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Fu Manchu

Dr. Fu Manchu is a supervillain who was introduced in a series of novels by the English author Sax Rohmer beginning shortly before World War I and continuing for another forty years. The character featured in cinema, television, radio, comic strips and comic books for over 100 years, and he has also become an archetype of the evil criminal genius and mad scientist, while lending his name to the Fu Manchu moustache.

Background and publication
According to his own account, Sax Rohmer decided to start the Dr. Fu Manchu series after his Ouija board spelled out C-H-I-N-A-M-A-N when he asked what would make his fortune. Clive Bloom argues that the portrait of Fu Manchu was based on the popular music hall magician Chung Ling Soo, "a white man in costume who had shaved off his Victorian moustache and donned a Mandarin costume and pigtail". As for Rohmer's theories concerning "Eastern devilry" and "the unemotional cruelty of the Chinese", he seeks to give them intellectual credentials by referring to the travel writing of Bayard Taylor. Taylor was a would-be ethnographer who, though unversed in Chinese language and culture, used the pseudo-science of physiognomy to find in the Chinese race "deeps on deeps of depravity so shocking and horrible, that their character cannot even be hinted". Rohmer's protagonists treat him as an authority.

Fu Manchu first appeared in Rohmer's short story "The Zayat Kiss" (1912). It and nine further stories were later collected into the 1913 novel The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Two more series were collected into The Devil Doctor (1916) and The Si-Fan Mysteries (1917), before the character entered a 14-year absence. Following 1931's The Daughter of Fu-Manchu, Rohmer wrote nine more Fu Manchu novels before his death in 1959. Four previously published stories were posthumously collected into The Wrath of Fu-Manchu (1973). In total, Rohmer wrote 14 novels concerning the character. The image of "Orientals" invading Western nations became the foundation of Rohmer's commercial success, being able to sell 20 million copies in his lifetime.

Dr. Fu Manchu
Supervillain Dr. Fu Manchu's murderous plots are marked by the extensive use of arcane methods; he disdains guns or explosives, preferring dacoits (armed robbers in India), Thugs (professional robbers and murderers in India) and members of other secret societies as his agents (usually armed with knives) or using "pythons and cobras ... fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli ... my black spiders" and other peculiar animals or natural chemical weapons. He has a great respect for the truth (in fact, his word is his bond), and uses torture and other gruesome tactics to dispose of his enemies.

Dr. Fu Manchu is described as a mysterious villain because he seldom appears on the scene. He always sends his minions to commit crimes for him. In the novel The Insidious Dr Fu-Manchu, he sends a beautiful young girl to the crime scene to see that the victim is dead. He also sends a dacoit to attack Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Dr Petrie.

In the novel Fu Manchu's Bride (1933), Dr. Fu Manchu claims to hold doctorates from four Western universities, while in Emperor Fu Manchu (1959), he states that he attended Heidelberg University, the Sorbonne and the University of Edinburgh. (In the film The Mask of Fu Manchu, however, he states proudly that "I am a doctor of philosophy from Edinburgh, a doctor of law from Christ's College, a doctor of medicine from Harvard. My friends, out of courtesy, call me 'Doctor.) At the time of their first encounter (1911) Dr. Petrie believed that Dr Fu Manchu was more than 70 years old. That would mean that he studied for his first doctorate in the 1860s or 1870s.

According to Cay Van Ash, Rohmer's biographer and former assistant who became the first author to continue the series after Rohmer's death, "Fu Manchu" was a title of honor, which referred to "the warlike Manchu". Van Ash speculates that Dr. Fu Manchu was a member of the imperial family of China who backed the losing side in the Boxer Rebellion. In the early books (1913–1917), Dr. Fu Manchu is an agent of a Chinese tong, known as the Si-Fan, and acts as the mastermind behind a wave of assassinations targeting Westerners living in China. In the later books (1931–1959), he has gained control of the Si-Fan, which has been changed from a mere Chinese tong into an international criminal organization under his leadership. In addition to attempting to take over the world and restore China to its former glory (Dr. Fu Manchu's main goals right from the beginning), the Si-Fan now also tries to eliminate fascist dictators and halt the spread of communism around the globe, for its leader's own selfish reasons. Dr. Fu Manchu knows that both fascism and communism present major obstacles to his plans for world domination. The Si-Fan is largely funded through criminal activities, particularly the drug trade and human trafficking. Dr. Fu Manchu has extended his already considerable lifespan by use of the elixir of life, a formula that he has spent decades trying to perfect.

Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Dr Petrie

Opposing Dr Fu Manchu in the stories are Sir Denis Nayland Smith and, in the first three books, Dr Petrie. Petrie narrates the first three novels. (The later novels are narrated by various other characters allied with Smith right up to the end of the series.) Smith carries on the fight, combating Dr Fu Manchu more by sheer luck and dogged determination than intellectual brilliance except in extremis. Smith and Dr Fu Manchu share a grudging respect for one another, as each believes that a man must keep his word, even to an enemy.

In the first three books, Smith serves in the Indian Imperial Police as a police commissioner in Burma who has been granted a roving commission, allowing him to exercise authority over any group who can help him in his mission. When Rohmer revived the series in 1931, Smith, who has been knighted for his efforts to defeat Fu Manchu, is an ex-Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard. He later accepts a position with MI6. Several books have him placed on special assignment with the FBI.

Kâramanèh
Prominent among Dr Fu Manchu's agents is the "seductively lovely" Kâramanèh. Her real name is unknown. She was sold to the Si-Fan by Egyptian slave traders while she was still a child. Kâramanèh falls in love with Dr Petrie, the narrator of the first three books in the series, and rescues Petrie and Nayland Smith many times. Eventually the couple are united and she wins her freedom. They marry and have a daughter, Fleurette, who figures in two later novels, Fu Manchu's Bride (1933) and its sequel, The Trail of Fu Manchu (1934). Lin Carter later created a son for Dr Petrie and Kâramanèh.

Fah Lo Suee

Dr Fu Manchu's daughter, Fah Lo Suee, is a devious mastermind in her own right, frequently plotting to usurp her father's position in the Si-Fan and aiding his enemies both within and outside the organization. Her real name is unknown; Fah Lo Suee was a childhood term of endearment. She is introduced anonymously while still a teenager in the third book in the series and plays a larger role in several of the titles of the 1930s and 1940s. She is known for a time as Koreani after being brainwashed by her father, but her memory is later restored. Like her father, she takes on false identities, among them Madame Ingomar, Queen Mamaloi and Mrs van Roorden. In films she has been portrayed by numerous actresses over the years. Her character is usually renamed in film adaptations because of difficulties with the pronunciation of her name. Anna May Wong played Ling Moy in Daughter of the Dragon (1931). Myrna Loy portrayed the similarly named Fah Lo See in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). Gloria Franklin had the role of Fah Lo Suee in Drums of Fu Manchu (1940). Laurette Luez played Karamaneh in The Adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu (1956), but the character owed more to Fah Lo Suee than to Rohmer's depiction of Kâramanèh. Tsai Chin portrayed Dr Fu Manchu's daughter Lin Tang in the five Christopher Lee films of the 1960s.

Sax Rohmer

 * The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (1913) (U.S. title: The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu)
 * The Devil Doctor (1916) (U.S. title: The Return of Dr Fu-Manchu)
 * The Si-Fan Mysteries (1917) (U.S. title: The Hand of Fu-Manchu)
 * Daughter of Fu Manchu (1931)
 * The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)
 * The Bride of Fu Manchu (1933) (U.S. title: Fu Manchu's Bride)
 * The Trail of Fu Manchu (1934)
 * President Fu Manchu (1936)
 * The Drums of Fu Manchu (1939)
 * The Island of Fu Manchu (1941)
 * Shadow of Fu Manchu (1948)
 * Re-Enter Dr. Fu Manchu (1957) (U.S. title: Re-Enter Fu Manchu)
 * Emperor Fu Manchu (1959), Rohmer's last novel published before his death
 * The Wrath of Fu Manchu (1973), a posthumous anthology containing the title novella, first published in 1952, and three later short stories: "The Eyes of Fu Manchu" (1957), "The Word of Fu Manchu" (1958), and "The Mind of Fu Manchu" (1959).

Cay Van Ash

 * Ten Years Beyond Baker Street (1984), the first of two authorised continuation novels by Cay Van Ash, Sax Rohmer's former assistant and biographer; set in early 1914, it sees Dr Fu Manchu come into conflict with Sherlock Holmes.
 * The Fires of Fu Manchu (1987), the second authorized continuation novel by Cay Van Ash; it is set in 1917, and documents Smith and Petrie's encounter with Dr Fu Manchu during the First World War, culminating in Smith's knighthood.
 * A third continuation novel, The Seal of Fu Manchu, was underway when Van Ash died in 1994 and it is believed to be lost.

Other authors

 * The Terror of Fu Manchu (2009), the first of three authorised continuation novels by William Patrick Maynard; it expands on the continuity established in Van Ash's books and sees Dr Petrie teaming with both Nayland Smith and a Rohmer character from outside the series, Gaston Max, in an adventure set on the eve of the First World War
 * The Destiny of Fu Manchu (2012), the second authorised continuation novel by William Patrick Maynard, set between Rohmer's The Drums of Fu Manchu and The Island of Fu Manchu on the eve of the Second World War; it follows the continuity established in Maynard's first novel
 * The Triumph of Fu Manchu (announced), the third authorised continuation novel by William Patrick Maynard, set between Rohmer's The Trail of Fu Manchu and President Fu Manchu
 * The League of Dragons by George Alec Effinger, an unpublished and unauthorised novel, narrated by Conan Doyle's character Reginald Musgrave, involving a young Sherlock Holmes matching wits with Dr Fu Manchu in the 19th century, of which two chapters have been published in the anthologies Sherlock Holmes in Orbit (1995) and My Sherlock Holmes (2003)

Dr Fu Manchu also makes appearances in the following non-Fu Manchu/Rohmer works:
 * "Sex Slaves of the Dragon Tong" and "Part of the Game", a pair of related short stories by F. Paul Wilson in his collection Aftershocks and Others: 19 Oddities (2009), featuring anonymous appearances by Fu Manchu and characters from Little Orphan Annie
 * Several stories in August Derleth's detective series Solar Pons, in which he appears as "the Doctor"; Derleth's successor, Basil Copper, also made use of the character.
 * Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick (1976), in which he is the Chinese ambassador
 * The Destroyer #83, Skull Duggery (1976), in which It is revealed that Chiun, the Master of Sinanju has worked for the Devil Doctor, as have previous generations of Masters.
 * Kim Newman's Anno Dracula (1992), in which he appears as the leader of the Si Fan and chief crime lord of London, referred to as "The Lord of Strange Deaths".
 * Ben Aaronovitch's series Rivers of London, in which Fu Manchu is a charlatan and con man rather than a supervillain, a Canadian married to a Chinese wife and only pretending to be Chinese himself; the grand criminal schemes attributed to him are mere myths concocted either by himself or by the sensationalist press and publicity-seeking police officers, the latter partly motivated by anti-Chinese prejudice.

Actors
Actors who have played Dr Fu Manchu:
 * Harry Agar Lyons in The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (1923) and The Further Mysteries of Dr Fu-Manchu (1924)
 * Warner Oland in The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929), The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu (1930), Paramount on Parade (1930), and Daughter of the Dragon (1931)
 * Boris Karloff in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)
 * Lou Marcelle in The Shadow of Fu Manchu (1939–1940)
 * Henry Brandon in Drums of Fu Manchu (1940)
 * John Carradine in Fu Manchu: The Zayat Kiss (1952)
 * Glen Gordon in The Adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu (1956)
 * Christopher Lee in The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), and The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969)
 * Peter Sellers in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980)
 * Nicolas Cage in Grindhouse (2007)

Actors who have played Dr Petrie:
 * H. Humberston Wright in The Mystery of Dr Fu-Manchu (1923) and The Further Mysteries of Dr Fu-Manchu (1924)
 * Neil Hamilton in The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu (1929) and The Return of Dr Fu Manchu (1930)
 * Holmes Herbert in Daughter of the Dragon (1931)
 * Gale Gordon in The Shadow of Fu Manchu (1939–1940)
 * Olaf Hytten in Drums of Fu Manchu (1940)
 * John Newland in Fu Manchu: The Zayat Kiss (1952)
 * Clark Howat in The Adventures of Dr Fu Manchu (1956)
 * Howard Marion-Crawford in The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968) and The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969)

Actors who have played Sir Denis Nayland Smith

Cultural impact
The style of facial hair associated with Fu Manchu in film adaptations has become known as the Fu Manchu moustache. The "Fu Manchu" moustache is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a "long, narrow moustache whose ends taper and droop down to the chin", although Rohmer's writings described the character as wearing no such adornment.

Before the creation of Fu Manchu, Chinese people were often portrayed in Western media as victims. Fu Manchu indicated a new phase in which Chinese people were portrayed as perpetrators of crime and threats to Western society as a whole. Rohmer's villain is presented as the kingpin of a plot by the "yellow races" threatening the existence of "the entire white race", and his narrator opines, "No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty of the Chinese."

The character of Dr. Fu Manchu became, for many, a stereotype embodying the "Yellow Peril". For others, Fu Manchu became the most notorious personification of Western views of the Chinese, and became the model for other villains in contemporary "Yellow Peril" thrillers:  these villains often had characteristics consistent with xenophobic and racist stereotypes which coincided with a significant increase in Chinese emigration to Western countries.

After the Second World War, the stereotype inspired by Fu Manchu increasingly became a subject of satire. Fred Fu Manchu, a "famous Chinese bamboo saxophonist", was a recurring character on The Goon Show, a 1950s British radio comedy programme. He was featured in the episode "The Terrible Revenge of Fred Fu Manchu" in 1955 (announced as "Fred Fu Manchu and his Bamboo Saxophone"), and made minor appearances in other episodes (including "China Story", "The Siege of Fort Night", and in "The Lost Emperor" as "Doctor Fred Fu Manchu, Oriental tattooist"). The character was created and performed by the comedian Spike Milligan, who used it to mock the racist attitudes which had led to the creation of the character. The character was also parodied in a later radio comedy, Round the Horne, as Dr Chu En Ginsberg MA (failed), portrayed by Kenneth Williams.

Dr. Fu Manchu was parodied as Dr. Wu in the action-comedy film Black Dynamite (2009), in which the executor of an evil plan against African Americans is an insidious, moustache-sporting kung fu master.

Science historian Fred Cooper and colleagues draws a parallel between narratives that COVID-19 was created by China, and the machinations of Fu Manchu, who is “expert in the deadly application of animal and biological agents” and who has been depicted on US television shows as threatening the West with lethal diseases.

Film
Dr Fu Manchu first appeared on the big screen in the British silent film series The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu (1923) starring Harry Agar Lyons, a series of 15 short feature films, each running around 20 minutes. Lyons returned to the role in The Further Mysteries of Dr Fu Manchu (1924), which comprised eight additional short feature films.

Dr Fu Manchu made his American film debut in Paramount Pictures' early talkie The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929) starring Warner Oland, soon to be known for his portrayal of Charlie Chan. Oland repeated the role in The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu (1930) and Daughter of the Dragon (1931) as well as in the short film Murder Will Out (part of the omnibus film Paramount on Parade) in which Dr. Fu Manchu confronts both Philo Vance and Sherlock Holmes.

The most controversial incarnation of the character was MGM's The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) starring Boris Karloff and Myrna Loy. At the time of its first release the film was considered racist and offensive by representatives of the Chinese government. The film was suppressed for many years, but has been released on DVD uncut.

Dr Fu Manchu returned to the serial format in Republic Pictures' Drums of Fu Manchu (1940), a 15-episode serial considered to be one of the best the studio ever made. It was later edited and released as a feature film in 1943.

Other than an obscure, unauthorized Spanish spoof El Otro Fu Manchu (1946), the Devil Doctor was absent from the big screen for 25 years, until producer Harry Alan Towers began a series starring Christopher Lee in 1965. Towers and Lee made five Fu Manchu films: The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), and The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969).

The character's last authorised film appearance was in the Peter Sellers spoof The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980), with Sellers featured as both Dr Fu Manchu and Nayland Smith. The film bore little resemblance to any earlier film or the original books. Fu Manchu claims he was known as "Fred" at public school, a reference to the character in "The Terrible Revenge of Fred Fu Manchu", a 1955 episode of The Goon Show which had co-starred Sellers.

Jesús Franco, who directed The Blood of Fu Manchu and The Castle of Fu Manchu, also directed The Girl from Rio, the second of three Harry Alan Towers films based on Rohmer's Fu Manchu-like female character Sumuru. He later directed an unauthorized 1986 Spanish film featuring Dr Fu Manchu's daughter, Esclavas del Crimen.

In the film Grindhouse (2007), Nicolas Cage makes an uncredited comedic cameo appearance as Dr Fu Manchu during the "trailer" for the fake film Werewolf Women of the SS, directed by Rob Zombie.

A composite character of Fu Manchu and the Mandarin, named Xu Wenwu, appears in Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Four film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, portrayed by Tony Leung Chiu-wai. The character was previously referenced in the Iron Man trilogy and All Hail the King. Xialing, Wenwu's daughter and Shang-Chi's sister, was partially inspired by Fah Lo Suee.

Television
A half-hour pilot was produced in 1952 for NBC's consideration starring Cedric Hardwicke as Sir Denis Nayland Smith, John Carradine as Dr. Fu Manchu, and Reed Hadley as Dr. John Petrie. NBC turned it down without broadcasting it, but it has been screened at special events.

The television arm of Republic Pictures produced a 13-episode syndicated series, The Adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu (1956), starring Glen Gordon as Dr. Fu Manchu, Lester Matthews as Sir Denis Nayland Smith, and Clark Howat as Dr. John Petrie. The title sequence depicted Smith and Dr. Fu Manchu in a game of chess as the announcer stated that "the devil is said to play for men's souls. So does Dr. Fu Manchu, evil incarnate." At the conclusion of each episode, after Nayland Smith and Petrie had foiled Dr. Fu Manchu's latest fiendish scheme, Dr. Fu Manchu would be seen breaking a black chess piece in a fit of frustration (black king's bishop, always the same scene, repeated) just before the closing credits rolled. It was directed by Franklin Adreon, as well as William Witney. Dr. Fu Manchu was never allowed to succeed in this TV series. Unlike the Holmes/Watson type relationship of the films, the series featured Smith as a law enforcement officer and Petrie as a staff member for the Surgeon-General. Though Republic had planned to film 78 episodes for the series, a dispute with Sax Rohmer ended the series after only 13 episodes were produced.

Music

 * American stoner rock band Fu Manchu was formed in Southern California in 1985.
 * Desmond Dekker had a 1969 reggae song titled "Fu Man Chu".
 * The Sparks song "Moustache" from the 1982 album Angst in My Pants includes a lyric "My Fu Manchu was real fine".
 * The Rockin' Ramrods had a 1965 song based on the film The Face of Fu Manchu, "Don't Fool with Fu Manchu".
 * Quebec rock singer Robert Charlebois included an epic three-part song titled "Fu Man Chu" on his 1972 album Charlebois.
 * Russian hardbass artist XS Project has a 2016 song named "Fu Manchu".
 * American country music singer Tim McGraw published a song called "Live Like You Were Dying". The song references Dr. Fu Manchu in the lyric "I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu".
 * American country music singer Travis Tritt published a song called "It's a Great Day to Be Alive". Dr. Fu Manchu's iconic moustache is referenced in the lyric "Might even grow me a Fu Manchu".
 * Japanese electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra published a song called "La Femme Chinoise", in which they reference the supervillain: "Fu Manchu and Susie Que and the girls of the floating world".
 * American rock musician Black Francis released a song entitled "Fu Manchu" on his 1993 solo album Frank Black, which references both the style of moustache as well as the character after which it was named.
 * British band The Kinks song 'The Village Green Preservation Society', released in 1968, includes a reference to Fu Manchu in the lyric "Help save Fu Manchu, Moriarty and Dracula".

Radio
Dr. Fu Manchu's earliest radio appearances were on The Collier Hour 1927–1931 on the Blue Network. This was a radio program designed to promote Collier's magazine and presented weekly dramatizations of the current issue's stories and serials. Dr. Fu Manchu was voiced by Arthur Hughes. A self-titled show on CBS followed in 1932–33. John C. Daly, and later Harold Huber, played Dr. Fu Manchu. In 2010, Fu Manchu's connections with the University of Edinburgh where he supposedly obtained a doctorate were investigated in a mockumentary by Miles Jupp for BBC Radio 4. Additionally, there were "pirate" broadcasts from the continent into Britain, from Radio Luxembourg and Radio Lyons in 1936 through 1937. Frank Cochrane voiced Dr. Fu Manchu. The BBC produced a competing radio play, The Peculiar Case at the Poppy Club written by Rohmer and broadcast in December 1938. In 1939, The Shadow of Fu Manchu aired in the United States as a thrice-weekly serial dramatizing the first nine novels.

Comic strips
Dr. Fu Manchu was first brought to newspaper comic strips in a black and white daily comic strip drawn by Leo O'Mealia (1884–1960) that ran from 1931 to 1933. The strips were adaptations of the first two Dr. Fu Manchu novels and part of the third. Unlike most other illustrators, O'Mealia drew Dr. Fu Manchu as a clean-shaven man with an abnormally large cranium. The strips were copyrighted by "Sax Rohmer and The Bell Syndicate, Inc." Two of the Dr. Fu Manchu comic strip storylines were reprinted in the 1989 book Fu Manchu: Two Complete Adventures. In 1940, the Chicago Tribune published an adaptation of Drums of Fu Manchu, at first it was a photo comics, but later it was illustrated by a unicredit artist.

Between 1962 and 1973, the French newspaper Le Parisien Libéré published a comic strip by Juliette Benzoni (script) and Robert Bressy (art).

Comic books

 * Dr. Fu Manchu made his first comic book appearance in Detective Comics #17 and continued, as one feature among many in the anthology series, until #28. These were reprints of the earlier Leo O'Mealia strips. In 1943, the serial Drums of Fu Manchu was adapted by Spanish comic artist José Grau Hernández in 1943. Original Dr. Fu Manchu stories in comics had to wait for Avon's one-shot The Mask of Dr. Fu Manchu in 1951 by Wally Wood. Fleetway published an adaptation of The Island of Fu Manchu in 1956 through their "pocket library" title Super Detective Library #9.
 * In the 1970s, Dr. Fu Manchu appeared as the father of the superhero Shang-Chi in the Marvel Comics series Master of Kung Fu. However, Marvel cancelled the book in 1983 and issues over licensing the character and concepts from the novels (such as his daughter Fah Lo Suee and adversaries Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie) have hampered Marvel's ability to both collect the series in trade paperback format and reference Dr. Fu Manchu as Shang-Chi's father. As such, the character is either never mentioned by name, or by an alias (such as "Mr. Han"). In Secret Avengers #6–10, writer Ed Brubaker officially sidestepped the entire issue via a storyline where the Shadow Council resurrect a zombified version of Dr. Fu Manchu, only to discover that "Dr. Fu Manchu" was only an alias; that Shang-Chi's father was really Zheng Zu, an ancient Chinese sorcerer who discovered the secret to immortality. Later, Fah Lo Suee was renamed Zheng Bao Yu.
 * Dr. Fu Manchu appears as an antagonist in Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Simply called "the Doctor", he is the first to steal the Cavorite that the League is sent to retrieve. He is apparently killed in the climactic battle with Professor Moriarty.
 * Fu Manchu makes a cameo appaerence in an issue of the Team Fortress 2 web comics. In the comics, Fu Manchu is a spy and one of nine mercenaries hired at some point in the 1850s by twins Redmond and Blutarch Mann to fight in the "Gravel War", a conflict about the lands in New Mexico owned by the brothers.

Role-playing games
Fu Manchu appears in the adventures Night Moves and Night Live for the role-playing game Marvel Super Heroes.

Accusations of racism
The stories of Dr Fu Manchu, both in print and on screen, have sparked accusations of racism and orientalism, from his fiendish design to his nonsensical Chinese name. After the release of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's film adaptation of The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), which featured the Chinese villain telling his followers that they must "kill the white man and take his women", the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, issued a formal complaint against the film.

Following the release of Republic Pictures' serial adaptation of Drums of Fu Manchu (1940) the U.S. State Department requested that the studio make no further films about the character, as China was an ally against Japan during the Second World War. Likewise, Rohmer's publisher, Doubleday, refused to publish additions to the best-selling series for the duration of the Second World War once the United States entered the conflict. BBC Radio and Broadway investors subsequently rejected Rohmer's proposals for an original Fu Manchu radio serial and stage show during the 1940s.

The re-release of The Mask of Fu Manchu in 1972 was met with protests from the Japanese American Citizens League, which stated that "the movie was offensive and demeaning to Asian Americans". CBS Television decided to cancel a showing of The Vengeance of Fu Manchu. Los Angeles TV station KTLA shared similar sentiments, but ultimately decided to run The Brides of Fu Manchu with the disclaimer: "This feature is presented as fictional entertainment and is not intended to reflect adversely on any race, creed or national origin."

Rohmer responded to charges that his work demonized Asians in Master of Villainy, a biography co-written by his widow: "Of course, not the whole Chinese population of Limehouse was criminal. But it contained a large number of persons who had left their own country for the most urgent of reasons. These people knew no way of making a living other than the criminal activities that had made China too hot for them. They brought their crimes with them." It was Rohmer's contention that he based Dr Fu Manchu and other "Yellow Peril" mysteries on real Chinese criminals he met as a newspaper reporter covering Limehouse.

In May 2013, General Motors cancelled an advertisement after complaints that a phrase it contained, "the land of Fu Manchu", which was intended to refer to China, was offensive.

Characterizing Dr Fu Manchu as an overtly racist creation has been criticized in the book Lord of Strange Deaths: The Fiendish World of Sax Rohmer. In a review of the book in The Independent, Dr Fu Manchu is contextualised: "These magnificently absurd books, glowing with a crazed exoticism, are really far less polar, less black and white, less white and yellow, than they first seem."

title: Fu Manchu


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Friesland

Friesland (, ; official ), historically and traditionally known as Frisia, named after the Frisians, is a province of the Netherlands located in the country's northern part. It is situated west of Groningen, northwest of Drenthe and Overijssel, north of Flevoland, northeast of North Holland, and south of the Wadden Sea. As of January 2023, the province had a population of about 660,000, and a total area of 5,753 km2.

The province is divided into 18 municipalities. The capital and seat of the provincial government is the city of Leeuwarden (West Frisian: Ljouwert, Liwwaddes: Liwwadde), a city with 123,107 inhabitants. Other large municipalities in Friesland are Sneek (pop. 33,512), Heerenveen (pop. 50,257), and Smallingerland (includes town of Drachten, pop. 55,938). Since 2017, Arno Brok is the King's Commissioner in the province. A coalition of the Christian Democratic Appeal, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, the Labour Party, and the Frisian National Party forms the executive branch. The area of the province was once part of the ancient, larger region of Frisia, which gave the province its name. The land is mostly made up of grassland and it has numerous lakes. The official languages of Friesland are West Frisian and Dutch.

Toponymy
In 1996, the Provincial Council of Friesland resolved that the official name of the province should follow the West Frisian spelling rather than the Dutch spelling, resulting in "Friesland" being replaced by "Fryslân". In 2004, the Dutch government confirmed this resolution, putting in place a three-year scheme to oversee the name change and associated cultural programme.

The province of Friesland is occasionally referred to as "Frisia" by, amongst others, Hanno Brand, head of the history and literature department at the Fryske Akademy since 2009. However, the English-language webpage of the Friesland Provincial Council refers to the province as "Fryslân".

Prehistory

The Frisii were among the migrating Germanic tribes that, following the breakup of Celtic Europe in the 4th century BC, settled along the North Sea. They came to control the area from roughly present-day Bremen to Bruges, and conquered many of the smaller offshore islands. What little is known of the Frisii is provided by a few Roman accounts, most of them military. Pliny the Elder said their lands were forest-covered with tall trees growing up to the edge of the lakes. They lived by agriculture and raising cattle.

In his Germania, Tacitus described all the Germanic peoples of the region as having elected kings with limited powers and influential military leaders who led by example rather than by authority. The people lived in spread-out settlements. He specifically noted the weakness of Germanic political hierarchies in reference to the Frisii, when he mentioned the names of two kings of the 1st century Frisii and added that they were kings "as far as the Germans are under kings".

In the 1st century BC, the Frisii halted a Roman advance and thus managed to maintain their independence. Some or all of the Frisii may have joined into the Frankish and Saxon peoples in late Roman times, but they would retain a separate identity in Roman eyes until at least 296, when they were forcibly resettled as laeti (Roman-era serfs) and thereafter disappear from recorded history. Their tentative existence in the 4th century is confirmed by archaeological discovery of a type of earthenware unique to 4th-century Frisia, called terp Tritzum, showing that an unknown number of Frisii were resettled in Flanders and Kent, likely as laeti under the aforementioned Roman coercion. The lands of the Frisii were largely abandoned by c. 400 as a result of the conflicts of the Migration Period, climate deterioration, and the flooding caused by a rise in the sea level.

Early Middle Ages

The area lay empty for one or two centuries, when changing environmental and political conditions made the region habitable again. At that time, during the Migration Period, "new" Frisians (probably descended from a merging of Frisii, Angles, Saxons and Jutes) repopulated the coastal regions. These Frisians consisted of tribes with loose bonds, centred on war bands but without great power. The earliest Frisian records name four social classes, the 'ethelings (nobiles in Latin documents; adel in Dutch and German) and frilings (vrijen in Dutch and Freien in German), who together made up the "Free Frisians" who might bring suit at court, and the laten or liten with the slaves, who were absorbed into the laten during the Early Middle Ages, as slavery was not so much formally abolished, as evaporated. The laten were tenants of lands they did not own and might be tied to it in the manner of serfs, but in later times might buy their freedom.

Under the rule of King Aldgisl, the Frisians came in conflict with the Frankish mayor of the palace Ebroin, over the old Roman border fortifications. Aldgisl could keep the Franks at a distance with his army. During the reign of Redbad, however, the tide turned in favour of the Franks; in 690, the Franks were victorious in the Battle of Dorestad. In 733, Charles Martel sent an army against the Frisians. The Frisian army was pushed back to Eastergoa. The next year the Battle of the Boarn took place. Charles ferried an army across the Almere with a fleet that enabled him to sail up to De Boarn. The Frisians were defeated in the ensuing battle, and their last king Poppo was killed. The victors began plundering and burning heathen sanctuaries. Charles Martel returned with much loot, and broke the power of the Frisian kings for good. The Franks annexed the Frisian lands between the Vlie and the Lauwers. They conquered the area east of the Lauwers in 785, when Charlemagne defeated Widukind. The Carolingians laid Frisia under the rule of grewan, a title that has been loosely related to count in its early sense of "governor" rather than "feudal overlord". About 100,000 Dutch drowned in a flood in 1228.

Frisian freedom

When, around 800, the Scandinavian Vikings first attacked Frisia, which was still under Carolingian rule, the Frisians were released from military service on foreign territory in order to be able to defend themselves against the heathen Vikings. With their victory in the Battle of Norditi in 884 they were able to drive the Vikings permanently out of East Frisia, although it remained under constant threat. Over the centuries, whilst feudal lords reigned in the rest of Europe, no aristocratic structures emerged in Frisia. This 'Frisian freedom' was represented abroad by redjeven who were elected from among the wealthier farmers or from elected representatives of the autonomous rural municipalities. Originally the redjeven were all judges, so-called Asega, who were appointed by the territorial lords.

After significant territories were lost to Holland in the Friso-Hollandic Wars, Frisia saw an economic downturn in the mid-14th century. Accompanied by a decline in monasteries and other communal institutions, social discord led to the emergence of untitled nobles called haadlingen ("headmen"), wealthy landowners possessing large tracts of land and fortified homes who took over the role of the judiciary as well as offering protection to their local inhabitants. Internal struggles between regional leaders resulted in bloody conflicts and the alignment of regions along two opposing parties: the Fetkeapers and Skieringers. On 21 March 1498, a small group of Skieringers from Westergo secretly met with Albert III, Duke of Saxony, the Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, in Medemblik requesting his help. Albrecht, who had gained a reputation as a formidable military commander, accepted and soon conquered all Friesland. Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg appointed Albrecht hereditary potestate and gubernator of Friesland in 1499.

In 1515, an army of haadlingen and peasants, with the help of mercenaries known as the Arumer Zwarte Hoop, started a fight for freedom from oppression by the Habsburg authorities. One of the leaders was Pier Gerlofs Donia, whose farm had been burned down and whose kinfolk had been killed by a marauding Landsknecht regiment. Since the regiment had been employed by the Habsburg authorities to suppress the civil war of the Fetkeapers and Skieringers, Donia put the blame on the authorities. After this he gathered angry peasants and some petty noblemen from Frisia and Gelderland and formed the Arumer Zwarte Hoop.The rebels received financial support from Charles II, Duke of Guelders, who claimed the Duchy of Guelders in opposition to the House of Habsburg. Charles also employed mercenaries under command of his military commander Maarten van Rossum in their support. However, when the tides turned against the rebels after the Donia's death in 1520, Charles withdrew his support, without which the rebels could no longer afford to pay their mercenary army. The revolt was put to an end in 1523 and Frisia was incorporated into the Habsburg Netherlands, bringing an end to the Frisian freedom.

Modern times

Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, became the first lord of the Lordship of Frisia. He appointed Georg Schenck van Toutenburg, who had crushed the peasants' revolt, as Stadtholder to rule over the province in his stead. When Charles abdicated in 1556, Frisia was inherited by Philip II of Spain along with the rest of the Netherlands. In 1566, Frisia joined the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule.

In 1577, George de Lalaing, Count of Rennenberg was appointed Stadtholder of Frisia and other provinces. A moderate, trusted by both sides, he tried to reconcile the rebels with the Crown. But in 1580, Rennenburg declared for Spain. The States of Frisia raised troops and took his strongholds of Leeuwarden, Harlingen and Stavoren. Rennenburg was deposed and Frisia became the fifth Lordship to join the rebels' Union of Utrecht. From 1580 onward, all stadtholders were members of the House of Orange-Nassau. With the Peace of Münster in 1648, Frisia became a full member of the independent Dutch Republic, a federation of provincies. In economic and therefore also political importance, Friesland was next in rank to the provinces of Holland and Zeeland.

In 1798, three years after the Batavian Revolution, the provincial lordship of Frisia was abolished and its territory was divided between the Eems and Oude IJssel departments. This was short-lived, however, as Frisia was revived as a department in 1802. When the Netherlands were annexed by the First French Empire in 1810, the department was in French renamed Frise. After Napoleon was defeated in 1813 and a new constitution was introduced in 1814, Friesland became a province of the Sovereign Principality of the United Netherlands, then of the unitary Kingdom of the Netherlands a year later.

Geography

Friesland is situated at 53.13333°N, 5.81667°W in the northwest of the Netherlands, west of the province of Groningen, northwest of Drenthe and Overijssel, north of Flevoland, northeast of the IJsselmeer and North Holland, and south of the North Sea. It is the largest province of the Netherlands if one includes areas of water; in terms of land area only, it is the third-largest province.

Most of Friesland is on the mainland, but it also includes a number of West Frisian Islands, including Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland and Schiermonnikoog, which are connected to the mainland by ferry. The province's highest point is a dune at 45 m above sea level, on the island of Vlieland.

There are four national parks of the Netherlands located in Friesland: Schiermonnikoog, De Alde Feanen, Lauwersmeer (partially in Groningen), and Drents-Friese Wold (also partially situated in Drenthe).

Urban areas
The ten urban areas in Friesland with the largest population are:

Municipalities
The province is divided into 18 municipalities, each with local government (municipal council, mayor and aldermen).

Climate
The province of Friesland, like the rest of the Netherlands, has an oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb).

Demography
In 2023, Friesland had a population of 659,551 and a population density of 197 /km2.

The years 1880–1900 show slower population growth due to a farm crisis during which some 20,000 Frisians emigrated to the United States.

Anthropometry
Since the late Middle Ages, Friesland has been renowned for the exceptional height of its inhabitants. Even early Renaissance poet Dante Alighieri refers to the height of Frisians in his Divine Comedy when, in the canticle about Hell, he talks about the magnitude of an infernal demon by stating that "not even three tall Frieslanders, were they set one upon the other, would have matched his height".

Religion
In 2015, 28.5% of the population belonged to the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, while 6.6% were Roman Catholic, 1.1% were Muslim and 6.5% belonged to other churches or faiths. Over half of the population (57.2%) identified as non-religious.

Economy

Friesland is mainly an agricultural province. The black and white Frisian cattle, black and white Stabyhoun and the black Frisian horse originated here. Tourism is another important source of income: the principal tourist destinations include the lakes in the southwest of the province and the islands in the Wadden Sea to the north. There are 195 windmills in the province of Friesland, out of a total of about 1200 in the entire country.

The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the region was 19.8 billion € in 2018, accounting for 2.6% of the Netherlands economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 26,700 € or 89% of the EU27 average in the same year.

Languages

Friesland is one of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands to have its national language that is recognized as such, West Frisian. Before the 18th century, varieties of Frisian were also spoken in the provinces of North Holland and Groningen, and together with the Frisian speakers in East Friesland and North Friesland a continuous linguistic area existed between Amsterdam and the present day Danish-German border.

The mutual intelligibility in reading between Dutch and Frisian is limited. A cloze test in 2005 revealed native Dutch speakers understood 31.9% of a West Frisian newspaper, 66.4% of an Afrikaans newspaper and 97.1% of a Dutch newspaper. In 2007, West Frisian is the native language of 54.3% of the inhabitants of the province of Friesland, followed by Dutch with 34.7%, and speakers of other regional languages, most of these restricted to Friesland, with 9.7%, and in the end other foreign languages with 1.4%. Frisian speakers are traditionally underrepresented in urban areas, and predominant in the countryside.

West Frisian is also spoken in a small adjacent part of the province of Groningen. Up to the 18th century Frisian was spoken in the, at that time Prussian and Hanoverian, lordships of East Friesland). Since then the East Frisian population switched to East Frisian (Ostfriesisch), a Low German dialect. Only in some, formerly remoted, East Frisian villages (Saterland) a variety of historically East Frisian (Seeltersk) is still in use but by an older generation. A collection of dialects named North Frisian, is or was spoken in North Friesland, alongside the North Sea coast and on the islands of Schleswig-Holstein. The named Frisian languages are historically related to Old English, which points towards the fact that Angles and Saxons, eventually accompanied by Frisians, came from these areas.

In Stellingwerf, in south-east Friesland, a dialect of Low Saxon is spoken, as is in the northeast in Kollumerpomp.

In the former municipality of het Bildt the Hollandic dialect of Bildts is spoken. It contains a lot of Frisian influence. In most of the cities of Leeuwarden, Town Frisian is spoken. As with Bildts, these variants are Hollandic dialects with Frisian influence.

The language policy in Friesland is preservation. West Frisian is a mandatory subject in Friesland in primary and secondary schools of the Frisian speaking districts. Bilingual (Dutch–Frisian) and trilingual (Dutch–English–Frisian) schools in the province of Friesland use West Frisian as a language of instruction in some lessons, besides Dutch in most other lessons and alongside them English. Literacy in Frisian however, is not often a core aim and that makes the number of Frisians speakers able to write in Frisian only 12%.

The provincial government takes various initiatives to preserve the West Frisian language. All parents in Friesland receive, at their children's birth, information about language and multilingualism (e.g. 'taaltaske'). To support the use of Frisian in public and at public events, the province also invests in the development of speech pathology materials and strives to create information technology devices for the West Frisian language. The Frisian government subsidizes the Afûk organization, which offers language courses and actively promotes Frisian in all sectors of society as well as the corporate domain which as a rule is dominated by Dutch and English. The province also promotes a wide range of art and entertainment in Frisian.

Sports

The province is famous for its speed skaters, with mass participation in cross-country ice skating when weather conditions permit. When winters are cold enough to allow the freshwater canals to freeze hard, the province holds its traditional Elfstedentocht (Eleven cities tour), a 200 km ice skating tour. A traditional sport is Frisian handball. Another Frisian practice is fierljeppen, a sport with some similarities to pole vaulting. A jump consists of an intense sprint to the pole (polsstok), jumping and grabbing it, then climbing to the top while trying to control the pole's forward and lateral movements over a body of water and finishing with a graceful landing on a sand bed opposite to the starting point. Because of all the diverse skills required in fierljeppen, fierljeppers are considered to be very complete athletes with superbly developed strength and coordination. In the warmer months, many Frisians practice wadlopen, the traditional art of wading across designated sections of the Wadden Sea at low tide. Friesland has lots of waterways and lake s there for Sailcontests with a Skutsje or frisian Tjalk is done during the summer on various lakes.

There are currently two professional football clubs playing in Friesland: SC Cambuur from Leeuwarden (home stadium Cambuur Stadion) active in de keuken kampioen divisie(2nd div.) and SC Heerenveen (home stadium Abe Lenstra Stadion) active in de Eredivisie(1st div.).

Politics

The King's Commissioner of Friesland is Arno Brok. The Provincial Council of Friesland has 43 seats. The Provincial Executive was a coalition of the Christian Democratic Appeal, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, the Labour Party and the Frisian National Party (FNP), until 2023 when new provincial elections saw a different composition in the provincial council.

!colspan="2" align="left"|Party !Votes !Seats !colspan="2" align="left"|Total ! 298.241 !align="center" | 43
 * -style="background:#E9E9E9;"
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|Christian Democratic Appeal
 * 49.704
 * 8
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|Forum for Democracy
 * 40.055
 * 6
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|Labour Party
 * 39.976
 * 6
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|People's Party for Freedom and Democracy
 * 28.073
 * 4
 * align="left"|Frisian National Party
 * 23.662
 * 4
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|GreenLeft
 * 22.935
 * 3
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|ChristianUnion
 * 19.673
 * 3
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|Party for Freedom
 * 17.287
 * 3
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|Socialist Party
 * 15.426
 * 2
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|Democrats 66
 * 12.284
 * 2
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|Party for the Animals
 * 9.618
 * 1
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|50PLUS
 * 7.595
 * 1
 * -style="background:#E9E9E9;"
 * 12.284
 * 2
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|Party for the Animals
 * 9.618
 * 1
 * bgcolor=""|
 * align="left"|50PLUS
 * 7.595
 * 1
 * -style="background:#E9E9E9;"
 * 1
 * -style="background:#E9E9E9;"
 * -style="background:#E9E9E9;"
 * }

Transport

The four motorways in the province are A6, A7 (E22), A31, and A32.

The main railway station of Friesland is Leeuwarden, which connects the railways Arnhem–Leeuwarden, Harlingen–Nieuweschans, and Leeuwarden–Stavoren which are all (partially) located in the province.

Ameland Airport near Ballum and Drachten Airfield near Drachten are the two small general aviation airports in the province. The Royal Netherlands Air Force uses Vlieland Heliport and the Leeuwarden Air Base.

Literature

 * Helma Erkelens, Taal fen it hert. Language of the Heart. About Frisian Language and Culture, Province of Fryslân, Leeuwarden 2004
 * John Hines & Nelleke IJssennagger (eds.), Frisians and their North Sea Neighbours: From the Fifth Century to the Viking Age, Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge/Rochester 2017
 * Goffe Jensma, 'Minorities and Kinships. The Case of Ethnolinguistic Nationalism in Friesland’, in: P. Broomans et al. (eds.), The Beloved Mothertongue. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism in Small Nations: Inventories and Reflections, Peeters, Louvain-Paris-Dudley 2008, p. 63-78
 * Horst Haider Munske (ed.), Handbuch des Friesischen / Handbook of Frisian Studies, Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 2001
 * Oebele Vries, 'Frisonica libertas: Frisian Freedom as an Instance of Medieval Liberty', in: Journal of Medieval History 41 (2015), nr. 2, p. 229-248

Media
Friesch Dagblad and Leeuwarder Courant are daily newspapers mainly written in Dutch. Omrop Fryslân is the public broadcaster with radio and TV programs mainly in Frisian.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Friesland


text:
Feminist science fiction

Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction (abbreviated "SF") focused on such feminist themes as: gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, reproduction, and environment. Feminist SF is political because of its tendency to critique the dominant culture. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction works have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue.

History

Feminist science fiction (SF) distinguishes between female SF authors and feminist SF authors. Both female and feminist SF authors are historically significant to the feminist SF subgenre, as female writers have increased women's visibility and perspectives in SF literary traditions, while the feminist writers have foregrounded political themes and tropes in their works. Because distinctions between female and feminist can be blurry, whether a work is considered feminist can be debatable, but there are generally agreed-upon canonical texts, which help define the subgenre.

Early modern England
As early as the English Restoration, female authors were using themes of SF and imagined futures to explore women's issues, roles, and place in society. This can be seen as early as 1666 in Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World, in which she describes a utopian kingdom ruled by an empress. This foundational work has garnered attention from some feminist critics, such as Dale Spender, who considered this a forerunner of the science fiction genre, more generally. Another early female writer of science fiction was Mary Shelley. Her novel Frankenstein (1818) dealt with the asexual creation of new life, and has been considered by some a reimagining of the Adam and Eve story.

First-wave feminism (suffrage)
Women writers involved in the utopian literature movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could be considered the first feminist SF authors. Their texts, emerging during the first-wave feminist movement, often addressed issues of sexism through imagining different worlds that challenged gender expectations. In 1881, Mizora: A Prophecy described a women-only world with technological innovations such as parthenogenesis, videophones, and artificial meat.

It was closely followed by other feminist utopian works, such as Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett's New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future (1889). In 1892, poet and abolitionist Frances Harper published Iola Leroy, one of the first novels by an African American woman. Set during the antebellum South, it follows the life of a mixed race woman with mostly white ancestry and records the hopes of many African Americans for social equality—of race and gender—during Reconstruction. Unveiling a Parallel (1893) features a male protagonist who takes an "aeroplane" to Mars, visiting two different "Marsian" societies; in both, there is equality between men and women. In one, Paleveria, women have adopted the negative characteristics of men; in Caskia, the other, gender equality "has made both sexes kind, loving, and generous." Two American Populists, A.O. Grigsby and Mary P. Lowe, published NEQUA or The Problem of the Ages (1900), which explores issues of gender norms and posited structural inequality. This recently rediscovered novel displays familiar feminist SF conventions: a heroine narrator who masquerades as a man, the exploration of sexist mores, and the description of a future hollow earth society (like Mizora) where women are equal.

The Sultana's Dream (1905), by Bengali Muslim feminist Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, engages with the limited role of women in colonial India. Through depicting a gender-reversed purdah in an alternate technologically futuristic world, Hussain's book has been described as illustrating the potential for cultural insights through role reversals early on in the subgenre's formation.

In the utopian novel Beatrice the Sixteenth (1909), transgender writer Irene Clyde creates a world where gender is no longer recognized and the story itself is told without the use of gendered nouns. Along these same lines, Charlotte Perkins Gilman explores and critiques the expectations of women and men by creating a single-sex world in Herland (1915), possibly the most well-known of the early feminist SF and utopian novels.

Among the francophones, published in 1909 Vega la magicienne, depicting  L'Oiselle, a winged superheroine and the first of the francophone superhero series.

Between the wars
During the 1920s and 1930s, many popular pulp science fiction magazines exaggerated views of masculinity and featured portrayals of women that were perceived as sexist. These views would be subtly satirized by Stella Gibbons in Cold Comfort Farm (1932) and much later by Margaret Atwood in The Blind Assassin (2000). As early as 1920, however, women writers of this time, such as Clare Winger Harris ("The Runaway World," 1926) and Gertrude Barrows Bennett (Claimed, 1920), published science fiction stories written from female perspectives and occasionally dealt with gender and sexuality based topics.

John Wyndham, writing under his early pen-name of John Beynon Harris, was a rare pulp writer to include female leads in stories such as The Venus Adventure (Wonder Stories, 1932), in which a mixed crew travel to Venus. The story opens in a future in which women are no longer enslaved by pregnancy and childbirth thanks to artificial incubators, which are opposed by a religious minority. Women have used this freedom to enter professions including chemistry. Wyndham's outlook was so rare that in a serialisation of his novel Stowaway to Mars, one magazine editor "corrected" the name of the central character Joan to John. Wyndham then had to write them a new final instalment to replace the conclusion in which Joan fell in love and became pregnant.

Post World War II
The Post-WWII and Cold War eras were a pivotal and often overlooked period in feminist SF history. During this time, female authors utilized the SF genre to assess critically the rapidly changing social, cultural, and technological landscape. Women SF authors during the post-WWII and Cold War time periods directly engage in the exploration of the impacts of science and technology on women and their families, which was a focal point in the public consciousness during the 1950s and 1960s. These female SF authors, often published in SF magazines such as The Avalonian, Astounding, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Galaxy, which were open to new stories and authors that pushed the boundaries of form and content.

At the beginning of the Cold War, economic restructuring, technological advancements, new domestic technologies (washing machines, electric appliances), increased economic mobility of an emerging middle class, and an emphasis on consumptive practices, carved out a new technological domestic sphere where women were circumscribed to a new job description – the professional housewife. Published feminist SF stories were told from the perspectives of women (characters and authors) who often identified within traditional roles of housewives or homemakers, a subversive act in many ways given the traditionally male-centered nature of the SF genre and society during that time.

In Galactic Suburbia, author Lisa Yaszek recovers many women SF authors of the post-WWII era such as Judith Merril, author of "That Only a Mother" (1948), "Daughters of Earth" (1952), "Project Nursemaid" (1955), "The Lady Was a Tramp" (1957); Alice Eleanor Jones "Life, Incorporated" (1955), "The Happy Clown" (1955), "Recruiting Officer" (1955); and Shirley Jackson "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts" (1955) and "The Omen" (1958). These authors often blurred the boundaries of feminist SF fiction and feminist speculative fiction, but their work laid substantive foundations for second-wave feminist SF authors to directly engage with the feminist project. "Simply put, women turned to SF in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s because it provided them with growing audiences for fiction that was both socially engaged and aesthetically innovative."

Second-wave feminism
By the 1960s, science fiction was combining sensationalism with political and technological critiques of society. With the advent of second-wave feminism, women's roles were questioned in this "subversive, mind expanding genre". Three notable texts of this period are Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) and Joanna Russ's The Female Man (1970). Each highlights what the authors believe to be the socially constructed aspects of gender roles by creating worlds with genderless societies. Two of these authors were pioneers in feminist criticism of science fiction during the 1960s and 1970s through essays collected in The Language of the Night (Le Guin, 1979) and How To Suppress Women's Writing (Russ, 1983). Also of note, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (1962), written for children and teens, features a 13-year-old girl protagonist, Meg Murry, whose mother, Mrs. Murry, is a scientist with degrees in biology and bacteriology. L'Engle's novel is decidedly science fiction, feminist, and deeply Christian, and the first of her series, The Time Quintet. Meg's adventures to other planets, galaxies, and dimensions are aided in Wrinkle by three ancient beings, Mrs What, Mrs Which, and Mrs Who who "tesser" to travel vast distances. A Wrinkle in Time was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1963 and has never been out of print. Men also contributed literature to feminist science fiction. Prominently, Samuel R. Delany's short story, "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" (1968), which won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1970, follows the life of a gay man that includes themes involving sadomasochism, gender, significance of language, and when high and low society encounter one another, while his novel Babel-17 has an autistic woman of colour as its primary hero and protagonist. Octavia Butler's Kindred (1979) tells the story of an African American woman living in the United States in 1979 who uncontrollably time travels to the antebellum South. The novel poses complicated questions about the nature of sexuality, gender, and race when the present faces the past.

The Demon Breed is a 1968 science fiction novel by James H. Schmitz in which the female main character, Nyles Etland, armed only with intelligence and intimate knowledge of her home environment, allies and science, intimidated an alien species who had intended to invade. Schmitz, who still commands a cult audience half a century after his death, dealt almost exclusively in competent and intelligent female main characters in dozens of novels and short stories.

1980s onwards
Feminist science fiction continues on into the 1980s with Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985), a dystopic tale of a theocratic society in which women have been systematically stripped of all liberty. The book was motivated by fear of potential retrogressive effects on women's rights. Sheri S. Tepper is perhaps best known for her series The True Game, which explore the Lands of the True Game, a portion of a planet explored by humanity somewhere in the future. In November 2015, she received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement for this series. Tepper has written under several pseudonyms, including A. J. Orde, E. E. Horlak, and B. J. Oliphant. Carol Emshwiller is another feminist SF author whose best known works are Carmen Dog (1988), The Mount (2002), and Mister Boots (2005). Emshwiller had also been writing SF for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction since 1974. She won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2005 for her novel The Mount (2002). This novel explores the prey/predator mentality through an alien race. Another author of the 1980s, Pamela Sargent has written the "Seed Series", which included Earthseed, Farseed, and Seed Seeker (1983–2010), the "Venus Series" about the terraforming of Venus, which includes Venus of Dreams, Venus of Shadows, and Child of Venus (1986–2001), and The Shore of Women (1986). Sargent is also the 2012 winner of the Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to SF/F studies. Lois McMaster Bujold has won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for her novella The Mountains of Mourning, which is part of her series the "Vorkosigan Saga" (1986–2012). This saga includes points of view from a number of minority characters, and is also highly concerned with medical ethics, identity, and sexual reproduction.

More recent science fiction authors illuminate what they contend are injustices that are still prevalent. At the time of the LA Riots, Japanese-American writer Cynthia Kadohata's work In the Heart of the Valley of Love (1992) was published. Her story, set in the year 2052, examines tensions between two groups as defined as the "haves" and the "have-nots" and is written as seen through the eyes of a nineteen-year-old girl who is of Asian and African descent. Nalo Hopkinson's Falling in Love With Hominids (2015) is a collection of her short stories whose subjects range from an historical fantasy involving colonialism in the Caribbean, to age manipulation, to ethnic diversity in the land of Faerie, among others.

In the early 1990s, a new award opportunity for feminist SF authors was created. The James Tiptree, Jr. Award is an annual literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore one's understanding of gender (Alice Sheldon was a female writer who published science fiction under the Tiptree pen name). Science fiction authors Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler initiated this subsequent discussion at WisCon in February 1991. The authors' publishing in feminist SF after 1991 were now eligible for an award named after one of the genre's beloved authors. Karen Joy Fowler herself is considered a feminist SF writer for her short stories, such as "What I Didn't See", for which she received the Nebula Award in 2004. This story is an homage to Sheldon, and describes a gorilla hunting expedition in Africa. Pat Murphy won a number of awards for her feminist SF novels as well, including her second novel The Falling Woman (1986), a tale of personal conflict and visionary experiences set during an archaeological field study for which she won the Nebula Award in 1988. She won another Nebula Award in the same year for her story "Rachel in Love". Her short story collection, Points of Departure (1990) won the Philip K. Dick Award, and her 1990 novella "Bones" won the 1991 World Fantasy Award.

Other winners of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award include "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell (1996), "Black Wine" by Candas Jane Dorsey (1997), Redwood and Wildfire by Andrea Hairston (2011), "The Carhullan Army" by Sarah Hall (2007), Ammonite by Nicola Griffith (1993), and "The Conqueror's Child" by Suzy McKee Charnas (1999). All of these authors have had an important impact on the SF world by adding a feminist perspective to the traditionally male genre.

Eileen Gunn's science fiction short story "Coming to Terms" received the Nebula Award (2004) in the United States and the Sense of Gender Award (2007) in Japan, and has been nominated twice each for the Hugo Award, Philip K. Dick Award and World Fantasy Award, and short-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. Her most popular anthology of short stories is Questionable Practices, which includes stories "Up the Fire Road" and "Chop Wood, Carry Water". She also edited "The WisCon Chronicles 2: Provocative Essays on Feminism, Race, Revolution, and the Future" with L. Timmel Duchamp. Duchamp has been known in the feminist SF community for her first novel Alanya to Alanya (2005), the first of a series of five titled "The Marq'ssan Cycle". Alanya to Alanya is set on a near-future earth controlled by a male-dominated ruling class patterned loosely after the corporate world of today. Duchamp has also published a number of short stories, and is an editor for Aqueduct Press. Lisa Goldstein is another well respected feminist sf author. The novelette Dark Rooms (2007) is one of her better known works, and another one of her novels, The Uncertain Places, won the Mythopoeic Award for Best Adult Novel in 2012.

Recurrent themes
Works of feminist science fiction are often similar in the goals they work towards as well as the subjects and plotlines they focus on in order to achieve those goals. Feminist science fiction is science fiction that carries across feminist ideals and the promotion of societal values such as gender equality, and the elimination of patriarchal oppression. Feminist science fiction works often present tropes that are recurrent across science fiction with an emphasis on gender relations and gender roles. Many elements of science fiction, such as cyborgs and implants, as well as utopias and dystopias, are given context in a gendered environment, providing a real contrast with present-day gender relations while remaining a work of science fiction.

Utopian and dystopian societies
Representations of utopian and dystopian societies in feminist science fiction place an increased emphasis on gender roles while countering the anti-utopian philosophies of the 20th century. Male philosophers such as John Rawls, Isaiah Berlin, and Michael Oakeshott often criticize the idea of utopia, theorizing that it would be impossible to establish a utopia without violence and hegemony. Many male authored works of science fiction as well as threads of philosophical utopian thought dismiss utopias as something unattainable, whereas in feminist science fiction, utopian society is often presented as something both achievable and desirable.

Anti-utopian philosophies and feminist science fiction come to odds in the possibility of achieving utopia. In "Rehabilitating Utopia: Feminist Science Fiction and Finding the Ideal", an article published in Contemporary Justice Review, philosophers against the dream of utopia argue that "First is the expectation that utopia justifies violence, second is the expectation that utopia collapses individual desires into one communal norm, and third is the expectation that utopia mandates a robotic focus on problem-solving." In feminist science fiction, utopias are often realized through a communal want for an ideal society. One such novel is summarized in the aforementioned article, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novel Herland, in which "Gilman perfectly captures the utopian impulse that all problems are solvable. She establishes a society where every consideration about a question aims for the rational answer." Gilman's utopia is presented as something attainable and achievable without conflict, neither enabling violence nor extinguishing individualism.

In the Parable series by feminist science fiction novelist Octavia Butler, anti-utopian philosophies are criticized via a dystopian setting. In the first novel, Parable of the Sower, following the destruction of her home and family, Lauren Olamina, one of many who live in a dystopian, ungoverned society, seeks to form her own utopian religion entitled 'Earthseed'. Olamina's utopian creation does not justify the use of violence as a means, no matter how expedient, to justify the end, achieving utopia, no matter how desirable. Yet we witness that she cannot avoid violence, as it results from little more than promulgating ideas different from those held by the majority of those living within the current social structure, however disorganized and ungoverned that social structure may be. Butler posits that utopian society can never be achieved as an entity entirely separate from the outside world, one of the more commonly held beliefs about conditions necessary to achieve utopia. Olamina's, and Butler's, utopia is envisioned as a community with a shared vision that is not forced on all within it.

One common trend in feminist science fiction utopias is the existence of utopian worlds as single-gendered – most commonly female, an early example being Emília Freitas’s 1899 novel A Rainha do Ignoto. In literary works female utopias are portrayed as free of conflict, and intentionally free of men. The single gendered utopias of female science fiction are free of the conflicts that feminism aims to eliminate, such as patriarchal oppression and the gender inequality inherent in patriarchal society. In a statement about these single gendered utopias, Joanna Russ, author of The Female Man, theorized that male-only societies were not written because in patriarchal society, male oppression is not as pressing an issue as is female oppression.

Utopia as an ideal to strive for is not a concept wholly limited to feminist science fiction, however many non-feminist science fiction works often dismiss utopia as an unachievable goal, and as such, believe that pursuits for utopia should be considered dangerous and barren. Anti-utopian theory focuses on the 'how' in the transition from present society to a utopian future. In feminist science fiction, the achievement of a utopian future depends on the ability to recognize the need for improvement and the perseverance to overcome the obstacles present in creating a utopian society.

Representation of women
Perhaps the most obvious attraction of science fiction to women writers – feminist or not – is the possibilities it offers for the creation of a female hero. The demands of realism in the contemporary or historical novel set limits which do not bind the universes available to science fiction. Although the history of science fiction reveals few heroic, realistic, or even original images of women, the genre had a potential recognized by the women writers drawn to it in the 1960s and 1970s. Before this time, the appeal for women writers was not that great. The impact of feminism on the science fiction field can be observed not only in science fiction texts themselves, but also on the development of feminist approaches to science fiction criticism and history, as well as conversations and debates in the science fiction community. One of the main debates is about the representation of women in science fiction.

In her article "Redefining Women's Power through Feminist Science Fiction", Maria DeRose suggests that, "One of the great early socialists said that the status of women in a society is a pretty reliable index of the degree of civilization of that society. If this is true, then the very low status of women in science fiction should make us ponder about whether science fiction is civilized at all". The women's movement has made most of us conscious of the fact that Science Fiction has totally ignored women. This "lack of appreciation" is the main reason that women are rebelling and actively fighting to be noticed in the field anyway.

Virginia Wolf relates to this aspect of feminist science fiction in the article "Feminist Criticism and Science Fiction for Children". As she discusses the scarcity of women in the field, she states, "During the first period, that of the nineteenth century, apparently only two women wrote Science Fiction, Mary Shelley and Rhoda Broughton," and continues, "In the early twentieth century, a few women were successful Science Fiction writers". But, "The times changed. Repression gave way to questioning and outright rebellion, and in the Science Fiction of the 1960s stylistic innovations and new concerns emerged 'Many of their stories, instead of dealing with the traditional hardware of science fiction, concentrated on the effects that different societies or perceptions would have on individual characters'". Andre Norton, a semi-well known analyst of Science fiction argues along these lines as well. As Norton explored one or more novels she came across, she realized that the creation of characters and how they are shown is a clear connection to the real world situation. From here, she goes in depth of characters in these feminist novels and relates them to the real world. She concludes here article along these lines. She wanted to get the idea out that feminists have a way to get their voice out there. Now, all their works are famous/ popular enough for their ideas to be let out. Virginia Wolf can attest to this fact. She introduced the idea that women were not represented well in the field till the early 1900s and added to the fact by stating, "Women are not represented well in Science Fiction".

Individual characters, as we come to know, have their own perception and observation of their surroundings. Characters in novels such as The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale are fully aware of the situation at hand and their role in society. This idea is a continuation of the argument presented by Andre Norton. Wolf argues the same point in her analysis of Le Guin's writing, who has many contributions to the works of feminist Science Fiction. Wolf argues, "What matters to Le Guin is not what people look like or how they behave but whether or not they have choice and whether or not they receive respect for who they are and what they do rather than on the basis of sex. Feminism is for her not a matter of how many women (or characters in Science Fiction) are housewives but a part of our hope for survival, which she believes lies in the search for balance and integration". This stirs up many questions about equality (a debate which has been going on for many years) but nobody seems to have an answer. In this continual search for equality, many characters find themselves asking the same question: "Is Gender Necessary" (which is, coincidentally, one of Le Guin's novels and also another problem arising from gender biases). Robin Roberts, an American literary historian, addresses the link of these characters and what that means for our society today. Roberts believes that men and women would like to be equal, but are not equal. They should be fighting the same battle when in fact they are fighting each other. She also debates that gender equality has been a problem in every reach of feminism, not just in feminist science fiction. Wolf also tackles this problem, "As she explains in "Is Gender Necessary?", The Left Hand of Darkness convinced her that if men and women were completely and genuinely equal in their social roles, equal legally and economically, equal in freedom, in responsibility, and in self-esteem, ... our central problem would not be the one it is now: the problem of exploitation—exploitation of the woman, of the weak, of the earth' (p. 159)". Science fiction criticism has come a long way from its defensive desire to create a canon. All of these authors demonstrate that science fiction criticism tackles the same questions as other literary criticism: race, gender, and the politics of Feminism itself. Wolf believes that evaluating primarily American texts, written over the past one hundred and twenty years, these critics locate science fiction's merits in its speculative possibilities. At the same time, however, all note that the texts they analyze reflect the issues and concerns of the historical period in which the literature was written. DeRose introduces her article with, in effect, the same argument. She says, "the power of women in Science Fiction has greatly depreciated in the past few years".

Gender identity
Feminist science fiction offers authors the opportunity to imagine worlds and futures in which women are not bound by the standards, rules, and roles that exist in reality. Rather, the genre creates a space in which the gender binary might be troubled and different sexualities may be explored.

As Anna Gilarek explains, issues of gender have been a part of feminist discourse throughout the feminist movement, and the work of authors such as Joanna Russ and Marge Piercy explore and expose gender based oppression. Gilarek outlines two approaches to social critique via Feminist SF: the use of fantastical elements such as "invented worlds, planets, moons, and lands", used to call attention to the ills of society by exaggerating them, or a more straightforward approach, "relying on realist techniques to convey the message about the deficiencies of our world and its social organization, in particular the continued inequality of women". There are many examples of redefined gender roles and gender identity found in Feminist SF, ranging from the inversion of gendered oppression to the amplification of gender stereotypes and tropes. In the short story "The Matter of Seggri", by Ursula Le Guin, traditional gender roles are completely swapped. Men are relegated to roles of athletes and prostitutes while women control the means of production and have exclusive access to education. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, gendered oppression is exaggerated in a dystopian society in which women's rights are stripped away and fertile women are relegated to the roles of handmaids who will bear children to further the human race. New books continue the dystopian theme of women living in a society which conforms to the wishes of men, at the expense of women's rights and well-being, such as in Louise O'Neill's young adult novel Only Ever Yours. In this work, females are no longer born naturally but are genetically designed before birth to conform to the physical desires of men, then placed in a school in which they are taught not to think (they are never taught to read), and to focus on appearance until they are rated by beauty on a scale at age sixteen, with the top ten becoming the brides of elite men, the middle ten forced into concubinage, and the bottom ten forced to continue their lives as instructors at the school in very humiliating circumstances. At age forty, the women are euthanized. In the post-apocalyptic novel, Gather the Daughters, by Jennie Melamed, females living in an island society are sexually exploited from the time they are girls, are forced to marry at adolescence, and after they become grandmothers must commit suicide.

Over the decades, SF and feminist SF authors have taken different approaches to criticizing gender and gendered society. Helen Merrick outlines the transition from what Joanna Russ describes as the "Battle of the Sexes" tradition to a more egalitarian or androgynous approach. Also known as the "Dominant Woman" stories, the "Battle of the Sexes" stories often present matriarchal societies in which women have overcome their patriarchal oppressors and have achieved dominance. These stories are representative of an anxiety that perceives women's power as a threat to masculinity and the heterosexual norm. As Merrick explains, "And whilst they may at least hint at the vision of a more equal gendered social order, this possibility is undermined by figuring female desire for greater equality in terms of a (stereotypical) masculine drive for power and domination." Examples of these types of stories, written in the 1920s and 30s through the 50s, include Francis Steven's "Friend Island" and Margaret Rupert's "Via the Hewitt Ray"; in 1978, Marion Zimmer Bradley released The Ruins of Isis, a novel about a futuristic matriarchy on a human colony planet where the men are extremely oppressed.

In the 1960s and 1970s, feminist SF authors shifted from the "Battle of the Sexes" writing more egalitarian stories and stories that sought to make the feminine more visible. Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness portrayed an androgynous society in which a world without gender could be imagined. In James Tiptree Jr.'s short story "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?", women are able to be seen in their full humanity due to the absence of men in a post-apocalyptic society. Joanna Russ's works, including "When it Changed" and The Female Man are other examples of exploring femininity and a "deconstruction of the acceptable, liberal 'whole' woman towards a multiple, shifting postmodernist sense of female 'selfhood'".

Comic books and graphic novels
Feminist science fiction is evidenced in the globally popular mediums of comic books, manga, and graphic novels. One of the first appearances of a strong female character was that of the superhero Wonder Woman, co-created by husband and wife team William Moulton Marston and Elizabeth Holloway Marston. In December 1941, Wonder Woman came to life on the pages of All Star Comics, and in the intervening years has been reincarnated in from animated TV series to live-action films, with significant cultural impact. By the early 1960s, Marvel Comics already contained some strong female characters, although they often suffered from stereotypical female weakness such as fainting after intense exertion. By the 1970s and 1980s, true female heroes started to emerge on the pages of comics. This was helped by the emergence of self-identified feminist writers including Ann Nocenti, Linda Fite, and Barbara Kesel. As female visibility in comics increased, the "fainting heroine" type began to fade into the past. However, some female comic book writers, such as Gail Simone, believe that female characters are still relegated to plot devices (see Women in Refrigerators).

Feminism in science fiction shōjo manga has been a theme in the works of Moto Hagio among others, for whom the writings of Ursula K. Le Guin have been a major influence.

Film and television
Feminism has driven the creation of a considerable body of action-oriented science fiction with female protagonists: Wonder Woman (originally created in 1941) and The Bionic Woman during the time of the organized women's movement in the 1970s; Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the Alien tetralogy in the 1980s; and Xena, Warrior Princess, comic book character Red Sonja, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 2001 science fiction TV series Dark Angel featured a powerful female protagonist, with gender roles between her and the main male character generally reversed.

However, feminists have also created science fiction that directly engages with feminism beyond the creation of female action heroes. Television and film have offered opportunities for expressing new ideas about social structures and the ways feminists influence science. Feminist science fiction provides a means to challenge the norms of society and suggest new standards for how societies view gender. The genre also deals with male/female categories, showing how female roles can differ from feminine roles. Hence feminism influences the film industry by creating new ways of exploring and looking at masculinity/femininity and male/female roles. A contemporary example of feminist science fiction television can be found in Orphan Black, which deals with issues of reproductive justice, science, gender, and sexuality.

Fandom
By the 1970s, the science fiction community was confronting questions of feminism and sexism within science fiction culture itself. Multiple Hugo-winning fan writer and professor of literature Susan Wood and others organized the "feminist panel" at the 1976 World Science Fiction Convention against considerable resistance. Reactions to the appearance of feminists among fannish ranks led indirectly to the creation of A Women's APA and WisCon.

Feminist science fiction is sometimes taught at the university level to explore the role of social constructs in understanding gender.

Publications
In the 1970s, the first feminist science fiction publications were created. The most well-known are fanzines The Witch and the Chameleon (1974–1976) and Janus (1975–1980), which later became Aurora SF (Aurora Speculative Feminism) (1981–1987). Windhaven, A Journal of Feminist Science Fiction was published from 1977 to 1979 by Jessica Amanda Salmonson in Seattle. Special issues of magazines linked to science fiction meetings were also published at that moment, like the Khatru symposium's fanzine Women in Science Fiction in 1975.

Femspec
Femspec is a feminist academic journal specializing in works that challenge gender through speculative genres, including science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, mythic explorations in poetry and post-modern fiction, and horror. There is a conscious multicultural focus of the journal, both in content and in the diverse makeup of its editorial group. The first issue came out in 1999 under the editorial direction of founder Batya Weinbaum, who is still the Editor-in-Chief. Femspec is still publishing and has brought over 1000 authors, critics and artists into print. Having lost their academic home in May 2003, they increasingly cross genres and print write-ups of all books and media received, as well as of events that feature creative works that imaginatively challenge gender such as intentional communities, performance events, and film festivals.

title: Feminist science fiction