Intersectional Singularity: A Speculative Fiction Discourse on Race, Sex, and Gender from Machine Learning to Sentient Droids  

Despite numerous post-apocalyptic storylines, many science fiction texts are a celebration of life and seek ways of making the most of it. Such an interest has informed a broad literary fascination with immortality and rebirth, particularly in nineteenth and early twentieth century fantasy and science fiction, with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, H. Rider Haggard’s She, or Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Ring of Thoth” being prime examples. Films have followed suit with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), Wesley Barry’s The Creation of the Humanoids (1962), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1968), and more recently, Alex Proyas’ I, Robot and Spike Jonze’s Her (2013). This list is far from exhaustive. The number of works indicates that the interest in extending life through technology or otherwise persists throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.

Moreover, we look with curiosity, and not a little trepidation, towards modern technology’s ability to gain sentience and experience personal growth on a human level. Such developments have been foreshadowed through a variety of texts from Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire to Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy in the modern era, to name but a few. As such texts interrogate what a world might be like in which non-human beings experience autonomy, or versions of it, they address questions such as, “What constitutes the human soul, individuality, and our relationships with others?,” “How would eternal life shape our relationship with the planet?,” and most notable, “What is a life worth living?”

The current collection aims to delve even further into modern-day concerns by exploring the intersectionality between race, gender, and sexuality within the aforementioned discourse on leading a life worth living within speculative fiction, bringing into question how groups that have been traditionally marginalized in literature, art, film, tv series, and theater, have either recently emerged, or were always already present but unexplored in criticism and other scholarly endeavors.

After a recent meeting between the editors and Ohio State University Press, the book is currently slated for the New Suns: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Speculative series.

More information may be found on their website: https://ohiostatepress.org/books/series/new_suns.html

We welcome 250-500 word proposals for one of the three sections of the book:

-Theory/New Approaches to speculative Fiction

-New Perspectives on Classic works

-New directions in speculative fiction

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Speculative visions of gender and sexuality
• Feminist theory in science fiction
• Transgendered approaches to technology/science fiction
• Disability studies in science fiction
• Gender, sexuality and the science fiction body
• Subgenres and movements – such as Afrofuturism, Black science fiction, Indigenous Futurism, and speculative fiction by writers of color – through the lens of gender and sexuality
• Unpacking the term “women in science fiction”
• Gender and performativity/theories of performativity

Please address abstracts and/or questions to Christene d’Anca (christene_danca@ucsb.edu) and Darren Borg (borgdj@piercecollege.edu) by March 15, 2024.

Full papers will be expected to be between 6-8000 words.

Predicted Publication Timeline:

March 14, 2024 – Abstracts Submission

April 15, 2024 – Notification of Acceptance

October 15, 2024 – Submission of Essays

January 15, 2025 – Edits Sent to Authors

March 15, 2025 – Submission of Revised Essays / Book Enters Peer Review

May 15, 2025 – Comments Sent to Authors

June 15, 2025 – Submission of Revised Essays / Book Enters Final Edits

July 15, 2025 – Final Edits Sent to Authors

August 15, 2025 – Proofs

September 15, 20205 – Final Proofs

November 2025 – Publication!