Margaret Cavendish’s The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (1666), one of the first works of science fiction, tells the story of a beautiful lady who is transported to a strange world joined “pole-to-pole” with our own. She is quickly made Empress of the Blazing World and its population of bear-men, ant-men, satyrs, and giants. This lecture will discuss Cavendish’s remarkable text and its representation of gender, science, and power.