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This essay appeared in Strange Plasma, and was originally read at a meeting of the Preston Speculative Fiction Group. It discusses the representation of female writers in literature, focusing specifically on female science fiction writers in modern literature. The essay provides an understanding of how social comment is foregrounded in science fiction and takes a close look at the historical relationship between science fiction and feminism.

The fourth chapter asks why the figure of the child continues to circulate at all. What sentiments attaches to the child under conditions of neoliberalism and its regimes of flexible accumulation? Once upon a time, perhaps, the figure of the child served as a link between the domestic interior and the national domestic, therefore centralizing sexuality and reproduction as the basis for economic vitality and designating the vigor of the household as the mechanism by which the nation rises and falls. By analyzing Margaret Atwood’s 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale next to her MaddAddam trilogy, this chapter explores how humanity’s age of “somatic capitalism” (neoliberalism + biopolitics of reproduction) requires the constrained vitality offered by reproduction and its issues.

This chapter contains the first review in the final section of the book, ‘The Reviews’. Within it, Jones critically analyses Sarah Lefanu’s In the Chinks of the World Machine. In her review, Jones addresses the relationship between feminism and science fiction and assesses the relevance of gender roles.

‘Sex: The Brains of Female Hyena Twins’ was originally a paper read at the second annual conference of the Academic Fantastic Fiction Network, at Reading University in December 1994, and was also published in Strange Attractors. Throughout the essay, Jones makes comparisons to the sexual habits and composition of other species and wildlife, but pays particularly close attention to the changing attitudes toward gender, human sexual behaviour and social roles in feminist science fiction and other literature.

In this review of David Brin’s Glory Season, Jones foregrounds the issues that arise when feminism is looked at from a male perspective. She criticises the text for presenting a feminist utopia so clearly designed by a man and analyses the sexual stereotyping that comes out of it.

This chapter contains Jones’ review of Carolyn J. Cherryh’s novels, mainly Serpent’s Reach and Cyteen. In her review, Jones foregrounds Cherryh’s use of strong female protagonists, and looks at the methods and techniques used to realistically put forward a futuristic piece of fiction.

In this chapter, Jones reviews science fiction novels by William Gibson, including Necromancer and Virtual Light. She discusses Gibson’s well-established contribution to the cyberpunk genre and outlines his frequent dependence on the heroes/heroines plotline, as well as unsympathetic characterisation. Writing from a feminist perspective, Jones also provides a commentary on the sexual politics present in Virtual Light and debates the titles’ status as radical science fiction.