
Dystopian dreams: on feminist science fiction - Mz
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/25/dystopian-dreams-how-feminist-science-fiction-predicted-the-future
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literallycancer
_And Atwood had a horrifyingly prescient eye for how a state like Gilead could
come to exist: “… after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and
machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They
blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time … Newspapers were censored and
some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The road-blocks began
to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious
you couldn’t be too careful.” Eventually, women’s bank accounts are frozen,
taken away from them, women are fired from their jobs. It happens step by
step. How do you boil a frog? You turn the heat up slowly._

Stories are good at illustrating points in an argument, but not at helping to
predict the future. Books need to be fun to read, so realism will give in to
the needs of the plot eventually.

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erikpukinskis
Have you read The Handmaid's Tale, or are you judging its realism based on the
columnist synopsis you quoted?

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literallycancer
I've read the plot summary on Wikipedia and am judging its realism based on
the quote, yes.

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j_s
3 more days: [https://www.humblebundle.com/books/women-of-scifi-and-
fantas...](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/women-of-scifi-and-fantasy-book-
bundle)

Includes Octavia Butler’s _Parable of the Sower_ for $1.

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ufmace
You know, I don't have much use for modern day third-wave feminism, but I
kinda would like to read more hard Sci-Fi written by women. I've noticed that
Sci-Fi written by men tends to envision societies where there's lots of casual
sex in ways that I suspect women would not appreciate. I wonder what kind of
societies women dream up and what the male-female relationships are like in
them. At least, when they're not stuck on making some ham-fisted point on
current-day gender relations.

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viraptor
The escape pod and their sibling podcasts have a periodic "Artemis rising"
series where they concentrate on non-male authors. There's no agenda as far as
the content goes, so there's a good mixture of ideas. [http://escape-
artists.wikia.com/wiki/Artemis_Rising](http://escape-
artists.wikia.com/wiki/Artemis_Rising)

If you're after some interesting views on relationships, I remember the
"Boris's Bar" and "Chimeras" were fun, but there's much more.

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Animats
_The Handmaid 's Tale_ was made into a movie in 1990. It's an OK movie. The
upcoming TV show is apparently a spinoff.

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LyndsySimon
> with the sudden accession to power of a theocracy in the United States

 _really_?

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ceejayoz
That sentence is quite clearly describing the setting of the book.

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xkxx
> How do you boil a frog? You turn the heat up slowly.

Obligatory reminder that you won't be able to boil a frog by slowly turning
the heat up, it would jump out. It would be nice if people stopped using this
common misconception as a metaphor.

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hectorlorenzo
Man, I agree, I've trying to kill two birds with one stone for the last couple
of years to no avail. It just doesn't happen.

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knieveltech
Have you tried using a bigger stone?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event)

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Vosporos
Wow, I really didn't know about all that and I feel I've been lied to for so
much time! Nobody ever told me who wrote Frankenstein, and what the theme was.
It's deeply interesting and deeply disturbing, considering what we missed.

