of science fiction writers and explores the fusion of a feminist political worldview with the myriad possibilities of science fictional otherworlds. With individual chapters on the work of Suzy McKee Charnas, Ursula Le Guin, Joanna Russ, and Tiptree herself, and a new preface from the author.

Reviews

"Astute and searching."

Sunday Times

"It is a classic, a milestone work which puts women back into the history from which we've been scored out, and is essential for anyone interested in writing, in the canon, in women, in genre and in history."

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

"Ranges widely with great intelligence... LeFanu has done something important for us, whoever we may be, male or female."

Locus

"Highly readable, containing much valuable comment, not only on the four writers who figure in Part Two (Tiptree, Charnas, Le Guin and Russ) but also on many other women writers and, indeed, on the nature of SF itself."

Paperback Inferno

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 231
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780704340923
  • Genres
  • feminism, criticism, fiction, literature
  • Release date
  • 2010