Passing the Baton

Will Brooker I went into Star Wars with an attitude like Han Solo’s: cynical, jaded, an impress-me air. I came out more like Luke Skywalker: invigorated, thrilled, wide-eyed from my vision of a new world. I say Star Wars. I mean Star Wars; just Star Wars, with no Roman numerals or subtitles before and after.…

Alienating the Gaze: The Hybrid Femme Fatale of Under the Skin

Alicia  Byrnes, New York University | In her seminal essay ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s,’ Donna Haraway adopts the cyborg as a feminist icon because it undermines the identity-related binaries governing patriarchal order. Irrespective of the merit of Haraway’s theory, films such as The Island of Lost Souls…

She Was a Beauty in a Cage

Rebecca Johnston | She Was a Beauty in a Cage responds to the prompt of ‘gender issues in science fiction for children and young adults’. I wrote it in response to a real life experience that gave me cause to reflect on pervasive gender issues in our society which also exist in the media we consume…

That Old Black Magic: Women, Race, and Post-Millennial U.S. Science Fiction Television

Elyce Helford | Though the present and future of post-millennial American science fiction television varies greatly from program to program, all are arguably driven by a melting-pot white ethic that reveals gains for white women and far less for people of color, especially African American women. While programming remains overwhelmingly produced by white men, white…