The Sex Is Out of This World: Essays on the Carnal Side of Science Fiction

Description

This book is a collection of new essays, with the general objective of filling a gap in the literature about sex and science fiction. Although some work has been published, none of it is recent. The essays herein explore the myriad ways in which authors writing in the genre, regardless of format (e.g., print, film, television, etc.), envision very different beings expressing this most fundamental of human behaviors. "Science fiction" can be translated into "real unreality." More than a genre like fantasy, which creates entirely new realms of possibility, science fiction constructs its possibilities from what is real, from what is, indeed, possible, or conceivably so. This collection, then, looks to understand and explore the "unreal reality," to note ways in which our culture's continually changing and evolving mores of sex and sexuality are reflected in, dissected by, and deconstructed through the genre of science fiction. Dedications Acknowledgments Table of Contents Introduction: Sexing Science Fiction • Michael G. Cornelius PART ONE : ALIEN SEX The Future, in Bed with the Past: Miscegenation in Science Fiction Film and Television • Cynthia J. Miller andA. Bowdoin Van Riper Alienating Sex: The Discourse of Sexuality in the Works of Octavia Butler • Anca Rosu “We pair off ! One man, one woman”: The Heterosexual Imperative in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy • Echo E. Savage Love at First Contact: Sex, Race and Colonial Fantasy in Star Trek: First Contact • Allison Whitney “They teach you that in Whore Academy?”A Quantitative Examination of Sex and Sex Workers in Joss Whedon’s Firefly and Dollhouse • Heather M. Porter The Evil Wet Nurse: Preoedipal Development and Primo Levi’s Science Fiction • Robert C. Pirro PART TWO: TECHNO SEX Patriarchy, Paternity and Papas: Reproductive Technologies and Parenthood in Science Fiction • Erin Grayson Sapp “I have worked hard at her head and brain”: Dr. Moreau and the New Woman • Thomas G. Cole II “Are we not men?” Degeneration, Future-Sex and The Time Machine • Larry T. Shillock Space Apes Want Our Women! Primate Lust in American Science Fiction • Matthew H. Hersch Technology as a Nexus for Homoerotic Desire in Boys’ Series Books • Michael G. Cornelius (Inter)Mediated Sexuality in the Science Fiction of J. G. Ballard • Clare Parody Human, Alien, Techno—What Next? Evolutionary Psychology, Science Fiction and Sex • Sherry Ginn Conclusion: Sexing Science Fiction, Take Two • Sherry Ginn About the Contributors Index