Paul Willis, Common Culture (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1990), p.

However, it is the trilogy of novels by Suzy McKee Charnas ( Walk to the End of the World (1974), Motherlines (1978) and The Furies (1994)) which stands most starkly in comparison to the Wraeththu novels, in its lesbian feminist analysis of gender issues. William Barnell’s Blessing trilogy (1980–1). There have been a number of post-holocaust trilogies, including Richard Cowper’s Corlay trilogy (1976–82) and This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.Īll citations to the Wraeththu trilogy refer to the following editions: Storm Constantine, The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit: The First Book of Wraeththu (New York: For Fantasy, 1987) The Bewitchments of Love and Hate: The Second Book of Wraeththu (New York: Tor Fantasy, 1988) and The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire: The Third Book of Wraeththu (New York: Tor Fantasy, 1988). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. 2 Across volumes entitled The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit (1987), The Bewitchments of Love and Hate (1988), and The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire (1988), she depicts the extinction of men - and the survival of women - in a twenty-first-century world increasingly dominated by hermaphrodite mutants called Wraeththu. He had no balance without it he perished’ (III, p. Like other female science fiction and science fantasy writers concerned with the implications of patriarchy, Constantine sees the causes of the ‘funeral’ residing in man’s own gender dominance: ‘Man burned himself out from within. Constantine replaces the familiar motif of sudden ecological or nuclear disaster with a less quantifiable but no less devastating apocalypse: ‘Not the final sudden death we all envisaged, but a slow sinking to nothing’ (I, p. 140–1) 1 can be used as the means to challenge a range of dominant cultural assumptions to do with gender, sexuality and subcultural values. Storm Constantine’s Wraeththu trilogy (1987–8) is a notable example of the way that the fictional depiction of ‘mankind’s funeral’ (I, pp. The opportunity afforded by science fiction and science fantasy to envisage post-apocalyptic cultures is an attractive one for any writer interested in imagining post-patriarchy.

Wraeththu by storm constantine