Science on Screen®: Feminist Dystopias

The reality we live in is a reality distorted—by faith in alternative fact and fundamentalism; by extremism in the streets and the courts; by democracy in peril and a planet on fire.

Its name is dystopia.

Science Fiction proposes futures born of present problems: Utopias built from today’s missteps corrected, and dystopias from staying the course. Sexism is not unique to the present—victories for suffrage, opportunity and bodily autonomy in the wide lens of history are.

"Startlingly, the idea that history always progresses,” Margaret Atwood stated, “is a fantasy.”

This season of Science on Screen, we look to Feminist Dystopias: to see critically our present world; to learn of opportunities that science has for a better one; and to be inspired by the agency that Feminist Science Fiction gives women to fight.