«There must be darkness to see the stars»: How contemporary women writers have been queering the way to mixtopic world-making
Abstract
Focussing on a number of literary works in English(es), this article intends to show how contemporary women writers have been enacting the disruption of the polarity not only between the fantastic and the real but also between apocalyptic scenarios and the utopistic urge of subgenres like solarpunk. By embracing the concept of mixtopia, as proposed by Giuliana Misserville, I will thus attempt to prove how, in a world ravaged by climate change and shaped by A.I., several women writers bring to the fore the relevance of a technocritical approach in form and content, queering the material-semiotic nature of sci-fi itself, originally a male-dominated genre, and now a wild land of uncharted territories, full of eco-aware possibilities.
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