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Science Fiction

Mary Shelley’s Daughters

Susan Hollis on women science fiction writers as social commentators.

Over recent decades, increasing numbers of women authors have entered the field of science fiction. This follows a long period when there were very few female sci-fi writers, despite the genre having arguably been invented by a woman. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818. In this novel, well known by name but much less read, and in her second novel, The Last Man (1826), Shelley gave voice to two of the major themes dominant in science fiction to this day: concern about technology in relation to the individual or society and the destruction of humanity by forces beyond human control. Ursula LeGuin has pointed out that in the ensuing century and three quarters, science fiction writers have continued to describe the fears and conditions of humanity rather than, as commonly supposed, predicting the future.

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