Marge Piercy, the landmark feminist novel’s author, reflects on the aspirations for a just society that she dramatised in 1976 – and their continuing relevance
The point of a novel about the future is not to predict it; I’m not pretending to be Nostradamus. The point of such writing is to influence the present by extrapolating current trends for advancement or detriment. Nobody is good at prediction. If we were better at guessing events in a year or even a few months or weeks, our divorce rate would be zero, we would not get into stupid relationships, and nobody would lose money in the stock market or to the racetrack. The point of creating futures is to get people to imagine what they want and don’t want to happen down the road – and maybe do something about it.
Woman on the Edge of Time was first published 40 years ago and begun three-and-a-half years before that. The early 1970s were a time of great political ferment and optimism among those of us who longed for change, for a more just and egalitarian society with more opportunities for all the people, not just some of them. Since then, inequality has greatly increased.
Instead of slut-shaming, I projected a society in which sex was available, accepted, and non-hierarchical
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