Volume 3. Issue 1. January 2019.

RE-IMAGINING EARLY WOMEN'S DRAMA AS SCIENCE FICTION

Beth Cortese

This article argues that the origins of Science Fiction theatre can be traced back to the seventeenth century and explores the way in which the performance of Science Fiction in early women’s drama cathartically addresses ‘Otherness’ to expose and shape attitudes towards gender and ethnicity. The seventeenth century witnessed the establishment of the Royal Society, along with the development of the telescope. It is no surprise that amidst such a climate of scientific discovery, colonisation, and travel, seventeenth-century texts express a fascination with the existence of other worlds and of life in outer-space. Francis Godwin’s The Man in the Moone (c.1638) and Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World (1666) have recently been hailed as early prose works of Science Fiction but less attention has been paid to the role of Science Fiction on the seventeenth-century stage. Drawing on Christos Callow and Susan Gray’s theorisation of Science Fiction theatre as “psychological inner space, and the social and political spaces between individuals, groups and societies” (65-66), I analyse the way in which Margaret Cavendish’s private and immersive performance of Utopia in The Lady Contemplation (1667) and Aphra Behn’s public and communal Science Fiction comedy The Emperor of the Moon (1687) cathartically reimagine and question existing relations within their society. As Household Drama performed in the Duchess’s stately home, Cavendish’s The Lady Contemplation presents a private, immersive, and intimate performance of Utopia which relies on the imagination, while Behn’s The Emperor of the Moon makes use of lavish costume, special effects, and painted scenery to create her lunar inhabitants in this public spectacle. I consider how each performance of Science Fiction raises questions about gender, the public and the private sphere, the relationship between the body and the mind, self and other, along with the allure of spectacle and fantastical contemplation as a cathartic exercise.

SPOCK: A STUDY OF THE HOMOROMANTIC/ASEXUAL VULCAN

Danielle Girard

This article seeks to reread Star Trek’s Vulcan race from a contemporary standpoint as an example of a post-identitarian text that more closely manifests as asexual rather than homoerotic. It explores the evident ties between the Vulcan mating cycle and asexuality as well as several key instances of Spock’s sexual performativity acting opposite to his established character (with a particular focus on “Amok Time,” “Journey to Babel,” and “This Side of Paradise”). The article argues against the binaries of a post-identitarian world and instead explores how Science Fiction texts can be used to locate alternative sexualities and romantic identities in order to remap and reshape assumptions embedded by the heteronormative binary.

LISTEN TO THE SKY: INVESTIGATING SOUND IN CULTURAL IMAGES OF THE A-BOMB, FLYING SAUCER, AND SPUTNIK, 1945-58

John Sharples