Women and Cli-fi: Ecological Science Fiction in the Time of the 'Manthropocene'
Résumé
Dealing with both imagined and scientific facts, the genre of science fiction, or sci-fi, has evolved throughout the years, and it keeps changing, following the changes in science, society and, thus, the natural world. This article aims to analyse the post-apocalyptic and post-patriarchal futures that characterise the novels known as cli-fi, or climate fiction, a subgenre of science fiction that deals with the effects of anthropogenic climate change and the way humanity responds to them. In particular, the corpus explored by this study is focused on the novels written by three pioneer women writers such as Ursula Le Guin’s Always Coming Home (1985), Octavia Butler’s Parable series (1993-8) and Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy (2003-13). In order to explore the way women have changed the genre of science fiction, the writers selected for this study are particularly important for three aspects which this analysis will look at: firstly, their narratives, which imagine the transformation of societies based on violence against women and the environment into post-patriarchal communities in harmony with the natural world; secondly, the SF criticism and theories that these writers have developed, by writing essays on the way they interpret science fiction; thirdly, and most importantly, the way they have revised and reshaped science fiction, a genre which, from its birth, has been associated to white male writers and male heroes, and in which women, LGBTQ and people of colour are often underrepresented both as writers and as characters.
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