The proper relationship between the artist and society has been an important theme in the work of any number of major authors, and, as one would expect, has been of particular interest to women writers, many of whom feel estranged from the dominant patriarchal culture. The problem is discussed in great depth by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own (1929). Among the contemporary women writers who have dealt with the issue are Joyce Carol Oates, Eudora Welty, Doris Lessing, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich.

In science fiction the role of the artist in society has not been discussed very often because so few science-fiction writers have tended to think of themselves as artists per se. Writers who have raised the question include Samuel R. Delany, Anne McCaffrey, Kim Stanley Robinson, Barry Malzberg, Joanna Russ, and, especially, Ursula K. Le Guin in her collection of essays...