I refer to as SF myth. Both belong to fantastic literature, to
what Suvin calls the literature of estrangement, and both offer
alternatives to "the author's community" which can challenge
the reader to "see afresh."

Perhaps it is the foundation of myth which carries these
works beyond the "anatomy" tradition in which Suvin would
place utopian fiction to the literary realization of human com-
munities, enabling them to realize fully the possibilities in-
herent in SF--the science of its surface reality and the fiction
of its human interaction. Certainly it is the nature of that myth
defining these worlds within women--a nondualistic, cyclical
affirmation of life and love--to offer a dynamic, flexible surface
reality open to individual expressions and resistant to hier-
archical organization. As a verbal construction, SF myth is as
fixed as any earlier cultural myth, but when that construction
is read metaphorically its possibilities become apparent, and
the reader can see through the words to the archetypal patterns
of ancient myth, can know that as this surface offers a shift
from the world we live in, it too can shift. "The good society,"
Khanna argues, "is thus viable only so long as it is constantly
re-evaluated, revised, responsive to individual and communal
growth" (p. 271).

-xiv-