SOURCE: “The Future of History: Violence and the Feminine in Contemporary Science Fiction,” in American Studies in Transition, edited by David E. Nye and Christen Kold Thomsen, Odense University Press, 1985, pp. 235–58.

In the following essay, Clark argues that many science fiction works that are typically viewed as misogynistic due to the “gratuitous” acts of violence against women are actually representations of the conditions that women face in present-day society, and that the “spectacle” of violence is necessary to draw attention to issues related to today's patriarchal hierarchy.

At the beginning of “False Dawn,” a short story by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro first published in 1972, the roving warrior Thea is prowling through the corpse-littered outskirts of a ruined city. That city and all others have been destroyed by a nuclear war, and the land is now ruled by brutal gangs who have been battling each other and leaving the dead...