ABSTRACT
The exploration of otherness and difference has always been one of the defi ning characteristics of science fi ction. Populating the imaginary space of the future with different possible paradigms of subjectivity and social organization affords a tantalizing opportunity to challenge and re-envision traditional power structures. Science fi ction’s exploration of how the impact of technology may reconfi gure concepts of what is ‘naturally’ human, ‘provides concrete, material externalisations for metaphors of alterity’ (Roberts 2000, 168), particularly in the fi gures of the cyborg and the extraterrestrial. Such alien fi gures have the potential to effect a radical destabilization of conservative ways of knowing, performing, and regulating identity while suggesting alternative discourses of identity and power relations.
