Quando la fantascienza è donna by Eleonora Federici (review)

Quando la fantascienza è donna (When Science Fiction Is Female) by Eleonora Federici is a book of many merits: its theoretical framework is informed by recent perspectives from gender studies, it boasts an extensive bibliography, and it is written in captivating and accessible prose. It is an intelligent book that fills an important gap in the literature, as few works on women science fiction writers have been published in Italian. Indeed, while much has been written on women’s science fiction in the English language, such a tradition has yet to develop in Italian, with one of the first exceptions being Ida Magli’s 1980 essay “L’immagine simbolica femminile e le sue costanti mitico-culturali nella fantascienza” (“Science-Fictional Representations of Femininity and Its Mythical and Cultural Origins)” in Luigi Russo’s La fantascienza e la critica (Science Fiction and Criticism [Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980], 103–12). Federici’s book thus serves not only as a pleasant read but as a guide to the rich tradition of English-language science fiction from the 1800s (chapters 1, 2, and 3) to today (chapter 6). Quando la fantascienza è donna will be of great utility for those wanting to teach science fiction in schools or universities, but also for those looking to carry out research on the women authors that form its focus, as it provides many cues for further research and a comprehensive bibliography.

The book includes in its scope a wide range of writers, and yet the author is able to skillfully draw out her key themes from across these sources. The most important is a gender perspective, highlighting the ways in which the texts, from the second half of the twentieth century onward, create a dialogue that addresses complex issues within feminist theory, most importantly around the question of “sexual difference.” Another central theme is that of women’s bodies in relation to technology and the concept of the cyborg. And last is the author’s interest in the new language and linguistic innovations in utopian/science fiction elsewhere. Federici in particular uses her analysis of science-fiction texts to look at the ways in which modifying linguistic structures and masculine lexicons is a necessary part of a feminist critique of patriarchy (chapter 4.4: “Liminalità e linguaggio al femminile” [“Liminality and Female Language”]).

In her emblematically titled introduction, “Perché una fantascienza al femminile?” (“Why Write Women’s Science Fiction?”), Federici seeks to identify the characteristics that make up women’s science fiction, where the lead character is a woman who offers a vision of a nonpatriarchal society. To do this, women writers use intertextual and intersectional strategies, creating a dialogue with male writing traditions in order to subvert or revise traditional themes and characters. Federici thus makes use of Marleen Barr’s concept of feminist fabulation (Feminist Fabulations: Space/Postmodern Fiction [Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992]) “to demonstrate the ways in which women’s science fiction offers us a different world to the one we know, forcing the two alternatives into a confrontation. Women science fiction writers deconstruct the traditional science-fiction narrative told from a male perspective and reveal the hidden cultural mechanisms that underpin it, offering a women’s viewpoint on the same themes” (11; my translation).¹ Women’s science fiction therefore distinguishes itself from the male tradition because it focuses on individuality and the capacity to empathize with the other.

The fourth chapter, “Dalle utopie femministe degli anni Settanta agli anni Ottanta” (“Feminist Utopias of the Seventies and into the Next Decade”), turns to issues that are very much at the fore of contemporary debates: the environment, pollution, reproduction, colonialism, and the pacifist movement. Utopian writing by women from the last three decades of the twentieth century, as Federici underlines, has given voice to new utopian models, visions of a better society where feminine cultural ideals are truly valued: pacifism, living in harmony with nature, empathy, and the capacity to live collectively [End Page...