I post this essay here with some trepidation since it is the first academic piece of mine ever published, and it's rather awkward in tone. But I can't miss the chance to celebrate the first Tron, released in 1982. In the early 1990s I was working on my first novel, Correspondence, about a woman who turns herself into a machine. I was fascinated by what I called 'the experience of machine-ness' and I watched Tron over and over again. When I was invited to write a chapter of a book on women and science fiction I knew I wanted to write about Tron, although to be honest I was much more interested in the machine than in the female side of things (ditto the other film I discuss there, Short Circuit).
Anyway, I guess I am one of the 'ageing geeks' mentioned by my DMU colleague James Russell in his Guardian article this week Will Tron: Legacy make Disney a long-game winner? so I'm sharing my ageing geek interpretation here, but please be kind, it was a very early attempt to write a la academic!
Scribd: Thomas, S. 1991, 'Between the boys and their toys' in Where No Man Has Gone Before: women and science fiction ed. Armitt, L. London: Routledge
I'm going to see the new Tron: Legacy on Monday - will report back.
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