Margaret Cavendish

The Blazing World Illustrated Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. Feminist critic Dale Spender calls it a forerunner of science fiction. It can also be read as a utopian work. As its full title suggests, Blazing World is a fanciful depiction of a satirical, utopian kingdom in another world (with different stars in the sky) that can be reached via the North Pole. It is "the only known work of utopian fiction by a woman in the 17th century, as well as an example of what we now call 'proto-science fiction' - although it is also a romance, an adventure story, and even autobiography." A young woman enters this other world, becomes the empress of a society composed of various species of talking animals, and organises an invasion back into her world complete with submarines towed by the "fish men" and the dropping of "fire stones" by the "bird men" to confound the enemies of her homeland, the Kingdom of Esfi.