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192-446: Science fiction and fantasy serve as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges between theory and practice. No other genres so actively invite representations of the ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of sexism, worlds in which women's contributions (to science) are recognized and valued, worlds that explore the diversity of women's desire and sexuality, and worlds that move beyond gender. Feminist science fiction

384-527: A TED talk at the TED Global conference; and via the crowdsourcing website Kickstarter in 2013, the kit allows students to use microstimulation to momentarily control the movements of a walking cockroach (left and right) using a Bluetooth -enabled smartphone as the controller. Other groups have developed cyborg insects, including researchers at North Carolina State University , UC Berkeley , and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore , but

576-475: A Vietnam War veteran who suffered a stroke. Ray's body, as doctors called it, was " locked in ". Ray wanted his old life back so he agreed to Kennedy's experiment. Kennedy embedded an implant he designed (and named a " neurotrophic electrode ") near the injured part of Ray's brain so that Ray would be able to have some movement back in his body. The surgery went successfully, but in 2002, Ray died. In 2002, Canadian Jens Naumann , also blinded in adulthood, became

768-761: A computer -like screen , computer viruses , video chat , tanning beds , home treadmills , and more. In 1963, the time travel-themed Doctor Who premiered on BBC Television. The original series ran until 1989 and was revived in 2005. It has been extremely popular worldwide and has greatly influenced later TV science fiction. Other programs in the 1960s included The Outer Limits (1963–1965), Lost in Space (1965–1968), and The Prisoner (1967). Star Trek (the original series), created by Gene Roddenberry , premiered in 1966 on NBC Television and ran for three seasons. It combined elements of space opera and Space Western . Only mildly successful at first,

960-415: A laser -like LED light in one version of the prototype. Furthermore, many people with multifunctional radio frequency identification (RFID) microchips injected into a hand are known to exist. With the chips they are able to swipe cards , open or unlock doors , operate devices such as printers or, with some using cryptocurrency , buy products, such as drinks, with a wave of the hand. bodyNET

1152-428: A space opera , went on to become a worldwide popular culture phenomenon , and the second-highest-grossing film series of all time. Since the 1980s, science fiction films , along with fantasy , horror , and superhero films, have dominated Hollywood's big-budget productions. Science fiction films often " cross-over " with other genres, including film noir ( Blade Runner - 1982), family film ( E.T.

1344-550: A 13-year-old girl protagonist, Meg Murry, whose mother, Mrs. Murry, is a scientist with degrees in biology and bacteriology. L'Engle's novel is decidedly science fiction, feminist, and deeply Christian, and the first of her series, The Time Quintet . Meg's adventures to other planets, galaxies, and dimensions are aided in Wrinkle by three ancient beings, Mrs What, Mrs Which, and Mrs Who who " tesser " to travel vast distances. A Wrinkle in Time

1536-486: A Chinese woman as its primary hero and protagonist. Octavia Butler's Kindred (1979) tells the story of an African American woman living in the United States in 1979 who uncontrollably time travels to the antebellum South. The novel poses complicated questions about the nature of sexuality, gender, and race when the present faces the past. The Demon Breed is a 1968 science fiction novel by James H. Schmitz in which

1728-535: A being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts. The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline . In contrast to biorobots and androids , the term cyborg applies to a living organism that has restored function or enhanced abilities due to the integration of some artificial component or technology that relies on feedback. "Cyborg" is not the same thing as bionics , biorobotics , or androids ; it applies to an organism that has restored function or, especially, enhanced abilities due to

1920-566: A bi-hormonal system is the Beta Bionics iLet . Military organizations' research has recently focused on the use of cyborg animals for the purposes of a supposed tactical advantage. DARPA has announced its interest in developing "cyborg insects" to transmit data from sensors implanted into the insect during the pupa stage. The insect's motion would be controlled from a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) and could conceivably survey an environment or detect explosives and gas. Similarly, DARPA

2112-551: A bias towards functionality and efficiency that may compel assent to a view of human people which de-emphasizes as defining characteristics actual manifestations of humanity and personhood , in favor of definition in terms of upgrades, versions, and utility. Retinal implants are another form of cyborgization in medicine. The theory behind retinal stimulation to restore vision for those suffering from retinitis pigmentosa and vision loss due to aging (conditions in which people have an abnormally low number of retinal ganglion cells ),

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2304-467: A complex range of motions beyond that of previous prosthetics. By 2004, a fully functioning artificial heart was developed. The continued technological development of bionic and ( bio- ) nanotechnologies begins to raise the question of enhancement, and of the future possibilities for cyborgs which surpass the original functionality of the biological model. The ethics and desirability of "enhancement prosthetics" have been debated; their proponents include

2496-476: A control loop are the MiniMed 670G from Medtronic and the t:slim x2 from Tandem Diabetes Care . Do-it-yourself artificial pancreas technologies also exist, though these are not verified or approved by any regulatory agency. Upcoming next-generation artificial pancreas technologies include automatic glucagon infusion in addition to insulin, to help prevent hypoglycemia and improve efficiency. One example of such

2688-523: A cyborg when he noticed that the software and his brain had united and given him an extra sense. Harbisson is a co-founder of the Cyborg Foundation (2004) and cofounded the Transpecies Society in 2017, which is an association that empowers individuals with non-human identities and supports them in their decisions to develop unique senses and new organs. Neil Harbisson is a global advocate for

2880-609: A cyborg, since these devices measure voltage potentials in the body, perform signal processing , and can deliver electrical stimuli , using this synthetic feedback mechanism to keep that person alive. Implants, especially cochlear implants , that combine mechanical modification with any kind of feedback response are also cyborg enhancements. Some theorists cite such modifications as contact lenses , hearing aids , smartphones , or intraocular lenses as examples of fitting humans with technology to enhance their biological capabilities. The emerging trend of implanting microchips inside

3072-424: A dystopian, ungoverned society, seeks to form her own utopian religion entitled 'Earthseed'. Olamina's utopian creation does not justify the use of violence as a means, no matter how expedient, to justify the end, achieving utopia, no matter how desirable. Yet we witness that she cannot avoid violence, as it results from little more than promulgating ideas different from those held by the majority of those living within

3264-450: A forerunner of the science fiction genre , more generally. Another early female writer of science fiction was Mary Shelley . Her novel Frankenstein (1818) dealt with the asexual creation of new life, and has been considered by some a reimagining of the Adam and Eve story. Her book is a critique of Darwinist ideas and also of the use of science without ethical reflection, as well as of

3456-420: A gendered environment, providing a real contrast with present-day gender relations while remaining a work of science fiction. Representations of utopian and dystopian societies in feminist science fiction place an increased emphasis on gender roles while countering the anti-utopian philosophies of the 20th century. Male philosophers such as John Rawls , Isaiah Berlin , and Michael Oakeshott often criticize

3648-535: A great and influential film. In 1954, Godzilla , directed by Ishirō Honda , began the kaiju subgenre of science fiction film, which feature large creatures of any form, usually attacking a major city or engaging other monsters in battle . 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey , directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the work of Arthur C. Clarke , rose above the mostly B-movie offerings up to that time both in scope and quality, and influenced later science fiction films. That same year, Planet of

3840-543: A human colony planet where the men are extremely oppressed. In the 1960s and 1970s, feminist SF authors shifted from the "Battle of the Sexes" writing more egalitarian stories and stories that sought to make the feminine more visible. Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness portrayed an androgynous society in which a world without gender could be imagined. In James Tiptree Jr. 's short story " Houston, Houston, Do You Read? ", women are able to be seen in their full humanity due to

4032-492: A human internally (such as in Elysium and RoboCop ). The computer game Deus Ex: Invisible War prominently features cyborgs called Omar, Russian for 'lobster'. In 1994, Hans Hass formulated a scientific view of the human-machine hybrids he called "hypercells". They can expand their biological cell body with artificial artifacts and thus expand their performance body. The theory of hypercells or "Homo proteus", as Hass called

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4224-669: A journey to the Moon and how the Earth 's motion is seen from there. Kepler has been called the "father of science fiction". Following the 17th-century development of the novel as a literary form , Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826) helped define the form of the science fiction novel. Brian Aldiss has argued that Frankenstein was the first work of science fiction. Edgar Allan Poe wrote several stories considered to be science fiction, including " The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall " (1835), which featured

4416-439: A major active role in establishing a carbon nanotube 's network and its stabilization. This novel material can be used in a wide range of electronic applications, from heating to sensing. For instance, using Candida albicans cells, a species of yeast that often lives inside the human gastrointestinal tract , cyborg tissue materials with temperature sensing properties have been reported. In current prosthetic applications,

4608-449: A male protagonist who takes an "aeroplane" to Mars, visiting two different "Marsian" societies; in both, there is equality between men and women. In one, Paleveria, women have adopted the negative characteristics of men; in Caskia, the other, gender equality "has made both sexes kind, loving, and generous." Two American Populists, A.O. Grigsby and Mary P. Lowe, published NEQUA or The Problem of

4800-579: A means to challenge the norms of society and suggest new standards for how societies view gender. The genre also deals with male/female categories, showing how female roles can differ from feminine roles. Hence feminism influences the film industry by creating new ways of exploring and looking at masculinity/femininity and male/female roles. A contemporary example of feminist science fiction television can be found in Orphan Black , which deals with issues of reproductive justice, science, gender, and sexuality. By

4992-434: A new class of drug-delivery systems positioned between classical synthetic materials and cell-based systems. In medicine, there are two important and different types of cyborgs: the restorative and the enhanced. Restorative technologies "restore lost function, organs, and limbs." The key aspect of restorative cyborgization is the repair of broken or missing processes to revert to a healthy or average level of function. There

5184-418: A powerful female protagonist, with gender roles between her and the main male character generally reversed. However, feminists have also created science fiction that directly engages with feminism beyond the creation of female action heroes . Television and film have offered opportunities for expressing new ideas about social structures and the ways feminists influence science. Feminist science fiction provides

5376-400: A problem in every reach of feminism, not just in feminist science fiction. Wolf also tackles this problem, "As she explains in "Is Gender Necessary?", The Left Hand of Darkness convinced her that if men and women were completely and genuinely equal in their social roles, equal legally and economically, equal in freedom, in responsibility, and in self-esteem, ... our central problem would not be

5568-412: A robotic focus on problem-solving." In feminist science fiction, utopias are often realized through a communal want for an ideal society. One such novel is summarized in the aforementioned article, Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's novel Herland , in which "Gilman perfectly captures the utopian impulse that all problems are solvable. She establishes a society where every consideration about a question aims for

5760-464: A scale at age sixteen, with the top ten becoming the brides of elite men, the middle ten forced into concubinage, and the bottom ten forced to continue their lives as instructors at the school in very humiliating circumstances. At age forty, the women are euthanized. In the post-apocalyptic novel, Gather the Daughters , by Jennie Melamed , females living in an island society are sexually exploited from

5952-420: A semi-well known analyst of Science fiction argues along these lines as well. As Norton explored one or more novels she came across, she realized that the creation of characters and how they are shown is a clear connection to the real world situation. From here, she goes in depth of characters in these feminist novels and relates them to the real world. She concludes here article along these lines. She wanted to get

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6144-404: A series of articles in 2016 describing the development of cyborg bacteria capable to harvest sunlight more efficiently than plants. In the first study, the researchers induced the self-photosensitization of a nonphotosynthetic bacterium, Moorella thermoacetica , with cadmium sulfide nanoparticles, enabling the photosynthesis of acetic acid from carbon dioxide . A follow-up article described

6336-406: A series of experiments including extending his nervous system over the internet to control a robotic hand , also receiving feedback from the fingertips to control the hand's grip. This was a form of extended sensory input. Subsequently, he investigated ultrasonic input to remotely detect the distance to objects . Finally, with electrodes also implanted into his wife's nervous system, they conducted

6528-418: A society (on Earth or another planet) that has developed in wholly different ways from our own." There is a tendency among science fiction enthusiasts as their own arbiter in deciding what exactly constitutes science fiction. David Seed says it may be more useful to talk about science fiction as the intersection of other more concrete subgenres. Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying "Science fiction

6720-694: A surgery to redirect the nerve that controls the voice and sound production to a muscle in the neck, where a nearby sensor would be able to pick up its electrical signals . The signals would then move to a processor which would control the timing and pitch of a voice simulator. That simulator would then vibrate producing a multi-tonal sound that could be shaped into words by the mouth. An article published in Nature Materials in 2012 reported research on "cyborg tissues" (engineered human tissues with embedded three-dimensional mesh of nanoscale wires), with possible medical implications. In 2014, researchers from

6912-495: A total estimated readership of at least 1 million), making it the world's most popular science fiction periodical . In 1984, William Gibson 's first novel, Neuromancer , helped popularize cyberpunk and the word " cyberspace ", a term he originally coined in his 1982 short story Burning Chrome . In 1986, Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold began her Vorkosigan Saga . 1992's Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson predicted immense social upheaval due to

7104-539: A transparent case, and in all the adventures of his famous hero, Captain Future . In 1944, in the short story " No Woman Born ", C. L. Moore wrote of Deirdre, a dancer, whose body was burned completely and whose brain was placed in a faceless but beautiful and supple mechanical body. In 1960, the term "cyborg" was coined by Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline to refer to their conception of an enhanced human being who could survive in extraterrestrial environments: For

7296-516: A trip to the Moon . Jules Verne was noted for his attention to detail and scientific accuracy, especially in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870). In 1887, the novel El anacronópete by Spanish author Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau introduced the first time machine . An early French/Belgian science fiction writer was J.-H. Rosny aîné (1856–1940). Rosny's masterpiece

7488-575: A very palatable form... New adventures pictured for us in the scientifiction of today are not at all impossible of realization tomorrow... Many great science stories destined to be of historical interest are still to be written... Posterity will point to them as having blazed a new trail, not only in literature and fiction, but progress as well. In 1928, E. E. "Doc" Smith 's first published work, The Skylark of Space , written in collaboration with Lee Hawkins Garby , appeared in Amazing Stories . It

7680-1124: A winged superheroine and the first of the francophone superhero series. Rhoda Broughton is also one of a number of 19th-century women writing in the successful science fiction genre. Rosa Rosà (Edith von Haynau) wrote the first Italian feminist science fiction with Una donna con tre anime in 1918. During the 1920s and 1930s, many popular pulp science fiction magazines exaggerated views of masculinity and featured portrayals of women that were perceived as sexist. These views would be subtly satirized by Stella Gibbons in Cold Comfort Farm (1932) and much later by Margaret Atwood in The Blind Assassin (2000). As early as 1920, however, women writers of this time, such as Clare Winger Harris ("The Runaway World," 1926) and Gertrude Barrows Bennett ( Claimed , 1920), published science fiction stories written from female perspectives and occasionally dealt with gender and sexuality based topics. John Wyndham , writing under his early pen-name of John Beynon Harris,

7872-623: A world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state . It influenced the emergence of dystopia as a literary genre . In 1926, Hugo Gernsback published the first American science fiction magazine , Amazing Stories . In its first issue he wrote: By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story—a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision... Not only do these amazing tales make tremendously interesting reading—they are always instructive. They supply knowledge... in

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8064-519: A world where gender is no longer recognized and the story itself is told without the use of gendered nouns. Along these same lines, Charlotte Perkins Gilman explores and critiques the expectations of women and men by creating a single-sex world in Herland ( 1915 ), possibly the most well-known of the early feminist SF and utopian novels. Among the francophones, Renée Marie Gouraud dʻAblancourt published in 1909 Vega la magicienne , depicting L'Oiselle ,

8256-470: Is Les Navigateurs de l'Infini ( The Navigators of Infinity ) (1925) in which the word astronaut, "astronautique", was used for the first time. Many critics consider H. G. Wells one of science fiction's most important authors, or even "the Shakespeare of science fiction". His works include The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of

8448-465: Is Questionable Practices , which includes stories "Up the Fire Road" and "Chop Wood, Carry Water". She also edited "The WisCon Chronicles 2: Provocative Essays on Feminism, Race, Revolution, and the Future" with L. Timmel Duchamp . Duchamp has been known in the feminist SF community for her first novel Alanya to Alanya (2005), the first of a series of five titled "The Marq'ssan Cycle". Alanya to Alanya

8640-511: Is a collection of her short stories whose subjects range from an historical fantasy involving colonialism in the Caribbean, to age manipulation, to ethnic diversity in the land of Faerie, among others. In the early 1990s, a new award opportunity for feminist SF authors was created. The James Tiptree, Jr. Award is an annual literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore one's understanding of gender ( Alice Sheldon

8832-444: Is a computer, which gains power by using Internet protocols to connect with other computers. Another example is a social-media bot —either a bot-assisted human or a human-assisted-bot—used to target social media with likes and shares . Cybernetic technologies include highways, pipes , electrical wiring , buildings, electrical plants , libraries, and other infrastructure that people hardly notice, but which are critical parts of

9024-425: Is a sub-genre of science fiction (SF for short) that focuses on theories that include feminist themes, for example gender inequality , sexuality , race , economics and reproduction . Feminist science fiction spans a wider range than science fiction itself, covering fantasy , utopia and dystopia , horror (such as Anne Rice 's vampire stories). Marleen S. Barr says that what is described as feminist ‘SF’

9216-713: Is also the 2012 winner of the Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to SF/F studies. Lois McMaster Bujold has won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for her novella The Mountains of Mourning , which is part of her series the " Vorkosigan Saga " (1986–2012). This saga includes points of view from a number of minority characters, and is also highly concerned with medical ethics , identity , and sexual reproduction . More recent science fiction authors illuminate what they contend are injustices that are still prevalent. At

9408-512: Is an application of human-electronic interaction currently in development by researchers from Stanford University . The technology is based on stretchable semiconductor materials ( Elastronic ). According to their article in Nature , the technology is composed of smart devices , screens, and a network of sensors that can be implanted into the body, woven into the skin or worn as clothes. It has been suggested that this platform can potentially replace

9600-432: Is considered one of the first science fiction novels. Refusing to overlook the contribution made by women to science and culture for the sole benefit of men, Marie-Anne Robert wrote an initiatory tale designed to develop women's critical faculties, and ultimately work towards their emancipation. Women writers involved in the utopian literature movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could be considered

9792-483: Is developing a neural implant to remotely control the movement of sharks. The shark's unique senses would then be exploited to provide data feedback in relation to enemy ship movement or underwater explosives. In 2006, researchers at Cornell University invented a new surgical procedure to implant artificial structures into insects during their metamorphic development. The first insect cyborgs, moths with integrated electronics in their thorax , were demonstrated by

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9984-503: Is no enhancement to the original faculties and processes that were lost. On the contrary, the enhanced cyborg "follows a principle, and it is the principle of optimal performance: maximising output (the information or modifications obtained) and minimising input (the energy expended in the process)". Thus, the enhanced cyborg intends to exceed normal processes or even gain new functions that were not originally present. Although prostheses in general supplement lost or damaged body parts with

10176-525: Is not really ‘SF’ at all, because it is not concerned with ‘hard science’ but with women's drive for power. Hard science fiction is of course a subset of science fiction. She thought we needed to use a term like feminist fabulation. Fantasy literature is de facto a privileged genre for tackling feminist themes. Because it allows to reflect on the future, on the possibilities of humanity and science, this literature allows all progressive and innovative ideas to coexist. So, to qualify as feminist science fiction,

10368-619: Is often called the first great space opera . The same year, Philip Francis Nowlan 's original Buck Rogers story, Armageddon 2419 , also appeared in Amazing Stories . This was followed by a Buck Rogers comic strip , the first serious science fiction comic . Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a " future history " science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon . A work of unprecedented scale in

10560-503: Is one of the most influential examples of social science fiction , feminist science fiction , and anthropological science fiction . In 1979, Science Fiction World began publication in the People's Republic of China . It dominates the Chinese science fiction magazine market , at one time claiming a circulation of 300,000 copies per issue and an estimated 3–5 readers per copy (giving it

10752-474: Is possible that this technology will also eventually be used with healthy people. Deep brain stimulation is a neurological surgical procedure used for therapeutic purposes. This process has aided in treating patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease , Alzheimer's disease , Tourette syndrome , epilepsy , chronic headaches , and mental disorders . After the patient is unconscious , through anesthesia , brain pacemakers or electrodes, are implanted into

10944-560: Is related to fantasy , horror , and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres . Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Subgenres include hard science fiction , which emphasizes scientific accuracy, and soft science fiction , focusing on social sciences. Other notable subgenres are cyberpunk , which explores the interface between technology and society, and climate fiction , addressing environmental issues. Precedents for science fiction are argued to exist as far back as antiquity, but

11136-463: Is set on a near-future earth controlled by a male-dominated ruling class patterned loosely after the corporate world of today. Duchamp has also published a number of short stories, and is an editor for Aqueduct Press . Lisa Goldstein is another well respected feminist sf author. The novelette Dark Rooms (2007) is one of her better known works, and another one of her novels, The Uncertain Places , won

11328-457: Is surgically anchored and integrated by means of osseointegration into the skeleton of the remainder of the amputated limb. The same company has developed e-OPRA, a will-powered upper limb prosthesis system that is being evaluated in a clinical trial to allow sensory input to the central nervous system using pressure and temperature sensors in the prosthesis' finger tips. Prostheses like the C-Leg,

11520-411: Is that the retinal implant and electrical stimulation would act as a substitute for the missing ganglion cells (cells which connect the eye to the brain). While the work to perfect this technology is still being done, there have already been major advances in the use of electronic stimulation of the retina to allow the eye to sense patterns of light. A specialized camera is worn by the subject, such as on

11712-401: Is the existence of utopian worlds as single-gendered – most commonly female, an early example being Emília Freitas ’s 1899 novel A Rainha do Ignoto . In literary works female utopias are portrayed as free of conflict, and intentionally free of men. The single gendered utopias of female science fiction are free of the conflicts that feminism aims to eliminate, such as patriarchal oppression and

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11904-469: Is the main reason that women are rebelling and actively fighting to be noticed in the field anyway. Virginia Wolf relates to this aspect of feminist science fiction in the article "Feminist Criticism and Science Fiction for Children". As she discusses the scarcity of women in the field, she states, "During the first period, that of the nineteenth century, apparently only two women wrote Science Fiction, Mary Shelley and Rhoda Broughton ," and continues, "In

12096-460: Is undermined by figuring female desire for greater equality in terms of a (stereotypical) masculine drive for power and domination." Examples of these types of stories, written in the 1920s and 30s through the 50s, include Francis Steven's "Friend Island" and Margaret Rupert's "Via the Hewitt Ray"; in 1978, Marion Zimmer Bradley released The Ruins of Isis , a novel about a futuristic matriarchy on

12288-537: Is what we point to when we say it." Forrest J Ackerman has been credited with first using the term "sci-fi" (analogous to the then-trendy " hi-fi ") in about 1954. The first known use in print was a description of Donovan's Brain by movie critic Jesse Zunser in January 1954. As science fiction entered popular culture , writers and fans active in the field came to associate the term with low-budget, low-tech " B-movies " and with low-quality pulp science fiction . By

12480-536: The Golden Age of Science Fiction . Science fiction has been called the "literature of ideas ", and continues to evolve, incorporating diverse voices and themes, influencing not just literature but film, TV, and culture at large. Besides providing entertainment it can also criticize present-day society and explore alternatives, and inspiration a " sense of wonder ". According to Isaac Asimov , "Science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with

12672-556: The World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2005 for her novel The Mount (2002). This novel explores the prey/predator mentality through an alien race. Another author of the 1980s, Pamela Sargent has written the "Seed Series", which included Earthseed , Farseed , and Seed Seeker (1983–2010), the "Venus Series" about the terraforming of Venus , which includes Venus of Dreams , Venus of Shadows , and Child of Venus (1986–2001), and The Shore of Women (1986). Sargent

12864-578: The C-Leg system developed by Otto Bock HealthCare , is used to replace a human leg that has been amputated because of injury or illness. The use of sensors in the artificial C-Leg aids in walking significantly by attempting to replicate the user's natural gait , as it would be prior to amputation. A similar system is being developed by the Swedish orthopedic company Integrum, the OPRA Implant System, which

13056-484: The Materials Research Society 's spring conference on 3 April 2013. The cyborg obtained was inexpensive, light and had unique mechanical properties. It could also be shaped in the desired forms. Cells combined with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) co-precipitated as a specific aggregate of cells and nanotubes that formed a viscous material. Likewise, dried cells still acted as a stable matrix for

13248-743: The Mythopoeic Award for Best Adult Novel in 2012. Works of feminist science fiction are often similar in the goals they work towards as well as the subjects and plotlines they focus on in order to achieve those goals. Feminist science fiction is science fiction that carries across feminist ideals and the promotion of societal values such as gender equality , and the elimination of patriarchal oppression . Feminist science fiction works often present tropes that are recurrent across science fiction with an emphasis on gender relations and gender roles. Many elements of science fiction, such as cyborgs and implants, as well as utopias and dystopias, are given context in

13440-470: The Nebula Award in 2004. This story is an homage to Sheldon, and describes a gorilla hunting expedition in Africa. Pat Murphy won a number of awards for her feminist SF novels as well, including her second novel The Falling Woman (1986), a tale of personal conflict and visionary experiences set during an archaeological field study for which she won the Nebula Award in 1988. She won another Nebula Award in

13632-526: The Nyctalope , a science fiction hero who was perhaps the first literary cyborg, in Le Mystère des XV  [ fr ] (later translated as The Nyctalope on Mars ). Nearly two decades later, Edmond Hamilton presented space explorers with a mixture of organic and machine parts in his 1928 novel The Comet Doom . He later featured the talking, living brain of an old scientist, Simon Wright, floating in

13824-477: The Russian writer and paleontologist Ivan Yefremov presented a view of a future interstellar communist civilization and is considered one of the most important Soviet science fiction novels. In 1959, Robert A. Heinlein 's Starship Troopers marked a departure from his earlier juvenile stories and novels. It is one of the first and most influential examples of military science fiction , and introduced

14016-611: The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and Washington University in St. Louis had developed a device that could keep a heart beating endlessly. By using 3D printing and computer modeling , these scientists developed an electronic membrane that could successfully replace pacemakers. The device uses a "spider-web like network of sensors and electrodes" to monitor and maintain a normal heart rate with electrical stimuli. Unlike traditional pacemakers that are similar from patient to patient,

14208-456: The artificial intelligence systems we have already constructed", and used the term "cyborg" "to emphasize that the new intelligent beings will have arisen, like us, from Darwinian evolution." The concept of a man-machine mixture was widespread in science fiction before World War II . As early as 1843, Edgar Allan Poe described a man with extensive prostheses in the short story " The Man That Was Used Up ". In 1911, Jean de La Hire introduced

14400-447: The information revolution . In 2007, Liu Cixin 's novel, The Three-Body Problem , was published in China. It was translated into English by Ken Liu and published by Tor Books in 2014, and won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel , making Liu the first Asian writer to win the award. Emerging themes in late 20th and early 21st century science fiction include environmental issues ,

14592-473: The region of the brain where the cause of the disease is present. The region of the brain is then stimulated by bursts of electric current to disrupt the oncoming surge of seizures . Like all invasive procedures , deep brain stimulation may put the patient at a higher risk. However, there have been more improvements in recent years with deep brain stimulation than any available drug treatment . Automated insulin delivery systems , colloquially also known as

14784-427: The rights of cyborgs . Rob Spence , a Toronto-based filmmaker, who titles himself a real-life "Eyeborg", severely damaged his right eye in a shooting accident on his grandfather's farm as a child. Many years later, in 2005, he decided to have his ever-deteriorating and now technically blind eye surgically removed, whereafter he wore an eyepatch for some time before he later, after having played for some time with

14976-434: The transhumanist movement , with its belief that new technologies can assist the human race in developing beyond its present, normative limitations such as aging and disease, as well as other, more general inabilities, such as limitations on speed, strength , endurance, and intelligence . Opponents of the concept describe what they believe to be biases which propel the development and acceptance of such technologies; namely,

15168-444: The "Dominant Woman" stories, the "Battle of the Sexes" stories often present matriarchal societies in which women have overcome their patriarchal oppressors and have achieved dominance. These stories are representative of an anxiety that perceives women's power as a threat to masculinity and the heterosexual norm. As Merrick explains, "And whilst they may at least hint at the vision of a more equal gendered social order, this possibility

15360-473: The "artificial pancreas", are a substitute for the lack of natural insulin production by the body, most notably in Type 1 Diabetes . Currently available systems combine a continuous glucose monitor with an insulin pump that can be remote controlled, forming a control loop that automatically adjusts the insulin dosage depending on the current blood glucose level . Examples of commercial systems that implement such

15552-477: The "fainting heroine" type began to fade into the past. However, some female comic book writers, such as Gail Simone , believe that female characters are still relegated to plot devices (see Women in Refrigerators ). Feminism in science fiction shōjo manga has been a theme in the works of Moto Hagio among others, for whom the writings of Ursula K. Le Guin have been a major influence. Feminism has driven

15744-410: The 'how' in the transition from present society to a utopian future. In feminist science fiction, the achievement of a utopian future depends on the ability to recognize the need for improvement and the perseverance to overcome the obstacles present in creating a utopian society. Perhaps the most obvious attraction of science fiction to women writers – feminist or not – is the possibilities it offers for

15936-400: The 1970s, critics within the field, such as Damon Knight and Terry Carr , were using "sci fi" to distinguish hack-work from serious science fiction. Peter Nicholls writes that "SF" (or "sf") is "the preferred abbreviation within the community of sf writers and readers." Robert Heinlein found even "science fiction" insufficient for certain types of works in this genre, and suggested

16128-409: The 1970s, the science fiction community was confronting questions of feminism and sexism within science fiction culture itself. Multiple Hugo -winning fan writer and professor of literature Susan Wood and others organized the "feminist panel" at the 1976 World Science Fiction Convention against considerable resistance. Reactions to the appearance of feminists among fannish ranks led indirectly to

16320-533: The 1980s with Margaret Atwood 's novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985), a dystopic tale of a theocratic society in which women have been systematically stripped of all liberty. The book was motivated by fear of potential retrogressive effects on women's rights. Sheri S. Tepper is perhaps best known for her series The True Game , which explore the Lands of the True Game , a portion of a planet explored by humanity somewhere in

16512-542: The Age of the Wearable computer was published by Doubleday . Some of the ideas in the book were incorporated into the documentary film Cyberman that same year. Cyborg tissues structured with carbon nanotubes and plant or fungal cells have been used in artificial tissue engineering to produce new materials for mechanical and electrical uses. Such work was presented by Raffaele Di Giacomo , Bruno Maresca , and others, at

16704-497: The Ages ( 1900 ), which explores issues of gender norms and posited structural inequality . This recently rediscovered novel displays familiar feminist SF conventions: a heroine narrator who masquerades as a man, the exploration of sexist mores, and the description of a future hollow earth society (like Mizora ) where women are equal. The Sultana's Dream (1905 ), by Bengali Muslim feminist Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain , engages with

16896-550: The Apes (the original), directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and based on the 1963 French novel La Planète des Singes by Pierre Boulle , was released to popular and critical acclaim, its vivid depiction of a post-apocalyptic world in which intelligent apes dominate humans . In 1977, George Lucas began the Star Wars film series with the film now identified as " Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope . " The series, often called

17088-473: The Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln created a super sensitive humidity sensor by coating the bacteria Bacillus cereus with gold nanoparticles, being the first to use a microorganism to make an electronic device and presumably the first cyborg bacteria or cellborg circuit. Researchers from the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley published

17280-701: The Edge of Time (1976) and Joanna Russ 's The Female Man (1970). Each highlights what the authors believe to be the socially constructed aspects of gender roles by creating worlds with genderless societies. Two of these authors were pioneers in feminist criticism of science fiction during the 1960s and 1970s through essays collected in The Language of the Night (Le Guin, 1979) and How To Suppress Women's Writing (Russ, 1983). Also of note, Madeleine L'Engle 's A Wrinkle in Time (1962), written for children and teens, features

17472-575: The Extra-Terrestrial - 1983), war ( Enemy Mine - 1985), comedy ( Spaceballs - 1987, Galaxy Quest - 1999), animation ( WALL-E – 2008, Big Hero 6 – 2014), Western ( Serenity – 2005), action ( Edge of Tomorrow – 2014, The Matrix – 1999), adventure ( Jupiter Ascending – 2015, Interstellar – 2014), mystery ( Minority Report – 2002), thriller ( Ex Machina – 2014), drama ( Melancholia – 2011, Predestination – 2014), and romance ( Eternal Sunshine of

17664-407: The Future (1889). In 1892, poet and abolitionist Frances Harper published Iola Leroy , one of the first novels by an African American woman. Set during the antebellum South , it follows the life of a mixed race woman with mostly white ancestry and records the hopes of many African Americans for social equality—of race and gender—during Reconstruction . Unveiling a Parallel (1893) features

17856-454: The MWCNT network. When observed by optical microscopy , the material resembled an artificial " tissue " composed of highly packed cells. The effect of cell drying was manifested by their " ghost cell " appearance. A rather specific physical interaction between MWCNTs and cells was observed by electron microscopy , suggesting that the cell wall (the outermost part of fungal and plant cells) may play

18048-803: The RoboRoach was the first kit available to the general public and was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health as a device to serve as a teaching aid to promote an interest in neuroscience . Several animal welfare organizations including the RSPCA and PETA have expressed concerns about the ethics and welfare of animals in this project. In 2022, remote controlled cyborg cockroaches functional if moving (or moved) to sunlight for recharging were presented. They could be used e.g. for purposes of inspecting hazardous areas or quickly finding humans underneath hard-to-access rubbles at disaster sites . In

18240-645: The SF world by adding a feminist perspective to the traditionally male genre. Eileen Gunn 's science fiction short story "Coming to Terms" received the Nebula Award (2004) in the United States and the Sense of Gender Award (2007) in Japan, and has been nominated twice each for the Hugo Award , Philip K. Dick Award and World Fantasy Award , and short-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award . Her most popular anthology of short stories

18432-457: The Spotless Mind – 2004, Her – 2013). Science fiction and television have consistently been in a close relationship. Television or television-like technologies frequently appeared in science fiction long before television itself became widely available in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The first known science fiction television program was a thirty-five-minute adapted excerpt of

18624-548: The States and Empires of the Moon (1657) and The States and Empires of the Sun (1662), Margaret Cavendish 's " The Blazing World " (1666), Jonathan Swift 's Gulliver's Travels (1726), Ludvig Holberg 's Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum (1741) and Voltaire 's Micromégas (1752). Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Somnium the first science fiction story; it depicts

18816-804: The Superman (1965) featured an introduction which spoke of a "new frontier" that was "not merely space, but more profoundly the relationship between 'inner space' to 'outer space' – a bridge...between mind and matter." In " A Cyborg Manifesto ", Donna Haraway rejects the notion of rigid boundaries between humanity and technology, arguing that, as humans depend on more technology over time, humanity and technology have become too interwoven to draw lines between them. She believes that since we have allowed and created machines and technology to be so advanced, there should be no reason to fear what we have created, and cyborgs should be embraced because they are part of human identities. However, Haraway has also expressed concern over

19008-510: The Worlds (1898). His science fiction imagined alien invasion , biological engineering , invisibility , and time travel . In his non-fiction futurologist works he predicted the advent of airplanes , military tanks , nuclear weapons , satellite television , space travel , and something resembling the World Wide Web . Edgar Rice Burroughs 's A Princess of Mars , published in 1912,

19200-429: The absence of men in a post-apocalyptic society. Joanna Russ's works, including "When it Changed" and The Female Man are other examples of exploring femininity and a "deconstruction of the acceptable, liberal 'whole' woman towards a multiple, shifting postmodernist sense of female 'selfhood'". Feminist science fiction is evidenced in the globally popular mediums of comic books , manga , and graphic novels . One of

19392-477: The abstract. This includes not only commonly-used pieces of technology such as phones , computers, the Internet, and so on, but also artifacts that may not popularly be considered technology; for example, pen and paper, and speech and language . When augmented with these technologies and connected in communication with people in other times and places, a person becomes capable of more than they were before. An example

19584-489: The basis of sex. Feminism is for her not a matter of how many women (or characters in Science Fiction) are housewives but a part of our hope for survival, which she believes lies in the search for balance and integration". This stirs up many questions about equality (a debate which has been going on for many years) but nobody seems to have an answer. In this continual search for equality, many characters find themselves asking

19776-421: The being can live in an environment different from the normal one. Thereafter, Hamilton would first use the term "cyborg" explicitly in the 1962 short story, "After a Judgment Day", to describe the "mechanical analogs" called "Charlies," explaining that "[c]yborgs, they had been called from the first one in the 1960s...cybernetic organisms." In 2001, a book titled Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in

19968-448: The best inventions of 2009. The bionic eye records everything he sees and contains a 1.5 mm , low-resolution video camera, a small round printed circuit board , a wireless video transmitter, which allows him to transmit what he is seeing in real-time to a computer, and a 3- volt rechargeable VARTA microbattery . The eye is not connected to his brain and has not restored his sense of vision. Additionally, Spence has also installed

20160-463: The body (mainly the hands), to make financial operations like a contactless payment, or basic tasks like opening a door, has been erroneously marketed as more recent examples of cybernetic enhancement. The latter has not yet seen significant traction outside niche areas in Scandinavia and in actual function is little more than a pre-programmed RFID microchip encased in glass that does not interact with

20352-451: The boundaries of form and content. At the beginning of the Cold War, economic restructuring, technological advancements, new domestic technologies ( washing machines , electric appliances ), increased economic mobility of an emerging middle class , and an emphasis on consumptive practices, carved out a new technological domestic sphere where women were circumscribed to a new job description –

20544-408: The brain, has focused on restoring damaged eyesight in the blind and providing functionality to paralyzed people, most notably those with severe cases, such as locked-in syndrome . This technology could enable people who are missing a limb or are in a wheelchair the power to control the devices that aid them through neural signals sent from the brain implants directly to computers or the devices. It

20736-413: The concept of powered armor exoskeletons . The German space opera series Perry Rhodan , written by various authors, started in 1961 with an account of the first Moon landing and has since expanded in space to multiple universes , and in time by billions of years. It has become the most popular science fiction book series of all time. In the 1960s and 1970s, New Wave science fiction

20928-471: The contradictions of scientific objectivity and the ethics of technological evolution, and has argued that "There are political consequences to scientific accounts of the world." According to some definitions of the term, the physical attachments that humans have with even the most basic technologies have already made them cyborgs. In a typical example, a human with an artificial cardiac pacemaker or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator would be considered

21120-544: The creation of A Women's APA and WisCon . Feminist science fiction is sometimes taught at the university level to explore the role of social constructs in understanding gender. In the 1970s, the first feminist science fiction publications were created. The most well-known are fanzines The Witch and the Chameleon (1974–1976) and Janus (1975–1980), which later became Aurora SF (Aurora Speculative Feminism) (1981–1987). Windhaven, A Journal of Feminist Science Fiction

21312-506: The creation of microrobots and micromachinery , nanotechnology , smartdust , virtual reality , and artificial intelligence (including swarm intelligence ), as well as developing the ideas of "necroevolution" and the creation of artificial worlds. In 1965, Dune by Frank Herbert featured a much more complex and detailed imagined future society than had previously in most science fiction. In 1967 Anne McCaffrey began her Dragonriders of Pern science fantasy series. Two of

21504-564: The creation of a considerable body of action-oriented science fiction with female protagonists : Wonder Woman (originally created in 1941) and The Bionic Woman during the time of the organized women's movement in the 1970s; Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the Alien tetralogy in the 1980s; and Xena, Warrior Princess , comic book character Red Sonja , and Buffy the Vampire Slayer . 2001 science fiction TV series Dark Angel featured

21696-412: The creation of a female hero. The demands of realism in the contemporary or historical novel set limits which do not bind the universes available to science fiction. Although the history of science fiction reveals few heroic, realistic, or even original images of women, the genre had a potential recognized by the women writers drawn to it in the 1960s and 1970s. Before this time, the appeal for women writers

21888-466: The current social structure, however disorganized and ungoverned that social structure may be. Butler posits that utopian society can never be achieved as an entity entirely separate from the outside world, one of the more commonly held beliefs about conditions necessary to achieve utopia. Olamina's, and Butler's, utopia is envisioned as a community with a shared vision that is not forced on all within it. One common trend in feminist science fiction utopias

22080-494: The cybernetics that humans work within. Bruce Sterling , in his Shaper/Mechanist universe , suggested an idea of an alternative cyborg called 'Lobster', which is made not by using internal implants, but by using an external shell (e.g. a powered exoskeleton ). Unlike human cyborgs, who appear human externally but are synthetic internally (e.g., the Bishop type in the Alien franchise), Lobster looks inhuman externally but contains

22272-406: The device is only currently used as a research tool to study changes in heart rate, in the future the membrane may serve as a safeguard against heart attacks . A brain–computer interface , or BCI, provides a direct path of communication from the brain to an external device, effectively creating a cyborg. Research into invasive BCIs, which use electrodes implanted directly into the grey matter of

22464-472: The devoted aficionado or fan—has a hard time trying to explain what science fiction is," and the lack of a "full satisfactory definition" is because "there are no easily delineated limits to science fiction." Another definition comes from The Literature Book by DK and is, "scenarios that are at the time of writing technologically impossible, extrapolating from present-day science...[,]...or that deal with some form of speculative science-based conceit, such as

22656-460: The e-OPRA Implant System, and the iLimb , are considered by some to be the first real steps towards the next generation of real-world cyborg applications. Additionally, cochlear implants and magnetic implants , which provide people with a sense that they would not otherwise have had, can additionally be thought of as creating cyborgs. In vision science , direct brain implants have been used to treat non- congenital (acquired) blindness. One of

22848-442: The early 1960s, Marvel Comics already contained some strong female characters, although they often suffered from stereotypical female weakness such as fainting after intense exertion. By the 1970s and 1980s, true female heroes started to emerge on the pages of comics. This was helped by the emergence of self-identified feminist writers including Ann Nocenti , Linda Fite , and Barbara Kesel . As female visibility in comics increased,

23040-528: The early twentieth century, a few women were successful Science Fiction writers". But, "The times changed. Repression gave way to questioning and outright rebellion, and in the Science Fiction of the 1960s stylistic innovations and new concerns emerged 'Many of their stories, instead of dealing with the traditional hardware of science fiction, concentrated on the effects that different societies or perceptions would have on individual characters'". Andre Norton ,

23232-431: The elastic heart glove is made custom by using high-resolution imaging technology. The first prototype was created to fit a rabbit 's heart, operating the organ in an oxygen and nutrient-rich solution. The stretchable material and circuits of the apparatus were first constructed by Professor John A. Rogers in which the electrodes are arranged in an s-shape design to allow them to expand and bend without breaking. Although

23424-802: The elucidation of the mechanism of semiconductor-to-bacterium electron transfer that allows the transformation of carbon dioxide and sunlight into acetic acid. Scientists of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Davis and Academia Sinica in Taiwan, developed a different approach to create cyborg cells by assembling a synthetic hydrogel inside the bacterial cytoplasm of Escherichia. coli cells rendering them incapable of dividing and making them resistant to environmental factors , antibiotics and high oxidative stress . The intracellular infusion of synthetic hydrogel provides these cyborg cells with an artificial cytoskeleton and their acquired tolerance makes them well placed to become

23616-439: The episodes, ran from 1959 to 1964. It featured fantasy , suspense , and horror as well as science fiction, with each episode being a complete story. Critics have ranked it as one of the best TV programs of any genre . The animated series The Jetsons , while intended as comedy and only running for one season (1962–1963), predicted many inventions now in common use: flat-screen televisions , newspapers on

23808-570: The establishment of feminist and lesbian utopia . In her book In the chinks of the world machine: feminism and science fiction , Scottish author Sarah LeFanu distinguishes between feminist SF and women's SF insofar as the latter, while having a certain influence on the development of science fiction in general by rejecting sexism and featuring female heroes, does not make feminist demands. Feminist science fiction (SF) distinguishes between female SF authors and feminist SF authors. Both female and feminist SF authors are historically significant to

24000-415: The exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term 'Cyborg'. Their concept was the outcome of thinking about the need for an intimate relationship between human and machine as the new frontier of space exploration was beginning to develop. A designer of physiological instrumentation and electronic data-processing systems, Clynes

24192-432: The female main character, Nyles Etland, armed only with intelligence and intimate knowledge of her home environment, allies and science, intimidated an alien species who had intended to invade. Schmitz, who still commands a cult audience half a century after his death, dealt almost exclusively in competent and intelligent female main characters in dozens of novels and short stories. Feminist science fiction continues on into

24384-401: The feminist SF subgenre, as female writers have increased women's visibility and perspectives in SF literary traditions, while the feminist writers have foregrounded political themes and tropes in their works. Because distinctions between female and feminist can be blurry, whether a work is considered feminist can be debatable, but there are generally agreed-upon canonical texts, which help define

24576-430: The feminist movement, and the work of authors such as Joanna Russ and Marge Piercy explore and expose gender based oppression. Gilarek outlines two approaches to social critique via Feminist SF: the use of fantastical elements such as "invented worlds, planets, moons, and lands", used to call attention to the ills of society by exaggerating them, or a more straightforward approach, "relying on realist techniques to convey

24768-566: The feminist project. "Simply put, women turned to SF in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s because it provided them with growing audiences for fiction that was both socially engaged and aesthetically innovative." By the 1960s, science fiction was combining sensationalism with political and technological critiques of society. With the advent of second-wave feminism , women's roles were questioned in this "subversive, mind expanding genre". Three notable texts of this period are Ursula K. Le Guin 's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Marge Piercy 's Woman on

24960-412: The first appearances of a strong female character was that of the superhero Wonder Woman , co-created by husband and wife team William Moulton Marston and Elizabeth Holloway Marston . In December 1941, Wonder Woman came to life on the pages of All Star Comics , and in the intervening years has been reincarnated in from animated TV series to live-action films , with significant cultural impact . By

25152-500: The first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans. Since 2004, British artist Neil Harbisson has had a cyborg antenna implanted in his head that allows him to extend his perception of colors beyond the human visual spectrum through vibrations in his skull. His antenna was included within his 2004 passport photograph which has been said to confirm his cyborg status. In 2012 at TEDGlobal , Harbisson explained that he started to feel like

25344-484: The first feminist SF authors. Their texts, emerging during the first-wave feminist movement , often addressed issues of sexism through imagining different worlds that challenged gender expectations. In 1881, Mizora : A Prophecy described a women-only world with technological innovations such as parthenogenesis , videophones, and artificial meat. It was closely followed by other feminist utopian works, such as Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett 's New Amazonia: A Foretaste of

25536-406: The first in a series of 16 paying patients to receive Dobelle's second-generation implant, marking one of the earliest commercial uses of BCIs. The second-generation device used a more sophisticated implant enabling better mapping of phosphenes into coherent vision. Phosphenes are spread out across the visual field in what researchers call the starry-night effect. Immediately after his implant, Naumann

25728-743: The first science fiction novel . Some of the stories from The Arabian Nights , along with the 10th-century The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter and Ibn al-Nafis 's 13th-century Theologus Autodidactus , are also argued to contain elements of science fiction. Written during the Scientific Revolution and later the Age of Enlightenment are considered true science-fantasy books. Francis Bacon 's New Atlantis (1627), Johannes Kepler 's Somnium (1634), Athanasius Kircher 's Itinerarium extaticum (1656), Cyrano de Bergerac 's Comical History of

25920-441: The first scientists to come up with a working brain interface to restore sight was private researcher William Dobelle . Dobelle's first prototype was implanted into "Jerry", a man blinded in adulthood, in 1978. A single-array BCI containing 68 electrodes was implanted onto Jerry's visual cortex and succeeded in producing phosphenes , the sensation of seeing light. The system included cameras mounted on glasses to send signals to

26112-695: The frames of their glasses, which converts the image into a pattern of electrical stimulation. A chip located in the user's eye would then electrically stimulate the retina with this pattern by exciting certain nerve endings which transmit the image to the optic centers of the brain, and the image would then appear to the user. If technological advances proceed as planned, this technology may be used by thousands of blind people and restore vision to most of them. A similar process has been created to aid people who have lost their vocal cords . This experimental device would do away with previously used robotic-sounding voice simulators . The transmission of sound would start with

26304-524: The future. In November 2015, she received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement for this series. Tepper has written under several pseudonyms, including A. J. Orde, E. E. Horlak, and B. J. Oliphant. Carol Emshwiller is another feminist SF author whose best known works are Carmen Dog (1988), The Mount (2002), and Mister Boots (2005). Emshwiller had also been writing SF for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction since 1974. She won

26496-615: The gender inequality inherent in patriarchal society. In a statement about these single gendered utopias, Joanna Russ , author of The Female Man , theorized that male-only societies were not written because in patriarchal society, male oppression is not as pressing an issue as is female oppression. Utopia as an ideal to strive for is not a concept wholly limited to feminist science fiction, however many non-feminist science fiction works often dismiss utopia as an unachievable goal, and as such, believe that pursuits for utopia should be considered dangerous and barren. Anti-utopian theory focuses on

26688-480: The genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years. In 1937, John W. Campbell became editor of Astounding Science Fiction , an event that is sometimes considered the beginning of the Golden Age of Science Fiction , which was characterized by stories celebrating scientific achievement and progress . The "Golden Age" is often said to have ended in 1946, but sometimes

26880-426: The great early socialists said that the status of women in a society is a pretty reliable index of the degree of civilization of that society. If this is true, then the very low status of women in science fiction should make us ponder about whether science fiction is civilized at all". The women's movement has made most of us conscious of the fact that Science Fiction has totally ignored women. This "lack of appreciation"

27072-441: The human body (it is the same technology used in the microchips injected into animals for ease of identification ), thus not actually fitting the definition of a cybernetic implant. As cyborgs currently are on the rise, some theorists argue there is a need to develop new definitions of aging . For instance, a bio-techno-social definition of aging has been suggested. The term is also used to address human-technology mixtures in

27264-580: The human-machine hybrid to distinguish Homo sapiens , takes up where Charles Darwin's theory of evolution left off and deals with the course of evolution beyond humans. In his 2019 book Novacene , James Lovelock used the term "cyborgs" to refer to the next generation of beings who will become the "understanders of the future" and "lead the cosmos to self-knowledge". While acknowledging the organic component in Clynes' and Kline's definition, he proposed that these cyborgs "will have designed and built themselves from

27456-465: The idea of installing a camera instead, contacted professor Steve Mann at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , an expert in wearable computing and cyborg technology. Under Mann's guidance, Spence, at age 36, created a prototype in the form of the miniature camera which could be fitted inside his prosthetic eye ; an invention that would come to be named by Time magazine as one of

27648-439: The idea of utopia, theorizing that it would be impossible to establish a utopia without violence and hegemony. Many male authored works of science fiction as well as threads of philosophical utopian thought dismiss utopias as something unattainable, whereas in feminist science fiction, utopian society is often presented as something both achievable and desirable. Anti-utopian philosophies and feminist science fiction come to odds in

27840-625: The idea out that feminists have a way to get their voice out there. Now, all their works are famous/ popular enough for their ideas to be let out. Virginia Wolf can attest to this fact. She introduced the idea that women were not represented well in the field till the early 1900s and added to the fact by stating, "Women are not represented well in Science Fiction". Individual characters, as we come to know, have their own perception and observation of their surroundings. Characters in novels such as The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree and Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid's Tale are fully aware of

28032-439: The implant. Initially, the implant allowed Jerry to see shades of grey in a limited field of vision at a low frame-rate. This also required him to be hooked up to a two-ton mainframe , but shrinking electronics and faster computers made his artificial eye more portable and now enable him to perform simple tasks unassisted. In 1997, Philip Kennedy, a scientist and physician, created the world's first human cyborg from Johnny Ray ,

28224-472: The implications of the Internet and the expanding information universe, questions about biotechnology , nanotechnology , and post-scarcity societies . Recent trends and subgenres include steampunk , biopunk , and mundane science fiction . The first, or at least one of the first, recorded science fiction film is 1902's A Trip to the Moon , directed by French filmmaker Georges Méliès . It

28416-431: The integration of a mechanical artifice, bionic implants in medicine allow model organs or body parts to mimic the original function more closely. Michael Chorost wrote a memoir of his experience with cochlear implants, or bionic ears, titled Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human . Jesse Sullivan became one of the first people to operate a fully robotic limb through a nerve - muscle graft, enabling him

28608-486: The integration of some artificial component or technology that relies on some sort of feedback , for example: prostheses , artificial organs , implants or, in some cases, wearable technology . Cyborg technologies may enable or support collective intelligence . A related, possibly broader, term is the " augmented human ". While cyborgs are commonly thought of as mammals , including humans, they might conceivably be any organism . D. S. Halacy's Cyborg: Evolution of

28800-415: The late 1940s and the 1950s are included. In 1942, Isaac Asimov started his Foundation series , which chronicles the rise and fall of galactic empires and introduced psychohistory . The series was later awarded a one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series". Theodore Sturgeon 's More Than Human (1953) explored possible future human evolution . In 1957, Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale by

28992-647: The late 2010s, scientists created cyborg jellyfish using a microelectronic prosthetic that propels the animal to swim almost three times faster while using just twice the metabolic energy of their unmodified peers. The prosthetics can be removed without harming the jellyfish. A combination of synthetic biology , nanotechnology and materials science approaches have been used to create a few different iterations of bacterial cyborg cells. These different types of mechanically enhanced bacteria are created with so called bionic manufacturing principles that combine natural cells with abiotic materials. In 2005, researchers from

29184-458: The limited role of women in colonial India . Through depicting a gender-reversed purdah in an alternate technologically futuristic world, Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain,'s book has been described as illustrating the potential for cultural insights through role reversals early on in the subgenre's formation. In the utopian novel Beatrice the Sixteenth (1909), transgender writer Irene Clyde creates

29376-408: The means of production and have exclusive access to education. In Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid's Tale , gendered oppression is exaggerated in a dystopian society in which women's rights are stripped away and fertile women are relegated to the roles of handmaids who will bear children to further the human race. New books continue the dystopian theme of women living in a society which conforms to

29568-569: The message about the deficiencies of our world and its social organization, in particular the continued inequality of women". There are many examples of redefined gender roles and gender identity found in Feminist SF, ranging from the inversion of gendered oppression to the amplification of gender stereotypes and tropes. In the short story " The Matter of Seggri ", by Ursula Le Guin , traditional gender roles are completely swapped. Men are relegated to roles of athletes and prostitutes while women control

29760-456: The modern genre primarily arose in the 19th and early 20th centuries when popular writers began looking to technological progress and speculation. Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein , written in 1818, is often credited as the first true science fiction novel . Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are pivotal figures in the genre's development. In the 20th century, expanded with the introduction of space operas , dystopian literature, pulp magazines , and

29952-472: The novellas included in the first novel, Dragonflight , made McCaffrey the first woman to win a Hugo or Nebula Award . In 1968, Philip K. Dick 's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was published. It is the literary source of the Blade Runner movie franchise . In 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin was set on a planet in which the inhabitants have no fixed gender . It

30144-447: The one it is now: the problem of exploitation—exploitation of the woman, of the weak, of the earth' (p. 159)". Science fiction criticism has come a long way from its defensive desire to create a canon. All of these authors demonstrate that science fiction criticism tackles the same questions as other literary criticism: race, gender, and the politics of Feminism itself. Wolf believes that evaluating primarily American texts, written over

30336-414: The past few years". Feminist science fiction offers authors the opportunity to imagine worlds and futures in which women are not bound by the standards, rules, and roles that exist in reality. Rather, the genre creates a space in which the gender binary might be troubled and different sexualities may be explored. As Anna Gilarek explains, issues of gender have been a part of feminist discourse throughout

30528-418: The past one hundred and twenty years, these critics locate science fiction's merits in its speculative possibilities. At the same time, however, all note that the texts they analyze reflect the issues and concerns of the historical period in which the literature was written. DeRose introduces her article with, in effect, the same argument. She says, "the power of women in Science Fiction has greatly depreciated in

30720-603: The play RUR , written by the Czech playwright Karel Čapek , broadcast live from the BBC's Alexandra Palace studios on 11 February 1938. The first popular science fiction program on American television was the children's adventure serial Captain Video and His Video Rangers , which ran from June 1949 to April 1955. The Twilight Zone (the original series), produced and narrated by Rod Serling , who also wrote or co-wrote most of

30912-534: The possibility of achieving utopia. In "Rehabilitating Utopia: Feminist Science Fiction and Finding the Ideal", an article published in Contemporary Justice Review, philosophers against the dream of utopia argue that "First is the expectation that utopia justifies violence, second is the expectation that utopia collapses individual desires into one communal norm, and third is the expectation that utopia mandates

31104-570: The post-WWII era such as Judith Merril , author of " That Only a Mother " (1948), "Daughters of Earth" (1952), "Project Nursemaid" (1955), "The Lady Was a Tramp" (1957); Alice Eleanor Jones "Life, Incorporated" (1955), "The Happy Clown" (1955), "Recruiting Officer" (1955); and Shirley Jackson "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts" (1955) and "The Omen" (1958). These authors often blurred the boundaries of feminist SF fiction and feminist speculative fiction , but their work laid substantive foundations for second-wave feminist SF authors to directly engage with

31296-400: The professional housewife . Published feminist SF stories were told from the perspectives of women (characters and authors) who often identified within traditional roles of housewives or homemakers, a subversive act in many ways given the traditionally male-centered nature of the SF genre and society during that time. In Galactic Suburbia , author Lisa Yaszek recovers many women SF authors of

31488-534: The rapidly changing social, cultural, and technological landscape. Women SF authors during the post-WWII and Cold War time periods directly engage in the exploration of the impacts of science and technology on women and their families, which was a focal point in the public consciousness during the 1950s and 1960s. These female SF authors, often published in SF magazines such as The Avalonian , Astounding , The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , and Galaxy , which were open to new stories and authors that pushed

31680-545: The rational answer." Gilman's utopia is presented as something attainable and achievable without conflict, neither enabling violence nor extinguishing individualism. In the Parable series by feminist science fiction novelist Octavia Butler , anti-utopian philosophies are criticized via a dystopian setting. In the first novel, Parable of the Sower , following the destruction of her home and family, Lauren Olamina, one of many who live in

31872-468: The reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology ." Robert A. Heinlein wrote that "A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method ." American science fiction author and editor Lester del Rey wrote, "Even

32064-537: The same question: "Is Gender Necessary" (which is, coincidentally, one of Le Guin's novels and also another problem arising from gender biases). Robin Roberts , an American literary historian , addresses the link of these characters and what that means for our society today. Roberts believes that men and women would like to be equal, but are not equal. They should be fighting the same battle when in fact they are fighting each other. She also debates that gender equality has been

32256-515: The same researchers. The initial success of the techniques has resulted in increased research and the creation of a program called Hybrid-Insect-MEMS (HI-MEMS). Its goal, according to DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office , is to develop "tightly coupled machine-insect interfaces by placing micro-mechanical systems inside the insects during the early stages of metamorphosis." The use of neural implants has recently been attempted, with success, on cockroaches. Surgically applied electrodes were put on

32448-754: The same year for her story " Rachel in Love ". Her short story collection, Points of Departure (1990) won the Philip K. Dick Award , and her 1990 novella "Bones" won the 1991 World Fantasy Award . Other winners of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award include "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell (1996), "Black Wine" by Candas Jane Dorsey (1997), Redwood and Wildfire by Andrea Hairston (2011), "The Carhullan Army" by Sarah Hall (2007), Ammonite by Nicola Griffith (1993), and "The Conqueror's Child" by Suzy McKee Charnas (1999). All of these authors have had an important impact on

32640-887: The series gained popularity through syndication and extraordinary fan interest . It became a very popular and influential franchise with many films , television shows , novels , and other works and products. Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994) led to six additional live action Star Trek shows: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999), Voyager (1995–2001) , Enterprise (2001–2005), Discovery (2017–2024), Picard (2020–2023), and Strange New Worlds (2022–present), with more in some form of development. Cyborg A cyborg ( / ˈ s aɪ b ɔːr ɡ / ) (also known as cybernetic organism , cyber-organism , cyber-organic being , cybernetically enhanced organism , cybernetically augmented organism , technorganic being , techno-organic being , or techno-organism )—a portmanteau of cybernetic and organism —is

32832-426: The seventeenth-century view that science was endowed with a certain virility aimed at penetrating the secrets of nature, presented as other, feminine and objectified. The book paved the way for future explorations of the cyborg theme by feminist science fiction and had a lasting influence. In France, feminist writer Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert 's Voyage de Milord Céton dans les sept planètes , published in 1758,

33024-466: The situation at hand and their role in society. This idea is a continuation of the argument presented by Andre Norton. Wolf argues the same point in her analysis of Le Guin 's writing, who has many contributions to the works of feminist Science Fiction. Wolf argues, "What matters to Le Guin is not what people look like or how they behave but whether or not they have choice and whether or not they receive respect for who they are and what they do rather than on

33216-423: The smartphone in the future. The US-based company Backyard Brains released what they refer to as the "world's first commercially available cyborg" called the RoboRoach. The project started as a senior design project for a University of Michigan biomedical engineering student in 2010, and was launched as an available beta product on 25 February 2011. The RoboRoach was officially released into production via

33408-495: The stories must carry a political message, that of challenging the male/female paradigm in society. With this in mind, in the early 1990s the American feminist fanzine Aurora SF published a list of ten levels of feminism to measure the political content of a text. This graduation of the political message ranges from simple questioning of patriarchal society, to egalitarian discourse between the sexes, to systematic criticism of men, to

33600-557: The subgenre. As early as the English Restoration , female authors were using themes of SF and imagined futures to explore women's issues, roles, and place in society. This can be seen as early as 1666 in Margaret Cavendish 's The Blazing World , in which she describes a utopian kingdom ruled by an empress. This foundational work has garnered attention from some feminist critics , such as Dale Spender , who considered this

33792-515: The term speculative fiction to be used instead for those that are more "serious" or "thoughtful". Some scholars assert that science fiction had its beginnings in ancient times , when the line between myth and fact was blurred. Written in the 2nd century CE by the satirist Lucian , A True Story contains many themes and tropes characteristic of modern science fiction, including travel to other worlds, extraterrestrial lifeforms , interplanetary warfare, and artificial life . Some consider it

33984-411: The term ‘fans’ to describe his male and female readers, blurring the boundary between readership and writing, he allowed women to take part for the first time. The 1920s saw the establishment of what was later to become ‘fandom’. The Post-WWII and Cold War eras were a pivotal and often overlooked period in feminist SF history. During this time, female authors utilized the SF genre to assess critically

34176-628: The time of the LA Riots , Japanese-American writer Cynthia Kadohata 's work In the Heart of the Valley of Love (1992) was published. Her story, set in the year 2052, examines tensions between two groups as defined as the "haves" and the "have-nots" and is written as seen through the eyes of a nineteen-year-old girl who is of Asian and African descent. Nalo Hopkinson 's Falling in Love With Hominids (2015)

34368-411: The time they are girls, are forced to marry at adolescence, and after they become grandmothers must commit suicide. Over the decades, SF and feminist SF authors have taken different approaches to criticizing gender and gendered society. Helen Merrick outlines the transition from what Joanna Russ describes as the " Battle of the Sexes " tradition to a more egalitarian or androgynous approach. Also known as

34560-477: The wishes of men, at the expense of women's rights and well-being, such as in Louise O'Neill 's young adult novel Only Ever Yours . In this work, females are no longer born naturally but are genetically designed before birth to conform to the physical desires of men, then placed in a school in which they are taught not to think (they are never taught to read), and to focus on appearance until they are rated by beauty on

34752-572: Was a female writer who published science fiction under the Tiptree pen name). Science fiction authors Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler initiated this subsequent discussion at WisCon in February 1991. The authors' publishing in feminist SF after 1991 were now eligible for an award named after one of the genre's beloved authors. Karen Joy Fowler herself is considered a feminist SF writer for her short stories, such as "What I Didn't See", for which she received

34944-409: Was a rare pulp writer to include female leads in stories such as The Venus Adventure ( Wonder Stories , 1932), in which a mixed crew travel to Venus. The story opens in a future in which women are no longer enslaved by pregnancy and childbirth thanks to artificial incubators, which are opposed by a religious minority. Women have used this freedom to enter professions including chemistry. Wyndham's outlook

35136-494: Was able to use his imperfectly restored vision to drive slowly around the parking area of the research institute. In contrast to replacement technologies, in 2002, under the heading Project Cyborg , a British scientist, Kevin Warwick , had an array of 100 electrodes fired into his nervous system to link his nervous system into the internet to investigate enhancement possibilities. With this in place, Warwick successfully carried out

35328-552: Was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1963 and has never been out of print. Men also contributed literature to feminist science fiction. Prominently, Samuel R. Delany 's short story, " Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones " (1968), which won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1970, follows the life of a gay man that includes themes involving sadomasochism, gender, significance of language, and when high and low society encounter one another, while his novel Babel-17 has

35520-404: Was influential on later filmmakers , bringing a different kind of creativity and fantasy . Méliès's innovative editing and special effects techniques were widely imitated and became important elements of the cinematic medium . 1927's Metropolis , directed by Fritz Lang , is the first feature-length science fiction film. Though not well received in its time, it is now considered

35712-480: Was known for its embrace of a high degree of experimentation, both in form and in content, and a highbrow and self-consciously " literary " or " artistic " sensibility . In 1961, Solaris by Stanisław Lem was published in Poland . The novel dealt with the theme of human limitations as its characters attempted to study a seemingly intelligent ocean on a newly discovered planet . Lem's work anticipated

35904-492: Was not that great. The impact of feminism on the science fiction field can be observed not only in science fiction texts themselves, but also on the development of feminist approaches to science fiction criticism and history, as well as conversations and debates in the science fiction community. One of the main debates is about the representation of women in science fiction. In her article "Redefining Women's Power through Feminist Science Fiction", Maria DeRose suggests that, "One of

36096-461: Was published by Hugo Gernsback in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories . The story was published as part of a science fiction competition, in which 300 short stories were proposed. Hugo Gernsback put out a call to his magazine's readership for this competition, inviting them to send in texts describing the cover of Amazing Stories in December 1926. The cover featured an ocean liner floating in space. Using

36288-763: Was published from 1977 to 1979 by Jessica Amanda Salmonson in Seattle. Special issues of magazines linked to science fiction meetings were also published at that moment, like the Khatru symposium's fanzine Women in Science Fiction in 1975. Science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to SF or sci-fi ) is a genre of speculative fiction , which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology , space exploration , time travel , parallel universes , and extraterrestrial life . It often explores human responses to changes in science and technology. Science fiction

36480-545: Was so rare that in a serialisation of his novel Stowaway to Mars, one magazine editor "corrected" the name of the central character Joan to John. Wyndham then had to write them a new final instalment to replace the conclusion in which Joan fell in love and became pregnant. The first science fiction story published in a magazine by a woman in America was The Fate of the Poseidonia , written by Claire Winger Harris in 1927. The story

36672-602: Was the chief research scientist in the Dynamic Simulation Laboratory at Rockland State Hospital in New York. The term first appears in print 5 months earlier when The New York Times reported on the " Psychophysiological Aspects of Space Flight Symposium " where Clynes and Kline first presented their paper: A cyborg is essentially a man-machine system in which the control mechanisms of the human portion are modified externally by drugs or regulatory devices so that

36864-408: Was the first of his three- decade -long planetary romance series of Barsoom novels , which were set on Mars and featured John Carter as the hero . These novels were predecessors to YA novels , and drew inspiration from European science fiction and American Western novels . In 1924, We by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin , one of the first dystopian novels, was published. It describes

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