Talk:Reproduction and pregnancy in speculative fiction

infertility

I don't think The White Plague belongs here. Pregnancy itself doesn't seem to be the point of the novel: there are no governments scrambling to find alternative methods of birth. 212.219.48.247 13:06, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Good point. The White Plague and numerous other novels are really more about infertility; and I would guess that from the popularity of "Children of Men" we'll have a lot of people looking for that. We should break it out into a separate section in this article and set up a redirect. If it develops enough it can become a separate page. --lquilter 15:02, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Earliest human/alien sex relationship

I think one needs to look towards H. P. Lovecraft and C. L. Moore for examples far older than Philip José Farmer. The Dunwich Horror, a 1928 tale involves a pregnacy with a being from another dimension. No long term sexual relation is implied though the woman worshipped the being in question for what is implied to be her entire life. The Shadow over Innsmouth in 1936 involves the mixing of human and amphibious beings' lineages (sex and pregnacy obviously had to occur). No relation is specified. The amphibious beings are stated either in that story or elsewhere in the Lovecraft mythos as having come from the stars and hence would be genuinely "alien". C. L. Moore's short story Shambleau, written in 1933 involves sex (no pregnacy) between the protagonist, Northwest Smith and an female humanoid alien. On Mars, if I recall correctly. No long term relationship developes nor if I recall correctly, is there a danger of some sort of pregnacy. -- KarlHallowell 21:35, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

rescue

Okay, I argued that this article can be rescued in the AFD, and so I'll work on it. The article needs significant work. Right now it’s just a list of works that have some kind of pregnancy or fertility or infertility plot or theme. Really, it needs to be an article that talks about how SF is a useful genre for exploring the social, biological, and political consequences of pregnancy, and traces the use of SF works to do so over the years.

I see some key themes:

• Starting with Frankenstein and tracing male/female dynamics around reproduction (Frankenstein has been analyzed in some feminist criticism as a male-appropriation of reproduction novel) and exploration of artificial reproduction technologies (Woman on the Edge of Time & relationship to Shulamith Firestone's work; Lois McMaster Bujold’s artificial wombs, both on Barrayar and in Ethan of Athos); briefly touch on cloning;
• hitting those alien impregnation stories (miscegenation anxiety) and definitely Naomi Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman (a response to the miscegenation anxiety stories);
• pregnancy horror (Rosemary’s Baby and numerous other satan-baby themes), which relates to themes of parasitism and slavery (Octavia Butler! “Alien”);
• use of fertility, infertility, mutation in end-of or decay-of-civilization and the human race stories (e.g., The Children of Men), plus what-is-humanity (Judith Merril's ”That Only a Mother”)
• and politicization of reproduction - minor novels/stories focusing on abortion rights, birth control, etc., and major novels using reproduction as a way to look at social repression (e.g., The Handmaid’s Tale).

Other thoughts?

Since pregnancy is hardly a major theme in literature, generally, SF is kinda it, and I would hate to see this topic ignored in wikipedia. I'll post in SF project talk and elsewhere to recruit other SF experts in the issue. --lquilter 17:04, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

A major problem is that it's difficult to demonstrate that it is a common theme without weasel words or performing original research and generating statistics on just how commonplace it all is. Discussing exploration of the theme in a handful of individual works ala Earth in fiction could just as easily be done on the work's page, and does not demonstrate that the theme actually exists and merits coverage. MrZaius^talk 17:20, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed that we should not be doing original research or synthesis, but there is actually quite a bit of scholarly literature on this topic already that we can and should read, summarize, and cite ... so i'll start working on generating cites. it'll be over a period of weeks, not days, though, since i've got several other balls in the air right now. --lquilter 17:27, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

PS, I'm not sure that one has to talk about it as a "common" theme and generate statistics on commonality. (Generating statistics would be original research, anyway.) Notability doesn't require "common". The fact that a high-profile works are on the theme, and that the theme shows up in major discussions / reference works, should be sufficient. I'll work on cites. --lquilter 17:32, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I actually meant for statistics to be an example of OR. Going off of high-profile works is okay, but it still carries a wiff of impartiality, barring some solid way to demonstrate that they are just that - should be trivial in the case of Shelley, but may not be in others. MrZaius^talk 14:10, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Good, well, neither of us want OR on this page. (If I were going to do OR I'd try to get a publication out of it, actually.) My goal is simply to summarize and synthesize the secondary literature on the topic of pregnancy in SF. I note high-profile works just to say that thereby a casual reader can recognize the theme. To write the encyclopedia article once has to use the work of secondary sources that have recognized and written about the theme. --lquilter 14:17, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

• Well - there's a ton of literature on this, more, even, than I knew. In the past I've read, I don't know, a dozen or twenty things talking about this theme regarding various works, but digging into the topic, there's lots more. If anyone else is interested in going thru the relevant scholarship, I'm compiling a much more extensive bibliography than I've added on the article so far; contact me on my talk page and I'll send it to you.

I ginned up the list of major themes based on previous reading, but it may be that as we go through the literature some of the themes will turn out to not be as prominent as I recollect, or other themes may have been observed that I'm not familiar with. Also, there's an encyclopedia of gender & SF coming out in 2008; I imagine it will include a relevant article or two that we should read.

--lquilter 04:22, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

First, I'm not sure about pregnancy not being a major theme in literature. Maybe not "pregnancy" per se, but reproduction is kind of a biggie - The Scarlet Letter - unsanctioned reproduction, Kate Chopin's "Awakening" - the "mother-hens" and Edna, the existential by-products of reproduction for 19th century women, the consequences of Holly Golightly's alluded to pregnancy in Capote's novel (not the disneyfied movie) Breakfast at Tiffany's, but I digress...

How about a name change from "Pregnancy..." to "Reproduction in Science Fiction"? Keep "pregnancy" as a redirect. This would cover all the things listed as themes. Also, I'm going to try and take a whack at restructuring the intro. If you hate, revert it and let me know why. Thanks Phyesalis (talk) 06:48, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Done. --Orange Mike 06:54, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! Okay, started to reword intro, but as I got into the themes section I wasn't quite sure how to procede. How about grouping reproduction by Alien, Technological, Human, and then break human down into pregnancy (male, female), social, political, etc., on the arbitrary guess that human is going to end up being the longest. In the mean time, I'm going to be checking out the refs and see if i can't start converting the bulleted themes into sub-section introduction statements. What do you think? Phyesalis (talk) 07:35, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, they just gave me my own Mop-and-Bucket! (But darn it, the housecleaning just never stops!) --Orange Mike 07:39, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it will work to break down by alien / human, or technological/human, because much of the SFnal treatment of "alien" reproduction is alien-human hybrids, and virtually all of the technology is human uses of technology. I suggest themes like:

• male/female dynamics
• alien-human hybrids and alien impregnation
• pregnancy horror - horror of being pregnant, having nightmare baby, being devoured; parasitism, slavery
• fertility & infertility on a species-wide scale leading to major social change
• politicization of reproduction

--Lquilter (talk) 12:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Phyesalis (talk) 00:57, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Side note

Keep in mind that, when you find strong references for here, many of them are likely going to be applicable to the OR-laden and unreferenced Sex in science fiction and various other members of Category:Science fiction themes. MrZaius^talk 14:08, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

• Good point. I'm going to focus on this one for the next several weeks; once it's in okay shape I'll look at some of the other SF themes pages. But maybe others will read the cites and replicate them appropriately in the meantime. --lquilter 14:13, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Sources

I just stumbled across this page! There's a great paper on Alien Resurrection by A. Samuel Kimball: Conceptions and Contraceptions of the Future: Terminator 2, The Matrix and Alien Resurrection from Camera Obscura, 17.2 (2002) 69-107. I'll start looking up more papers and posting them here. Phyesalis (talk) 07:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

• Great - Ill look for it. You can also add them to the main page under "further reading". -- talk • contribs) 12:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
• I've been drafting it essay-style and marking some (but not nearly all) of the assertions which need cites. In general I'm just writing this from my own familiarity with the literature; there are plenty of resources out there, and we can all add them as needed. --Lquilter (talk) 21:44, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

recent removal of items

I diasgree with the removal of Frankenstein, Dr Moreau, and others. They may need to have better categories created for them, but I think it provides value to readers to group on one page all the various significant fictional attempts to imagine other ways of reproducing ourselves as individuals or as a species. How can these be usefully reintegrated? BrainyBabe (talk) 14:42, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

But they were placed seemingly at random (that's why i removed - Frankenstein has no male pregancy in. Its not even reproduction, the Monster wasn't human). Trying to group ALL the significant attempts should be done in a list article, not here. (although maybe this article should be renamed - it is getting very listy).Yobmod (talk) 21:31, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Examples subpage - For listing the many examples given until the article is fixed up and the important ones can be cited and added.YobMod 17:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

For re-incorporation

(as in male pregnancy, parthenogenesis, and gendered control over the ability and right to reproduce; see also numerous dystopian stories about state-controlled reproduction, abortion, and birth control, such as The Handmaid's Tale; see also analysis of how contemporary political debates about reproduction and pregnancy affect treatment of these issues in science fiction);

References