{"id":4453,"date":"2026-05-10T08:27:52","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T08:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=4453"},"modified":"2026-05-10T08:28:50","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T08:28:50","slug":"a-new-book-on-mothers-and-mothering-in-speculative-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2026\/05\/10\/a-new-book-on-mothers-and-mothering-in-speculative-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"A NEW BOOK: ON MOTHERS AND MOTHERING IN SPECULATIVE FICTION"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The new book I present today, Exploring Reproduction and Gender in Contemporary Feminist Speculative Fiction: Mothers Out of this World<\/em><\/a>, is a collective volume that I have co-edited with Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen, of the University of Zaragoza. This is the end of a long collaboration, initiated by Jessica herself, which has lasted about two years, perhaps two and a half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          As my readers know, I tend to write about men much more than about women, and I\u2019m not a mother. When Jessica, whom I\u2019ve known for years from diverse conferences, proposed that we did something together about motherhood (she\u2019s a mother of two young children), I wasn\u2019t quite sure how to react. So, I started by offering the chance to publish a monographic section in the journal I co-edit, H\u00e9lice<\/em>. In the end, our call for papers attracted enough articles for two special sections, published in Spanish in H\u00e9lice<\/em>\u2019s no. 37<\/a> and 38<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Jessica and I were less confident about the next step we had planned, which consisted of convincing a major academic Anglophone publisher to accept the texts, translated into English, as a collective volume. Fortunately, Linda Braus, from Palgrave USA, saw no inconvenient in the fact that the chapters had been already published as journal articles in Spanish, which opens very interesting possibilities for other similar projects, either ours or by other academics working in languages other than English. By the way, the book can be downloaded from the many university libraries subscribing to Springer Nature services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Without further ado, here\u2019s our very exciting TOC:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Introduction: On Motherhood and Mothering, Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen, Sara Mart\u00edn<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*The Travelling Mother: Naomi Mitchison and Memoirs of a Spacewoman<\/em>, Sara Mart\u00edn<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Prole(tarian) M\/others of the Future, Unite: Queer Social Reproduction and Utopian Kinship in the Speculative Fiction by Marge Piercy and, M.E. O\u2019Brien and Eman Abdelhadi, Ira Ter\u00e1n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Domination and Silence: Motherhood in The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em> and Cad\u00e1ver Exquisito<\/em>, Sof\u00eda Duarte<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Reproductive Processes and Systemic Violence in Three Contemporary British SF Novels: The Birth of Love<\/em>, Intrusion<\/em>, and The Growing Season<\/em>, Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Fairy Tale, Myth, and Reproductive Dystopia: Jane Rogers\u2019s The Testament of Jessie Lamb<\/em>, Daniel Nisa C\u00e1ceres<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Mothering, Family, and Survival: The Post-apocalyptic World of Margaret Atwood\u2019s MaddAddam<\/em>, Carmen Velasco-Montiel<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Re-sculpting the Mother-Daughter Bond and the Idea(l) of the Female Body: A Reading of Madeline Miller\u2019s Galatea<\/em>, Madalina Armie<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Posthuman Reproductive Futures: The Eco-Queer Kinship of Larissa Lai\u2019s The Tiger Flu<\/em>, Lidia Mar\u00eda Cuadrado Payeras<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Monstrous Maternities: Motherhood, Mothering, and Ectogenesis in \u201cMOM\u201d by Nieves Delgado, Irene Ruiz Vidal<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*\u201cWhy Do You Look at Me Like That, Mother?\u201d Motherhood, Abjection, and Entrapment in Vivarium<\/em>, Ver\u00f3nica Membrive<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Mother Yourself: Cloned Women and Paternal Erasure in The Echo Wife<\/em> by Sarah Gailey, Vicky Brewster<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Institutionalized Maternal Surveillance: Violence and Resistance in Jessamine Chan\u2019s The School for Good Mothers<\/em>, Paula Serrano Elena<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Natural and Scientific Conception: Motherhood(s) in Louisa Hall\u2019s Reproduction<\/em>, Aline Ferreira<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          In the introduction, we explain that mothers and mothering are central to our work in this volume. Motherhood has been often seen by radical feminism as a burden for women (a term now fraught with complications, as certain trans men still keep their wombs and, hence, the capacity to bear children). Motherhood, however, was vindicated by later feminist thinkers, such as the prolific, omnipresent Andrea O\u2019Reilly, as a source of power, which is how it should be seen. Patriarchal oppression is clearly based to a great extent on patriarchal men\u2019s grudging realization that the survival of the species depends on women\u2019s willingness to bear children. To guarantee its own survival, then, patriarchy has enslaved us, beginning by imposing the cult of virginity to guarantee that the first-born child is the husband\u2019s. This is important since property, a patriarchal invention and foundation, is transmitted from father to sons, occasionally daughters. Adrienne Rich introduced the concept of mothering, which refers to the relationship between mother and children, and today, more generally, to parenting. This relationship, as we know, can be complicit with patriarchy but is also a source of potential anti-patriarchal resistance and rebellion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          The authors and we (Jessica and I) have dealt in our chapters with the challenges that technoscience presents for mothers, motherhood, and mothering. These challenges are best explored in science fiction, though we\u2019re using the label speculative fiction to consider other texts which, strictly speaking, are fantasy or even horror. In recent years, scholarship has increasingly illuminated how feminist science fiction engages with the intersecting themes of reproduction, technology, and gender, offering critical insights into the biopolitical regulation of bodies and the cultural construction of motherhood in new representations. These critical interventions reveal how speculative fiction reimagines reproductive roles and maternal identities beyond traditional, biologically deterministic frameworks, contributing to broader feminist debates around embodiment, autonomy, and reproductive justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Building on this body of work, in this volume our main argument is that we have outgrown the term \u2018mothering\u2019, which was very useful in past decades but now requires redefinition in light of contemporary theories and lived experiences. As the authors and their theoretical perspectives demonstrate, we can no longer speak of the mother as a totalizing or enclosed entity. Instead, motherhood must be understood as a fluid, relational, and often contested site shaped by technological mediation, cultural expectations, and political struggle. Through committed feminist critical engagement, we aim to unravel the intricate tapestry of reproductive experiences within speculative fiction, illuminating the intersections of gender, power, and autonomy along the way. We aim to join, above all, the debate on whether technoscientific intervention in the natural process of human reproduction is harmful to women. The position we defend is that it will harm women as long as science and technology are dominated by patriarchal interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          As the chapters demonstrate, feminist speculative fiction is a particularly fertile ground for interrogating the ethical, emotional, and political dimensions of reproduction, an issue that, naturally, concerns all human beings and not just mothers. From imagined futures governed by biotechnological intervention, or posthuman landscapes where care is redefined through alien and artificial kinships, to hair-raising dystopias, the analyses of the chosen stories create a space for us to think in a novel way about what it means to be a mother, to create life inside one\u2019s body (or outside), or to inhabit an anatomy forced to gestate and nurture beyond the will of the mother. The works examined in each chapter go beyond the stagnant and traditional representations of \u2018good\u2019 and \u2018bad\u2019 motherhood, revealing instead a multiple, fluid, situated, ambivalent motherhood, deeply shaped as well by personal relationships (often with other women but mainly with controlling men), interconnected with the environment and, on the whole, resisting a clear and stable definition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Ultimately, we invite readers to think beyond the present, to question outdated theses about gender, care, and creation, and to imagine reproductive futures that are more equitable, more diverse, and more attuned to the many ways we make and unmake ourselves and others. A wide space opens up before us for further exploration. Future research will be able to deepen these discussions and explore topics such as trans*, differently-abled, and neurodivergent motherhood, with more non-Western and decolonial perspectives, or analyze how digital and interactive narratives are reshaping the aesthetics and politics of speculative motherhood. What this volume demonstrates, however, is that the maternal remains a place of generative inquiry, one that speculative fiction is uniquely positioned to explore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          The conversation around motherhood and mothering has been certainly growing in recent years, not only because our reproductive rights are at risk in many democracies where they seemed to be absolutely guaranteed, but also because other issues require urgent measures, from surrogacy to the so far silenced process of mourning for stillborn children. The physical process itself of bearing a child has been the object of much exploration by expectant mothers, and the role of fathers has changed enormously not only in relation to this process, but also in relation to the legislation around paternity leave and other vindications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          All these changes and new contributions to the ongoing conversation are accompanied, however, by a greater reluctance than ever to have children. Prospective mothers have many difficulties to find suitable partners (in the UK a study found out that is the main reason why women freeze their eggs, not, as supposed, a selfish dedication to their careers) and the financial situation, with precarious jobs and limited access to housing, makes it very difficult for all individuals to consider reproduction and forming families when they\u2019re still in their twenties and even thirties. With this panorama, it is no wonder that most of the stories the authors have analysed are mainly dystopian (perhaps with the singular exception of the one I chose, Naomi Mitchison\u2019s unique Memoirs of a Spacewoman<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          The technoscience thriving in our times has made it possible for many women to become mothers, but also threatens to turn us women into objects of total patriarchal control, in a sort of science-fictional rendering of Atwood\u2019s dystopian The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>. The eventual arrival of viable ectogenesis (or reproduction outside the human body via artificial wombs) might be either liberating, as radical feminism imagined, or a nightmare as Aldous Huxley already imagined back in 1932, with his Brave New World<\/em>. We need to add to the conversation as well the decision many of us have made not to bring children to this world, which is not a selfish decision, as it is often said to be, but an expression of the fear and dislike of the fiercely patriarchal world we live in, apart from other personal considerations.           Jessica, our authors and I hope that you find much food for thought in our collective book, and, above all, that you read (or see) and enjoy the works we analyze. We hope that the exploration of motherhood continues in as many different directions as possible, and that new-style fatherhood is also explored, though we worry that there are still very few works of speculative fiction addressing this issue. Perhaps that should be our next project: finding and studying them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new book I present today, Exploring Reproduction and Gender in Contemporary Feminist Speculative Fiction: Mothers Out of this World, is a collective volume that I have co-edited with Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen, of the University of Zaragoza. This is the end of a long collaboration, initiated by Jessica herself, which has lasted about two years, perhaps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1137,11,1093,14,17,799,22,31],"tags":[335,1483,1482,1031],"class_list":["post-4453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-literature","category-cultural-studies","category-english-studies","category-feminism","category-gender-studies","category-literary-criticism","category-literary-studies","category-science-fiction","tag-motherhood","tag-mothering","tag-mothers","tag-speculative-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4454,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4453\/revisions\/4454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}