Through the screen wildly

As with the relationship between any two cultural areas the flow of ideas between science and science fiction is not simply one-directional but two-way. An exchange of knowledge and perspectives exists, fed by the concerns of society at large. Feminism has helped to explode the myth that patriarchal institutions, be they scientific, literary or science fictional, exist as self-contained spheres unaffected by the social structures of everyday life. Within this work I explore the dialogues that take place between science fiction and the postmodern world, and what effects these have had on identity. I take the science fiction novel to be the paradigmatic form of postmodernism. Instead of presenting a truth with possible explanations between which it may be impossible to choose as, for example, in the popular 'whodunit' fictions of modernism - the science fiction novel presents possible worlds. The 'stuff' of fiction, the 'human condition', is framed by unusual worlds which in turn create surprising dilemmas with which the characters must cope. It is this question of possible worlds, exploring how they relate to temporality in postmodern fiction, linking to later work focusing on ideas of hyperspace, leading finally to my discussion of the postmodern city and the notion of the wildzone. Showalter describes women and their literature as falling into this 'wild zone' uninhabited by patriarchy, and suggests that this is why women often write of freedom and construct their worlds in the wilderness, where they can come into their own. However, while the 'wildzone' is traditionally a female space, I will be modifying the concept to suggest that in postmodern society male writers can also access the area (as there is a corresponding crescent of purely male experience) and that in postmodern society this space is just as important, and indeed necessary, for men as for women. I will align the discussion of the postmodern sublime with theories of hyperspace, and will argue that cyberspace can become a postmodern wildzone with open doors which allow access to both men and women.