Gender and Sexuality in Futuristic Worlds Science fiction is a genre which gives one's fantasy free rein. The writer doesn't have limitations of the present world. She or he doesn't need to take modern laws, social norms, and ethics into consideration if they do not choose to do so. A writer is free to choose a whole new world to explore, which can be similar to present day, or completely different. By writing about the future, a person can explore issues of present day through imaginative technology, non-human species, and other new tropes. Joanna Russ choses to create a utopia with only female inhabitants and explores feminist concepts. And on a smaller platform, female-writers create fan fictions pairing Kirk and Spock of Star Trek in intimate stories, thus questioning the ideas of masculinity and gender roles. Both types of work contribute to providing a platform for discussion of the inequality that exists between men and women. When It Changed is a short work of science fiction written by Joanna Russ. In this story, Russ creates a world where women have lived for 600 years without any presence of men. When two men suddenly land on this planet, they question the validity of their “life style”, and are shocked that women aren't devastated over the absence of men. For the first time in six …show more content…
Fan fiction is writing based on characters from movies, books, TV shows, etc. In NASA/TREK and Future Men, Constance Penley focuses in on fan fiction written about Kirk and Spock, the main male characters in the TV series Star Trek. She discusses the reasons why women choose to write erotic stories about two men, and what purpose does it serve in talking about society. Ideas from Penley's writings about female empowerment in a male-dominated world are similar to the ideas found in Joanna Russ's When It Changed. Penley's concepts can be found in Russ's