"Humanity is Unnatural!" Feminisms and Science-Fiction Strategies in Joanna Russ’s The Female Man and The Adventures of Alyx

Abstract: While acknowledging that Russ’s work is problematic in some regards, the aim of this thesis is to counter the criticism of Russ’s oeuvre as outdated and sometimes stuck in second-wave feminist positions, instead demonstrating how Russ’s use of sci-fi strategies such as cyborgism, possible-worlds theory, utopianism, and concretised metaphors in The Female Man and The Adventures of Alyx enables her to move beyond second-wave feminist positions and anticipate third-wave feminism in ways that are still relevant today.