“Decoding Masculinity in 21st Century Science Fiction by Men: Two Case Studies in Reconceptualizing Patriarchy”: Two Case Studies in Reconceptualizing Patriarchy

Science fiction (SF) is a laboratory of ideas that enables authors to explore how patriarchy privileges not just masculinity over femininity, but certain forms of masculinity over others. This chapter examines two 21st-century British novels, Thin Air by Richard K. Morgan and The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks, as case studies showing how male SF writers expose the kinds of damage that patriarchy specifically inflicts on certain kinds of men. This damage is largely class-based: Morgan’s Hakan Veil is an Indigenous, working-class private investigator on Mars who suffers from the many bodily modifications he had to endure in his past work as a cyborgian space enforcer. By way of contrast, Banks’s Fassin Taak is a scholar living an ivory tower existence until his family is destroyed for protecting an illegal sentient AI. While Veil opts simply for surviving as well as he can in the absence of organized resistance, Taak ends up becoming an anti-patriarchal rebel, albeit at a high personal cost.