Woman on the Edge of Time

Content Warning: This section discusses racism, sexual violence, abortion, wrongful commitment to a psychiatric hospital, and anti-gay bias.

Though science fiction is sometimes regarded as a male-dominated domain, many pioneers in the genre have been women; the novel often credited with inventing the genre, Frankenstein (1818), was the work of British Romantic writer Mary Shelley. Many of these authors were drawn to the genre because it provided space for imagining different gender norms or social roles. In the 20th century, for example, science fiction provided an outlet for women frustrated with the traditionalism of post-World War II society. Scholar Lisa Yaszek argues that these examples of “galactic suburbia” “provide us with important insight into women’s representations of the relations between science, technology, and gender” (Yaszek, Lisa. Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women’s Science Fiction. Ohio State University Press, 2008, p. 20). She also notes that much of the sexism these female writers faced reveals how even the most “openminded” readers—those drawn to speculative fiction—could still be constrained by social mores.

Today, Woman on the Edge of Time is recognized as a groundbreaking novel, and Piercy speaks in the Introduction about her interest in utopian fiction, writing, “Feminist utopias were created out of a hunger for what we didn’t have at a time when change felt not only possible but probable” (viii).