The Female Man

Начало книги

SF writers have been fascinated by the ‘many worlds’ or ‘multiverse’ concept since it first emerged as a marginally respectable scientific idea—usually credited to a graduate student, Hugh Everett III, 1957. Parallel universes allow for time travel without offences against causality. Parallel universes allow SF writers to play dress-up, and still claim they are not writing fantasy. And that’s not all they can do:

Arguably, every trivial decision we make creates a different self, with a different present and a different past. But not all decisions are trivial. In The Female Man (1975) Joanna Russ—already adept at mixing a keen appreciation of genre with a sharp grasp of the social politics of her times—combines a ‘many worlds’ science fiction plot with the phenomenon known in radical politics as raised consciousness. When it dawns on you that some classes and races are exploited; or that prejudice and corruption are rife in your society, all your memories change colour. All your hopes for the future vanish and are replaced: it’s as if you’re a new person, in a strange yet familiar new world. Three women, one from the far future, two from variants of the USA in 1969, meet in what seems a freak accident, a brief fusion of the ‘braided possibilities’. Janet, from far-off Utopian Whileaway; Jeannine, from a 1969 where the Great Depression never ended (and economic growth never generated Women’s Liberation); and ‘Joanna’, who is Joanna Russ herself, are independent characters in the plot. They are also the same person, the modern Everywoman, USA, at different stages of her life. Partly this story is a dizzying SF mind game; partly it’s a timeless road-map of the feminist route to self-realization.

Читать дальше →