“You should read Naomi Alderman’s The Power.
In which women suddenly develop the ability to overpower men by projecting electrical currents from their hands. This causes a revolution in gender relations and, eventually, world politics. Men are at first puzzled, then alarmed, and finally subjugated.
The bio-mechanics are easily understood – women develop a sheet of muscle across the collarbone, known as a skein, and the power comes from there. But no one can quite figure out what caused the skeins to grow. The best guess is it has something to do with chemical pollution, the detritus of mankind’s wars and industry, seeping into the water table.
Alderman’s fiction is a sort of inverted Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood mentored the writer), and asks some profound questions about human nature. The inhabitants of Alderman’s new world have little nostalgia for the old; they remember what it was like to live in the patriarchy. But her vision is bleak. She suggests that power has the same dynamics, regardless of who holds it. Why do powerful people do bad things, she asks? Because they can.”
-Stephen Dyson,
Associate Professor of Political Science,
Director, Humanities House
http://lchumanitieshouse.wixsite.com/2017-2018
