Sultana's dream

In 1905, “Sultana's Dream,” a science fiction short story of feminist utopia, appeared in the pages of The Indian Ladies' Magazine. As the first magazine in India established and edited by a woman for women, the periodical was an ideal fit for Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s “Sultana's Dream,” one of the earliest science fiction stories written by a woman. In Rokeya’s feminist utopia, women rule the world as society lives peacefully and prospers through their inventions of solar ovens, flying cars, and cloud condenser, which offer abundant, clean water to the population of “Ladyland.” And the men, who are deemed “fit for nothing,” are shut inside their homes.
Rokeya’s witty and cutting indictment of Indian society, and the men who rule it, also depicts an alternative, feminist science—one which better serves society. In her ideas, Rokeya was decades ahead of her time, critiquing not only the close relationship between science and patriarchy but also that between science and the colonial powers that controlled India at the time of her writing.