Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction by Men is the first comprehensive study of the self-representation of men in twenty-first-century SF novels. It demonstrates how the old stereotypes are being replaced by a collective reflection on how men and masculinity are changing and progressing.
My first publication about men appeared in 1998, before I even knew that Masculinities Studies (now called Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities) existed. It was an article called “Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mister Universe?: Hollywood Masculinity and the Search for the New Man,” in which I wondered why Schwarzenegger and other ‘musculine’ men did not embody a truly inspiring model, despite their avowed popularity. Twenty-seven years later, I have reached the conclusion with my latest book, Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction by Men that men simply have ‘no plans for the future’, my chosen subtitle. By this I mean that whereas most women (cis or trans), gender fluid and non-binary persons, dream collectively of an egalitarian future, men do not dream about any specific gender utopia, except for the right-wing men who dream of a terrifying patriarchal future, as Margaret Atwood warned in The Handmaid’s Tale (1985).
In recent years, thanks to a lessened teaching workload, for which I thank my university, I have published diverse books on men and masculinity, apart from journal articles and book chapters. These books are Masculinity and Patriarchal Villainy in the British Novel: From Hitler to Voldemort (2019), Representations of Masculinity in Literature and Film: Focus on Men (2020), American Masculinities in Contemporary Documentary Film: Up Close Behind the Mask (2023), Detoxing Masculinity in Anglophone Literature and Culture: In Search of Good Men (co-edited with M. Isabel Santaulària, 2023) and the forthcoming Masculinities in Contemporary Science-Fiction Television (co-edited with Michael Pitts, 2025), apart from Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction by Men. I have translated myself all of them into Spanish, except for the volume co-edited with Michael Pitts, to give my research visibility in my native language (my other native language is Catalan).
As a woman and a non-native speaker of English you might think that I lack the authority to examine texts that are socially, culturally and linguistically distant from my own environment. Yet, I have always seen my research as a task bridging distant shores, in gender, in nation, in language. The impact of Anglophone culture is so huge, besides, at an international level that all the authors and texts I have studied can be said to be part of my own Catalan/Spanish culture, except that I have approached them in their original language rather than in translation. SF in particular has an evident transnational appeal, with its all-encompassing view of humanity beyond the local differences that split our world. As a woman, I have always enjoyed SF precisely because its vision of the future tends to be far more egalitarian than our present and has allowed me to believe that the feminist utopia will be reached, sooner or later.
There are, however, many other feminist scholars writing about women’s SF and I decided a few years ago that in Science Fiction Studies we were losing track of what men are up to as SF authors, and as characters in fiction by men. I could have chosen to consider men in women’s feminist SF fiction, but Michael Pitts had already done that in Alternative Masculinities in Feminist Speculative Fiction: A New Man (2021). Besides, I’m particularly interested in self-representation, and so the research question my new book answers is ‘how do men represent men and masculinities in current 21st century SF?’ I chose to consider only the current century because I believe that the SF by contemporary, living authors is substantially different from earlier 20th century SF, which is usually quite sexist. I’m not going to naively claim that current SF male authors are feminists, because that is not the case. Yet, I have found in their novels very many compelling female characters, treated with notable respect, and often placed in a much higher moral and personal ground than the less than ideal, often quite lost, vulnerable male characters.
My initial thesis was that male SF writers are not only aware of the impact of feminism on society and on SF in the Anglophone territories, but also of the negative influence that patriarchy has over men and the diverse masculinities. This thesis, I believe, has been proven along the fourteen chapters of the book, which cover seventeen authors of different nationalities and even different generations. The problem is that I have also been proven right (please excuse my smugness!) in the sub-thesis guiding me: namely, that despite their lucid awareness about the burdens that patriarchy imposes on the present, male SF writers have not invested their energies on imagining an alternative, egalitarian, truly free social order. They complain, or even rage, against the current patriarchal regime and fear that it can be prolonged into the future, hence the many villains roaming the pages of 21st-century SF by men, yet the lack of a common anti-patriarchal agenda, also missing in Western society at large, makes it very difficult for them to build the utopia that all human beings need now.
As Richard K. Morgan writes in his kind review, I have carefully avoided “any smug blanket criticism of maleness,” working with “an enthusiastic curiosity about what the men are doing and a principled but impassioned engagement with why.” I have been very critical at points, whenever my feminist commitment has overcome my “enthusiastic curiosity” but I would be extremely happy if my book could enrich the conversation about men and masculinities in SF without the bitterness and acrimony that often plagues our approach to gender. As I’ve been arguing for many years now, it’s about time we distinguish patriarchy from masculinity, to help build a future in which men are finally free from the toxicity that patriarchy infects all human society with. And SF by men, no doubt, can play a major role in that endeavour.
Now enjoy Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction by Men and please read the many great novels analysed in it.
Sara Martín
Sara Martín teaches English Literature and Cultural Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Her research applies gender studies to the study of popular fictions in English.
[1] LMA P69/MRY4/B/005/MS01239/001/003, fol. 817r.
[2] Christopher Marsh, “‘Common Prayer’ in England 1560–1640: The View from the Pew” Past and Present 171 (2001): 66–94.
[3] For example, Cathy Shrank, Writing the Nation in Reformation England, 1530–1580 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) and Stewart James Mottram, Empire and Nation in Early English Renaissance Literature (Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer, 2008).
[4] For an overview of changes under Henry VIII, see G. W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005).
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