Of death (and birth) of universes: gender and science in Pamela Zoline´s “The Heat Death of the Universe”

Abstract

This essay approaches some issues recently raised in the arena of genre-informed criticism on women´s utopias, dystopias and science fiction, and responds to some of those issues, specifically with regard to “the need for further contemporary work connecting feminist SF and science theories, and the potential for critical synergies evoked by situating feminist SF as a creative form of science studies” (MERRICK, 2007). It does so by presenting a reading of Pamela Zoline´s “The Heat Death of the Universe” (1967), a story which has reached the status of a classic in feminist SF. Privileging an “ethnographic attitude” (HARAWAY, 2003), we look at the ways in which this short story creatively incorporates scientific practices and discourses in its elaborate composition by refashioning and expanding the meanings of the central concept it deals with: entropy. Drawing on earlier readings of Zoline´s text, we further argue that the juxtaposition of science/fiction as constructed by this narrative activates, expands and relativises our ways of thinking about the death (and birth of) universes by stressing the interplay of physical, biological, social, psychological and philosophical forces and perspectives. In order to accomplish this, the central entropy-informed tension between ordered and disordered systems is kept throughout the story masterfully by the deployment of narrative devices that maintain such suspension. Finally, we reflect on this fictional piece in relation to the scientific paradigms it envisions, and its functions on the formation of gender perceptions, paying particular attention to the politics, tensions, effects and stakes at play.