Feminist SF timeline

A Brief History of Feminist SF and Women in SF

BF (Before Frankenstein)

SF per se did not exist, but many of the stories that were told, and eventually published, relied on fantastical premises of one sort or another, often including magical, religious, and mythical imagery, beings or events. The imagined civilization, whether it be utopian, the Kingdom of Heaven, or otherwise, cropped up here and there.

• 1405 Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies
• 1666 Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World
• 1762 Sarah Scott, A Description of Millennium Hall
• 1794 Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (quintessential gothic novel; supernatural events ultimately shown to be non-supernatural)
• 1798; rev. 1803 Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (a satirical gothic novel)

Nineteenth Century CE: After Frankenstein (1818-1919)

The early 19th century formats were still shaping and being developed. Gothic novels remained popular, with supernatural or possibly supernatural elements. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein emerged in part from this tradition.

In the mid-later part of the 19th century, a wide variety of utopian stories coming out of social and utopian movements; also many supernatural and ghost stories.

The late 19th and early 20th century saw a suffragette backlash in literature: novels in which humorless women take over the world, for good or for ill; valiant men with a sense of humor often took it right back to the satisfaction of both sexes.

• 1818 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
• 1827 Jane Webb Loudon, The Mummy!: A Tale of the Twentieth Century

• 1872 J. Sheridan Le Fanu, "Carmilla" (an early, possibly the first, lesbian vampire story published)
• 1880-81 Mary E. Bradley publishes Mizora: A Prophecy
• 1892 Charlotte Perkins Gilman publishes "The Yellow Wallpaper" turning the ghost story on its head in an early feminist critique of what Betty Friedan later named "the feminine mystique".

• 1915 Charlotte Perkins Gilman publishes Herland
• 1918 Frances Stevens publishes Citadel of Fear
• 1918 Gertrude Franklin Atherton publishes The White Morning

The 20th Century AF: After the Great War (1920-1945)

The pulp era begins, and brings with it women writers, often writing pseudonymously or under gender-ambiguous names, such as C.L. Moore.

• 1926 Thea von Harbou publishes Metropolis
• 1926 Sylvia Townsend Warner publishes Lolly Willowes
• 1928 Virginia Woolf publishes Orlando
• 1935 Katharine Burdekin publishes The End of This Day's Business
• 1941 First appearance of Wonder Woman, one of the first female superheroes

The 20th Century AF: After WW2 (1945-1967)

SF popularity continues to grow, and male and female writers enter the field in increasing numbers. Women still frequently write with pseudonyms or gender-ambiguous names, or pseudonymously with male writers using a male pseudonym.

In US SF, anxieties over nuclear war, Communism, and the changing roles of women during and after WW2 sometimes played out in gender-related SF. A number of "war of the sexes" stories appeared, often depicting the society run by women as a hive-like metaphor for socialism. As in the suffragette backlash, the societies run by women were authoritarian, humorless, dull, and lacked creative fire and ingenuity, and they were often static or even dying societies.

Prominent new writers in the '40s include Judith Merril, Leigh Brackett and Miriam Allen deFord.

• 1948 Judith Merril publishes "That Only a Mother"
• 1948 Shirley Jackson publishes "The Lottery"
• 1948 Lisa Ben publishes "New Year's Day", the first modern "gay identity" SF story
• 1948 Wilmar Shiras publishes "In Hiding", which was later developed into a novel, Children of the Atom (1953)

Prominent new women writers in the '50s include Katharine MacLean, Margaret St. Clair, Zenna Henderson, and Andre Norton.

• 1950 Judith Merril publishes Shadow on the Hearth
• 1952 Zenna Henderson begins publishing The People series
• 1954 "Femizine" An "all female" SF fan zine created in England, later revealed to be a hoax.

Prominent new women writers in the '60s are almost too many to name here but a selection include: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Rosel George Brown, Sonya Dorman, Carol Emshwiller, Sylvia Louise Engdahl, Phyllis Gotlieb, Madeleine L'Engle, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, Naomi Mitchison, Joanna Russ, James Tiptree, Jr., Kate Wilhelm, and many others. Plus, Samuel R. Delany.

• 1960 Theodore Sturgeon publishes Venus Plus X
• 1961 Marion Zimmer Bradley publishes The Door Through Space
• 1962 Naomi Mitchison publishes Memoirs of a Spacewoman
• 1962 Madeleine L'Engle publishes A Wrinkle in Time
• 1962 Marion Zimmer Bradley publishes Planet Savers, first novel in the Darkover series
• 1966 Ursula K. Le Guin publishes her first two novels, Rocannon's World and Planet of Exile
• 1966 Rosel George Brown publishes Sibyl Sue Blue
• 1967 Pamela Zoline's publishes her story "The Heat Death of the Universe" in Michael Moorcock's New Worlds
• 1967 Anna Kavan publishes Ice
• 1967 Harlan Ellison's publishes Dangerous Visions, a ground-breaking anthology including work by Delany, Emshwiller, and Sturgeon

The Golden Age of Feminist SF (1968-1979)

Lesbian separatism and Gay Liberation made strong impacts on feminist SF, and the developing world of fanfic. Many more women entered the field. A feminist backlash became prominent, focusing less on hive-like socialist societies and more on lesbianism and male fears of sexual redundancy.

• 1968 Joanna Russ published Picnic on Paradise
• 1968 Lt. Uhura and Captain Kirk debut the first interracial kiss on American TV in "Plato's Stepchildren", "Star Trek" Season 3

• 1968 Samuel Delany published Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, a major novel with a gay protagonist

• 1969 Ursula K. Le Guin published The Left Hand of Darkness

• 1971 Monique Wittig published Les Guerilleres

• 1971 Dorothy Bryant]] published The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You, which stylistically echoed late 19th century threads of metaphoric fiction and paved the way for New Age fiction

• 1972 Joanna Russ published "When It Changed"

• 1973 James Tiptree, Jr. published "The Girl Who Was Plugged In"

• 1974 Suzy McKee Charnas published Walk to the End of the World, first in the Holdfast Series
• 1974 Pamela Sargent published Women of Wonder: Science Fiction Stories by Women about Women, the first anthology dedicated to women in SF
• 1974 Diane Marchant published the first known Star Trek slash, "A Fragment Out of Time," an oblique Kirk/Spock story

• 1975 Marion Zimmer Bradley publishes The Heritage of Hastur
• 1975 Tanith Lee publishes The Birthgrave
• 1975 Naomi Mitchison publishes Solution Three
• 1975 Joanna Russ publishes The Female Man
• 1975 Robert Silverberg described James Tiptree, Jr.'s writing as "ineluctibly masculine" in the introduction to Warm Worlds and Otherwise, apparently attempting to dispel rumors that Tiptree was female

• 1976 Susan Wood set up a feminist panel at MidAmericon; this was apparently the first panel on "women and science fiction", and led ultimately to the founding of A Woman's Apa.

• 1976 Samuel R. Delany published Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia

• 1976 Marge Piercy published Woman on the Edge of Time

• 1976 Carol Seajay began Feminist Bookstore News, a selection tool geared toward women's bookstores; an SF column began -- ? when. Susanna Sturgis was the long-time SF columnist.

• 1977 The first WisCon was held in Madison, Wisconsin.

• 1978 E.M. Broner published A Weave of Women
• 1978 Vonda McIntyre publishes Dreamsnake

• 1979 The gay/lesbian (eventually glbt) bookstore "A Different Light" opened, naming itself after Elizabeth Lynn's novel of the same name.
• 1979 Octavia Butler publishes Kindred
• 1979 Sally Miller Gearheart publishes The Wanderground

The Eighties: Cyberpunk & "Post-Feminism" (1980-1990)

The feminist sex wars reach their peak in the 80s, not coincidentally at the same time that women's erotica is enjoying a boom. SF in general shows a much greater level of sexual explicitness, and fanfic gets naughty and needs a spanking.

Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon kicks off a new thread of novels portraying women's spirituality and goddess-based religions, ultimately feeding into the New Age fiction trend. The Mists of Avalon also initiated a popular trend of reenvisioning histories, myths, and iconic stories from feminist or subaltern perspectives.

Numerous women's presses and bookstores are founded in the 1970s with the collective energy of the feminist movement and lesbian separatists; lesbian & gay-themed lines, presses, and bookstores followed shortly thereafter.

The English-speaking world discovers magical realism, and numerous important new works are published or translated into English.

The bisexual, goth, androgynous, vampire thing picks up steam in the 80s.

• 1980 Octavia Butler publishes Wild Seed
• 1980 Elizabeth Lynn publishes Northern Girl
• 1980 Kate Wilhelm publishes Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

• 1981 Julian May publishes The Many Colored Lands (first in Pleiocene Cycle)
• 1981 New Victoria publishes WomanSpace: Future and Fantasy, Stories and Art by Women
• 1981 Elisabeth Vonarburg publishes La Silence de la Cite; translated into English in 1988 as The Silent City

• 1982 Tanith Lee publishes The Silver Metal Lover

• 1983 Marion Zimmer Bradley publishes The Mists of Avalon
• Mary Gentle publishes Witchbreed
• 1983 Joanna Russ publishes How to Supress Women's Writing

• 1984 Suzette Haden Elgin publishes Native Tongue
• 1984 Marion Zimmer Bradley publishes Sword and Sorceress, the first in a series of Bradley-edited anthologies in which many new writers got started, and a consistent source for stories about women (specifically, swordswomen and sorceresses).
• 1984 Kindred Spirits: An Anthology of Gay and Lesbian Science Fiction Stories Jeffrey M. Elliot publishes, with Alyson Press, the first explicitly gay-lesbian themed SF anthology, reprinting GL stories from previous publications.

• 1985 Margaret Atwood publishes The Handmaid's Tale, later made into a film and an opera

• 1986 Sigourney Weaver kicks ass in Aliens (dir., James Cameron)
• 1986 Joan Slonczewski publishes A Door Into Ocean
• 1986 Gaylaxian Science Fiction Society formed

• 1987 Toni Morrison publishes Beloved
• 1987 Pamela Sargent publishes The Shore of Women
• 1987 Gwyneth Jones publishes Divine Endurance
• Octavia Butler publishes Dawn, first book of the Xenogenesis trilogy
• James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon) dies, 1915-1987

• 1988 Carol Emshwiller publishes Carmen Dog
• 1988 C.J. Cherryh publishes Cyteen
• 1988 Sheri Tepper publishes The Gate to Women's Country
• Gaylaxicon, the first GLB SF convention
• Lambda Literary Awards inaugurated, with a joint category for "mystery/sf"; award given to mystery novels.

The Gay Nineties: Queer Identity & Default Feminism (1991 onward)

Explicitly feminist themes in SF continued to be explored in feministSF, but the true triumph of the Secret Feminist Cabal is the acceptance of the goals and analyses of feminism in much other literature. Strong women characters have become a norm for male and female writers alike. Kick-ass woman heroes made a major splash on TV and film. In the post-Feminist Sex Wars years, lesbian, feminist, and woman-centered erotica boomed, spawning many anthologies on every conceivable subject. And feministSF moved online, in all its forms: fanfic, geeky websites, mailing lists, and the like.

• 1991 The creation of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for SF or fantasy that explores and expands gender roles; Pat Murphy announced the creation at WisCon.
• 1991 Lambda Literary Awards now split the lesbian mystery/sf category, and created a category for "Lesbian Science Fiction/Fantasy"; first Lambda for a lesbian fantasy/SF book, Jessica Amanda Salmonson's anthology of glb supernatural fiction, What Did Miss Darrington See?)
• 1991 Susanna Sturgis publishes Memories and Visions: Women's Fantasy and Science Fiction anthology
• 1991 Jewelle Gomez publishes The Gilda Stories; Marge Piercy publishes He, She and It; Rebecca Ore publishes The Illegal Rebirth of Billy the Kid

• 1992 Angela Carter dies
• 1992 Nicola Griffith publishes Ammonite
• 1992 Sally Potter directs "Orlando"

• 1993 The X-Files reinvents the buddy film, debuting the skeptical scientific Scully playing straight man to Mulder's flirty believer; the two remain (mostly) platonic peers and equals for some half-dozen years into the series. The X-Files also accounts for a tremendous surge in FanFic which moved online in vast numbers.
• 1993 Pam Keesey publishes Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampire Stories, one of the first explicitly lesbian anthologies of fantasy/horror, tapping into the lesbian vampire zeitgeist (they're lesbian! they're vampires!)

• 1994 First website on feminist SF (ultimately becoming http://feministSF.org ).
• 1994 Nancy Kress publishes Beggars in Spain; Kathleen Ann Goonan publishes Queen City Jazz; Maureen McHugh publishes Half the Day Is Night

• 1995 "Xena: Warrior Princess" series premiere airs in the US (1995 Sept. 9; UK airdate, 1996 Sept. 8)
• 1995 Nancy Springer publishes Larque on the Wing

• 1996 (??) Circlet Press first publication of erotic, feminist SF, a chapbook called Telepaths Don't Need Safewords

• 1997 Judith Merril dies
• 1997 Buffy the Vampire Slayer series premiere in the US

• [1998]] The Gaylactic Network establishes the Spectrum Awards "to honor works in science fiction, fantasy and horror which include positive explorations of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered characters, themes, or issues."
• 1998 - The Secret Feminist Cabal goes public by publishing the Tiptree Anthology, Flying Cups and Saucers, illustrated by Freddie Baer
• 1998 Nalo Hopkinson publishes Brown Girl in the Ring

• 1999 FemSpec founded
• 1999 Marion Zimmer Bradley dies
• 1999 Naomi Mitchison dies

• 2000 Broad Universe founded to promote women writers of SF/F/H
• 2000 Feminist Bookstore News shuts down after a 25-year run, and the demise of many feminist presses and bookstores.

• 2002 Whileaway LiveJournal community began, 2002 June 26

• 2003 Monique Wittig died

• 2006 Octavia Butler died
• 2006 feministSF wiki began
• 2006 WisCon 30 year anniversary!

Sources & External Links

• Laura Quilter, 2001-2006, A Brief History of Feminist SF/F and Women in SF/F, available at http://feministsf.org/community/history.html