Naomi Mitchison: Fantasy and Intermodern Utopia

Abstract

Naomi Mitchison was the author of over 70 books published across eight decades. It is possible to trace a particular progression within the many strands of her career, which encompassed a wide range of genres and non-fiction works. From the publication of her first novel, The Conquered (1923), set in Roman Gaul, through to the reworking of her Scottish ancestry in The Bull Calves (1947), her fiction was mostly historical. Later on in her career, she wrote more science fiction such as Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962), Solution Three (1975), and Not By Bread Alone (1983). This progression embodies the historic transition, highlighted by Fredric Jameson in Archaeologies of the Future (2005), by which science fiction has superseded the historical novel as the main literary vehicle for the pursuit of utopia.