Post by Adrian Munsey

Part 3 of of my new series "Wonderland: Science Fiction in the Atomic Age" is on Sky Arts Channel 36 Freeview and Sky at 8pm tonight. Episode 3 - MARGARET ATWOOD TO TED CHIANG Science fiction had largely been a male gender-based form. Writers like Ursula le Guin and Octavia Butler challenged conventional notions of gender. Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid's Tale created a more political, dystopian model to illustrate relations between genders becoming oppressive. Illustration of the work of Joanna Russ further develops this theme. Samuel Delaney (Babel-17, Dhalgren), an African American queer author, questioned in the late 1960s and 1970s what it meant to be a person. The complexion of science fiction is seen to have changed. – it is less white and straight and American and British than it used to be in the Golden Age or the age of the pulps or even in the New Wave. It is a more diverse community of writers and fans.   Tade Thompson further argues that: "From my perspective, the aliens are the colonisers." The work of Liu Cixin (The Three Body Problem), Ted Chiang (The Story of Our Lives) and Denis Villeneuve is explored. Susan Sontag portrays The Imagination of Disaster.  The episode continues with the forms of early cinema, including the work of Georges Melies and Fritz Lang. It concludes with describing several remarkable American films, including It Came from Outer Space. I have added the trailer again.

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