Gendered Cartographies in Melissa Scott’s Science Fiction: Queering Shadow Man (1995)

Abstract

In her 1995 novel, Shadow Man, Melissa Scott explores an alternative future where humanity’s sexual diversity has drastically increased after being exposed to the radiation and chemical drugs that surround space travel. In the text, Scott presents both a seemly all-inclusive place where different gender identities, sexual orientations and sex differences are recognized and accepted, as well as a second national space where the gender binary and heteronormativity are not only heavily endorsed but also seen as a prerequisite to belong and be recognized as human. In this article, I draw from different academic fields such as science fiction studies, space studies and feminist and queer studies to explore how the speculative elements of the novel influence the construal of gender identity, and I question whether Scott’s narrative can be interpreted as a hopeful space for queer liberation in the face of hostility. I analyse how the economic relations between both spaces, Hara and the Concord worlds, shape the understanding of gender and sexuality, and I focus on how the friction between the two systems highlights the power of the nation-state to mark certain bodies as foreign, undesirable and abjected. Finally, I conclude that Scott’s depiction of ‘the wry-abled’ and ‘the odd-bodied’ offers nuanced opportunities to interact with the sex-gender system through speculation while emphasizing how these categories are artificial social constructions.