Science Fiction – created by women?

For my presentation, I was pretty excited to find out that my assignment was to study look a women who is considered to be one of the earliest proprietors of the science fiction genre, Margaret Cavendish’s “The Blazing World” is a very early form of science fiction similar in fact to some of the fantasy sci-fi novels of today with a main character whisked off to a new world to learn about the failings of earths society. I think it is supremely interesting that two of the founders of the genre are in fact women. The reason and second example I would give for this is Maary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Although it is firstly considered to be a gothic novel, Frankenstein also greatly influences later works.

Part of what makes both of these considered Science fiction is their attention to the scientific elements. Within the genre of science fiction there are both examples of hard and light science fiction. Light science fiction doesn’t not concern itself as thoroughly with the aspects of how the science works, it just works but hard science fiction is more technical and devles into the why and the how these things could happen. If the apocalypse is coming hard sci-fi wants to know why, where as light wants to know how people are coping…

Shelley works to explain much of how the doctor creates his monster, and so to does Cavendish strive to explain how this alternate world works and why it is superior to earth.