This lecture explores how women writing science fiction during the genre's formative years contributed to the development of their chosen story form by translating the new images of women (and women's work) offered by first wave feminists into science fiction itself. Like their male counterparts, women wrote about a range of scientific and technological topics, in stories that ranged from "thought experiments" (speculative stories set anywhere that privilege thought over action, responsibility over power, and cooperation over aggression) to "space operas" (stories set in outer space, often focusing on galaxy-spanning wars between species that privilege action over thought, power over responsibility, and competition over cooperation). Women also made a number of unique contributions to science fiction, often inspired by the real-world actions and ideas of first-wave feminists, who proposed thinking about women as "New Women" seeking equal rights in the public sphere; "True Women" prepared to apply their "uniquely feminine" housekeeping skills to the entire public world through the act of "Municipal Housekeeping"; and "Housewife Heroines" whose relative happiness or unhappiness is a barometer of society's success at creating truly new and better futures for all. Frustrated by the limited images of women created by male SF authors (the love interest, the damsel in distress, and the Beautiful Alien Monster), women writers translated the images of women proposed by feminists into new SF character types: the lady scientist and astronaut, the domestic engineer, the alien queen, and the housewife heroine. In addition to creating new character types and adding depth to established ones, women working in classic SF also expanded the scene of science fiction action (showing that kitchens and classrooms could be just as exciting spaces of technoscientific adventure as laboratories and launchpads), and explored how science and technology could both metaphorically and literally reconstruct both individual gendered bodies and gender relations as a whole.
