Breaking the Mold: Why Women Belong at the Helm of Sci-Fi

Mechelle Martz-Mayfield
Dec 14, 2025
2 min read

For too long, science fiction has been viewed as a boys’ club—space battles, laser guns, and brooding antiheroes leading the charge. But look a little closer, and you’ll see that women have always been there—quietly coding, exploring, questioning, building futures both imagined and real. And today, more than ever, women are claiming their place at the helm of science fiction—not just as characters, but as creators, change-makers, and world-builders.

Women Have Always Been Here

Let’s start with the facts: the first science fiction novel is widely credited to a woman—Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Her blend of science and gothic horror wasn’t just about a monster; it was about humanity, ethics, creation, and consequence—core questions that still define the genre today.

Despite this powerful beginning, women have often been sidelined in the sci-fi narrative. Classic bookshelves and movie posters were stacked with male heroes and male creators. But the tides have been shifting, and fast.

Why Diverse Voices Matter in Sci-Fi

Science fiction asks the biggest questions—What if? Who are we becoming? What does the future hold? To explore those questions fully, we need more than one perspective. We need stories that reflect a wide range of experiences, identities, and values.

Women of all types bring complexity to the genre. They bring nuance. They bring emotional intelligence and ethical tension and a refusal to settle for one-dimensional answers. Female characters and creators often prioritize collaboration over conquest, internal conflict over external explosions, and empathy over ego. And that’s where the magic happens.

Sci-Fi Isn’t Just Lasers and Dystopias

Modern sci-fi, especially in the hands of women, is more intimate, more experimental, and more human. Think Becky Chambers’ hopeful space crews, Martha Wells’ awkward AI in The Murderbot Diaries, or the emotional twists in Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility. These stories don’t just imagine new worlds—they challenge us to be better in this one.

The Heart of AL-ive and Kicking

In my own debut novel, AL-ive and Kicking, the lead coder is Nara—a brilliant, driven, deeply idealistic woman who’s trying to use AI for good in a world full of ethical gray areas. Her voice isn’t just central to the story—it is the story. She’s part of a trio of founders who are building a hyper-realistic AI robot, and while the tech is cool, the real tension is human: ambition, grief, love, betrayal, and what it means to do the right thing in a flawed system. She is living the struggle of women in technology fields and learning to be someone who will challenge it. This book wouldn’t exist without women in sci-fi who paved the way. And I hope it helps pave the way for more.

The Future Is Feminist, Futuristic, and Fierce

So if you’ve ever felt like sci-fi wasn’t written for you—think again. The future is wide open, and women are designing it, deconstructing it, and dreaming it forward. From the labs to the libraries, from the screen to the page, we’re not just participating. We’re leading.