Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.1353/sfs.2023.a900284
Mark Bould
Transitional Demands Mark Bould (bio) John Rieder. Speculative Epistemologies: An Eccentric Account of SF from the 1960s to the Present. Liverpool UP, 2021. vii+ 183 pp. $137.50 hc, $47.99 pbk. In Speculative Epistemologies, the author of the justly influential Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction (2008) and Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System (2017) continues to destabilize and reorient our understanding of sf. And once more, he displays his uncanny knack for spotting those things bobbing and flickering in the corner of sf studies' eye, of gathering them together and placing them center stage, and of saying things about sf that immediately strike you as obvious and true—but only after he has said them. Rieder's new book is concerned with "truth effects in sf" (1). It explores the interrelation of mimesis and rhetoric, of representation and persuasion, in sf works that "challenge dominant assumptions about the normal, the possible, and the real"—hence, "speculative epistemologies"—but that have occupied the edges or, rather, some of the multiple "epicenters" of sf—hence, "eccentric"—since the 1960s (2). His six key examples, to each of which he devotes a chapter, are Pamela Zoline's "The Heat Death of the Universe" (1967), Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony (1977), Samuel R. Delany's "The Tale of Plague and Carnivals" (1985), Theodore Roszak's The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein (1995), Albert Wendt's The Adventures of Vela (2009), and Donna Haraway's "The Camille Stories" (2016). Clearly, then, what is on offer is not, as the subtitle of Brian Aldiss's Billion Year Spree (1973) was sometimes rendered, the true history of sf, or even just the history of sf. Instead, Rieder navigates the last half century of sf, which he understands both as a "fluid, historically malleable" discursive object and as many often interweaving and overlapping communities of knowledge and practice (3). His six exemplary texts do not merely "flirt with generic boundaries"—they are "boundary objects" that "draw together" these subcultures and thus "foreground social struggles against the maintenance of dominant knowledge systems" (3). At the same time, they express the "marginalized and alternative ways of knowing" associated with women (Zoline, Roszak), Indigenous communities (Silko, Wendt) and queer communities (Delany, Haraway) (4), and because the period that interests Rieder also features the rise of sf studies and its associated subculture(s), two of his authors are also career academics (Roszak, Haraway) (19). Moreover, all six texts are rooted in "the civil rights and women's movements of the 1950s and 1960s and their legacy in the ongoing struggle against institutional [End Page 271] racism and sexism, and in the allied pursuit of environmental activism"; they are "positioned at the prolific intersections of multiple histories, communities and discourses" (152). Consequently, in addition to providing detailed close readings, Rieder traces
过渡要求马克·博尔德(传记)约翰·里德。思辨认识论:20世纪60年代至今科幻小说的古怪叙述。利物浦，2021年。Vii + 183页。137.50美元，每页47.99美元。在《思辨认识论》一书中，这位颇有影响力的《殖民主义与科幻小说的出现》(2008年)和《科幻小说与大众文化类型系统》(2017年)的作者继续动摇和重新定位我们对科幻小说的理解。再一次，他展示了他那不可思议的本领:发现那些在科幻小说研究者眼中闪烁的东西，把它们聚集在一起，放在舞台的中心，说出一些关于科幻小说的事情，让你立刻感到显而易见和真实——但只有在他说完之后。里德的新书关注的是“科幻小说中的真理效应”(1)。它探讨了科幻作品中模仿和修辞、再现和说服的相互关系，这些作品“挑战了关于正常、可能和真实的主流假设”——因此，“思辨认识论”——但自20世纪60年代以来，这些作品占据了科幻小说的边缘，或者更确切地说，占据了科幻小说的一些多个“中心”——因此，“古怪”(2)。他的六个关键例子，每个例子他都用了一章。分别是帕梅拉·佐琳的《宇宙的热死》(1967)、莱斯利·马蒙·西尔科的《仪式》(1977)、塞缪尔·r·德拉尼的《瘟疫与嘉年华的故事》(1985)、西奥多·罗斯扎克的《伊丽莎白·弗兰肯斯坦回忆录》(1995)、阿尔伯特·温特的《贝拉的冒险》(2009)和唐娜·哈拉威的《卡米尔的故事》(2016)。显然，书中所呈现的并不是科幻小说的真实历史，甚至不只是科幻小说的历史，就像布赖恩·奥尔迪斯(Brian Aldiss)的《十亿年狂欢》(Billion Year Spree, 1973)的副标题有时被渲染的那样。相反，里德在过去半个世纪的科幻小说中进行了导航，他将其理解为“流动的，历史上可延展的”话语对象，以及许多经常交织和重叠的知识和实践社区(3)。他的六个示范文本不仅仅是“与一般边界调情”-它们是“边界对象”，“汇集”这些亚文化，因此“前景社会斗争反对维持主导知识系统”(3)。他们表达了与女性(佐琳，罗斯扎克)，土著社区(西尔科，温特)和酷儿社区(德拉尼，哈拉威)(4)相关的“边缘化和另类的认知方式”，因为里德感兴趣的时期也是科幻研究及其相关亚文化兴起的时期，他的两位作者也是职业学者(罗斯扎克，哈拉威)(19)。此外，所有六个文本都植根于“20世纪50年代和60年代的民权和妇女运动及其在反对制度性种族主义和性别歧视的持续斗争中的遗产，以及对环境行动主义的联合追求”;它们“位于多种历史、社区和话语的多产交叉点”(152)。因此，除了提供详细的细读外，里德还通过生产、流通和接受的回路追踪每一篇文本，激活它与不同社区的关系，这些社区将其理解为科幻小说。例如，佐林的《宇宙的热死》首先发表在迈克尔·穆尔科克的《新世界》杂志上，然后迅速被他的《新世界3》(1968)和朱迪思·梅里尔的《英格兰摇摆》(1968)选为最佳科幻小说选集。因此，它首先被理解为新浪潮“挑战和修改”sf的先前被接受的含义的方式的例证(21)。随后，它被编入罗伯特·西尔弗伯格的《无限之镜:批评家的科幻小说选集》(1970年)，并由布莱恩·奥尔迪斯作了介绍，这本故事集还包括作家评论家和学者评论家的评论(金斯利·艾米斯、阿尔吉斯·布德利斯、詹姆斯·布利什、托马斯·克莱森、h·布鲁斯·富兰克林、达蒙·奈特)，然后，也许令人惊讶的是，大卫·凯特勒的学术著作《旧的新世界》将其排除在科幻经典之外:《末世想象、科幻小说与美国文学》(1974)。这些举动将佐林的故事与不同的社区和背景联系起来，在那里，科幻小说更广泛的文学意义正在争论。帕梅拉·萨金特(Pamela Sargent)的《新奇迹女性》(The New Women of Wonder, 1978)将其选集再一次更明确地与第二波女权主义和女权主义社会联系起来——例如，这一立场得到了加强……
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Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.1353/sfs.2023.a900296
Richard Bleiler, Curtis White, Antonio Sanna, Caryn Murphy, Pinaki Roy, Tanima Dutta, Angelique Nairn, Justin Matthews
Notes and Correspondence Richard Bleiler, Curtis White, Dr. Antonio Sanna, Caryn Murphy, Pinaki Roy, Tanima Dutta, Angelique Nairn, and Justin Matthews "Fred Folio" Unmasked The year 1855 saw the publication of a satiric work known variously as A Book for the Times: Lucy Boston, or, Woman's Rights and Spiritualism: Illustrating the Follies and Delusions of the Nineteenth Century and, more simply, as Lucy Boston, or, Woman's Rights and Spiritualism: Illustrating the Follies and Delusions of the Nineteenth Century. It is an anti-feminist/anti-spiritualist diatribe whose narrative relies upon what we today would describe as elements of science fiction and fantasy to "prove" its points. These include poltergeistic phenomena and seances (modeled after those of the young Fox sisters circa 1848) as well as extrapolation that reimagines the contemporary political system for satiric purposes. In the novel, women successfully change the New York State constitution to allow them to vote and hold office, and Lucy Boston succeeds in becoming Governor of New York. The reactionary messages of Lucy Boston resonated with its contemporary audience, and the book went through at least two editions of several thousand volumes each; but it is today a work known primarily by scholars of women's history and those interested in nineteenth-century fantastic satire. Elizabeth Lowry, for example, recognizes it as "targeting the Fox sisters in particular," even though the Fox sisters had by 1855 "more of less ceased public practice" ("Spiritual(R)Evolution and the Turning of Tables" Journal for the Study of Radicalism 9.2 [Fall 2015]: 1-16). Although "Fred Folio" is generally known to have been pseudonymous, the identity behind the pseudonym has escaped bibliographers. It has not hitherto been noted that upon his death, "Folio" was identified in an obituary notice in The Hamilton Literary Monthly of 1886, a publication of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York: "Rev. Frederick J. Jackson, '43, who died at Nyack, December 26th, 1885, was the author of 'Lucy Boston; or, Women's Rights and Spiritualism,' illustrating the foibles and delusions of the nineteenth century." Other resources show that Jackson was born on 8 March 1815 and served for a while as the Principal of the Tarrytown Military Institute. His grave lies in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, inadvertently linking him to a much greater American fantasist, Washington Irving, who is also buried in Tarrytown.—Richard Bleiler, Collections and Humanities Librarian, University of Connecticut Library, U of Connecticut, Storrs Second Annual C.S. Lewis Symposium at Ulster University, 13-14 November 2023, Ulster University, Coleraine (Northern Ireland) This two-day, public-facing academic symposium aims to examine C.S. Lewis in the light of his influence on twentieth and twenty-first century writers working in genres as varied as children's fiction, sf, literary and cultural criticism, popular apologetics, and even poetry. The centr
Richard Bleiler, Curtis White, Antonio Sanna博士，Caryn Murphy, Pinaki Roy, Tanima Dutta, Angelique Nairn和Justin Matthews“揭露”1855年出版了一部讽刺作品，被称为“时代之书”:《Lucy Boston》，或《妇女权利和招魂术:说明19世纪的愚蠢和妄想》，更简单地说，《Lucy Boston》，或《妇女权利和招魂术》。说明19世纪的愚蠢和妄想。这是一篇反女权主义/反唯心论的诽谤文章，其叙事依赖于我们今天所说的科幻小说和幻想元素来“证明”其观点。其中包括恶作剧现象和降神会(模仿1848年左右年轻的福克斯姐妹)，以及为讽刺目的重新想象当代政治制度的推断。在小说中，女性成功修改了纽约州宪法，允许她们投票和担任公职，露西·波士顿成功成为纽约州州长。露西·波士顿的反动思想引起了同时代读者的共鸣，这本书至少有两个版本，每个版本都有几千册;但今天，这部作品主要为研究女性历史的学者和对19世纪怪诞讽刺作品感兴趣的人所熟知。例如，伊丽莎白·洛瑞(Elizabeth Lowry)认为它“特别针对福克斯姐妹”，尽管福克斯姐妹在1855年“或多或少停止了公开实践”(“精神(R)进化和扭转形势”激进主义研究杂志9.2[2015年秋季]:1-16)。虽然《弗雷德·开本》通常被认为是假名，但这个假名背后的身份却逃过了书目编纂者的眼睛。到目前为止还没有人注意到，在他死后，《对开本》在1886年《汉密尔顿文学月刊》(纽约克林顿汉密尔顿学院的出版物)的讣告中被确认:“弗雷德里克·j·杰克逊牧师，43岁，于1885年12月26日在尼亚克去世，是《露西·波士顿;或者是《妇女权利与唯心论》，描述了19世纪的弱点和妄想。”其他资料显示，杰克逊出生于1815年3月8日，曾担任过一段时间的塔利敦军事学院校长。他的坟墓位于断头谷公墓，无意中将他与一位更伟大的美国幻想家华盛顿·欧文联系在一起，后者也葬在塔利镇。-理查德·布莱勒，收藏和人文图书馆员，康涅狄格大学图书馆，康涅狄格大学，斯托斯第二届年度C.S.刘易斯研讨会在阿尔斯特大学，13-14十一月2023，阿尔斯特大学，科尔莱恩(北爱尔兰)这两天，面向公众的学术研讨会旨在研究C.S.刘易斯在他的影响光在体裁不同的儿童小说，科幻小说，文学和文化批评的作家工作，流行的护教，甚至诗歌。中心的组织隐喻是宗谱，一个人继承的本质、品质和特征代代相传。根据这个中心隐喻，我们将研究刘易斯是如何被他自己的一套文学影响所塑造的，以及他是如何通过自己的作品将这些影响传递(并转化)给全世界的作家的。我们的希望是，一种双面神式的方法——同时回顾刘易斯的“祖先”和展望他的“儿子和女儿”——将为从事刘易斯研究的不同领域的学者提供充分的机会，以开拓出适合自己兴趣的主题。我们邀请提交不超过250字的20分钟论文，内容涉及我们主题的某些方面。欢迎各个职业阶段的学者投稿。请附上一份简短的个人简介。请在2023年9月4日下午5点前发送邮件。请注意，这是一个面对面的活动;目前我们还没有实现虚拟参与的工具。——柯蒂斯·怀特，阿尔斯特大学系列丛书:跨媒体怪物和恶棍这个新系列旨在通过跨学科的视角来讲述怪物和恶棍这个迷人的主题。每卷将集中在一个单一的数字(或一组数字)，并检查它在其多个化身，从起源到适应在不同的媒体。同样欢迎的是…
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Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.1353/sfs.2023.a900291
Reviewed by: Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970sby Roz Samer Kathryn Heffner Fannish Feminisms. Roz Samer. Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970s. Duke UP, 2022. xii+ 290 pp. $104.95 hc, $27.95 pbk. Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970sby Rox Samer focuses on how potentials and futurity are expressed in lesbian feminist media. Texts and other cultural productions discussed include independent media in film, art, and fan works that articulate lesbian and feminist subjectivities. Samer draws on Giorgio Agamben's "On Potentiality" (1999) in their readings of feminist media-making in the 1970s, extending Agamben's framework of potentiality to closely examine how lesbian futures were articulated then. For Samer, potentiality intersects with other critical examinations of queer futurities and deserves consideration, whether or not these potentials come to fruition. In examining lesbian-separatist ideologies and the formation of lesbian activism in the 1970s, both potentials and failures of becoming are equally important. As Samer explains, "these cultural texts engender new space-times from which women might love and live differently than they do in the present [End Page 297]but also suggest that the lesbian existence they envision need not come to be" (18). Samer specifically focuses on attentive readings of lesbian independent media productions, including feminist sf fandom that solidified as a distinct counterpublic in the 1970s (141). Although works from other formative lesbian and feminist groups are identified, here I focus on the chapters that explicitly concern feminist sf fandom. In chapter three, "Raising Fannish Consciousness: The Formation of Science Fiction Fandom," Samer examines the fanzines The Witch and the Chameleon(1974-1976), Aurora/ Janus(1975-1990), and Khatru's symposium on "Women in Science Fiction" (issues 3 and 4, 1975), exploring how fans engaged in a feminist critique. The chapter has two major emphases: the act of consciousness-raising for self-reflection and the use of humor in these fanzines. Samer closely attends to how fans in these explicitly feminist print networks incorporated consciousness-raising as part of fannish critique, then turns to examining how humor operates as a form of self-reflection and criticism of lesbian identities. Samer's work differs from prior investigations of fan-studies scholarship, as it specifically examines the emotional, embedded, and situated dialogues of women fans contesting images of women in science fiction. Perhaps the most effective investigation of fannish critique is Samer's exploration of letter columns in The Witch and the Chameleon. They note that Amanda Bankier, as the founder and editor of this Canadian fanzine, engaged a lesbian feminist readership with news, reviews, and information about feminist sf. A series of small case studies examines Bankier's comments and critiques about Andre Norton's work. Samer elaborates on how Bank
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Pub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1353/sfs.2023.a900279
Stephen Schryer
ABSTRACT:In the 1960s and 1970s, sf writer Robert Heinlein and Chicago economist Milton Friedman emerged as voices for the American libertarian right, promoting idealized visions of absolute, laissez-faire capitalism. These visions depended on the authors' use of world reduction (Jameson). They stripped away many of the complexities of global capitalism, creating appealing pictures of a frictionless free market. This essay reads Robert Heinlein as an amateur economist, exploring his fascination with monetary theory from his early H.G. Wells-inspired socialist utopias to later libertarian fictions such as Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966). Heinlein's right-ward drift between these fictions hinged on his changing conception of risk, an idea that he at once celebrated and attenuated, rarely exposing the consequences of unfettered laissez-faire. Conversely, the essay reads Friedman as a science-fiction writer whose works for a popular audience (Capitalism and Freedom [1962], Free to Choose [1980]) extrapolate free-market futures that draw on nostalgic recreations of America's frontier past. Heinlein's and Friedman's books made their respective versions of libertarianism compelling for a generation of (mostly) white male middle-class readers. Their world reductions helped usher in a specifically neoliberal vision of the individual's place in society, one that celebrates economic freedoms while disavowing democratic liberties.
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Pub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1353/sfs.2023.a900289
Kara Kennedy
Barefoot stumble, he regains his footing in Chapter 4, which focuses on Aldiss’s post-New Wave retrenchment as a historian of the genre in Billion Year Spree (1973) and in novels such as Frankenstein Unbound (1973) and An Island Called Moreau (1980) that recursively engage with classic sf texts. Kincaid sees these “parasitic novels” (as Andrew M. Butler has called them) as interesting failures, arresting in conception but slight in execution, but also as important rehearsals for his mid-career masterpiece The Malacia Tapestry (1976), with its view of modern European history as a static wonderland hovering on the brink of technological change. The expansive scope of this novel paved the way, as Kincaid compellingly shows, for the author’s crowning achievement: the HELLICONIA trilogy (1982-1985), with its sweeping vision of a planetary culture transformed by seasons millennially long. A finegrained and consistently illuminating discussion of the trilogy dominates Chapter 5, which focuses on Aldiss as “Scientist,” largely because of the rigorous world-building that went into the three books. This is where, I think, Kincaid’s thematic structure starts to break down a bit into more loosely fitting topics, and it is even more evident in Chapter 6, which collects roughly thirty years of disparate production under the umbrella “Utopian,” largely because of the overtly utopian late novel White Mars (1999). Still, if the thematic cohesiveness of the final chapter is rather wanting, there is no arguing with the tart judgment with which Kincaid opens it: the HELLICONIA trilogy was Aldiss’s “last book-length work of science fiction to attract and merit serious critical attention” (138). These final three decades of the author’s career are thus, in Kincaid’s treatment, one long dying fall: White Mars is listlessly conceived, boringly written, and “marred by ... atrocious sexual politics” (155), while HARM (2007), if more vigorous, is nonetheless “jerky, awkwardly constructed, and often unconvincing” (159), and Finches of Mars (2012) is simply “not well done,” a “sad, dispirited end to a career that had seen [Aldiss] become perhaps the most widely recognized and applauded science fiction writer of his generation” (162). In the final analysis, Kincaid views a handful of stories and novels as the author’s signal achievements, especially “Hothouse, Greybeard, Report on Probability A, Billion Year Spree, The Malacia Tapestry, and the Helliconia Trilogy” (166)—a canon of masterworks to which I would only add Barefoot in the Head, and all of which (even this last, which he likes much less than I do) Kincaid illuminates with the searchlight of his fine critical intelligence.—Rob Latham, Twentynine Palms
{"title":"Discovering Dune: Essays on Frank Herbert's Epic Saga ed. by Dominic J. Nardi and N. Trevor Brierly (review)","authors":"Kara Kennedy","doi":"10.1353/sfs.2023.a900289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sfs.2023.a900289","url":null,"abstract":"Barefoot stumble, he regains his footing in Chapter 4, which focuses on Aldiss’s post-New Wave retrenchment as a historian of the genre in Billion Year Spree (1973) and in novels such as Frankenstein Unbound (1973) and An Island Called Moreau (1980) that recursively engage with classic sf texts. Kincaid sees these “parasitic novels” (as Andrew M. Butler has called them) as interesting failures, arresting in conception but slight in execution, but also as important rehearsals for his mid-career masterpiece The Malacia Tapestry (1976), with its view of modern European history as a static wonderland hovering on the brink of technological change. The expansive scope of this novel paved the way, as Kincaid compellingly shows, for the author’s crowning achievement: the HELLICONIA trilogy (1982-1985), with its sweeping vision of a planetary culture transformed by seasons millennially long. A finegrained and consistently illuminating discussion of the trilogy dominates Chapter 5, which focuses on Aldiss as “Scientist,” largely because of the rigorous world-building that went into the three books. This is where, I think, Kincaid’s thematic structure starts to break down a bit into more loosely fitting topics, and it is even more evident in Chapter 6, which collects roughly thirty years of disparate production under the umbrella “Utopian,” largely because of the overtly utopian late novel White Mars (1999). Still, if the thematic cohesiveness of the final chapter is rather wanting, there is no arguing with the tart judgment with which Kincaid opens it: the HELLICONIA trilogy was Aldiss’s “last book-length work of science fiction to attract and merit serious critical attention” (138). These final three decades of the author’s career are thus, in Kincaid’s treatment, one long dying fall: White Mars is listlessly conceived, boringly written, and “marred by ... atrocious sexual politics” (155), while HARM (2007), if more vigorous, is nonetheless “jerky, awkwardly constructed, and often unconvincing” (159), and Finches of Mars (2012) is simply “not well done,” a “sad, dispirited end to a career that had seen [Aldiss] become perhaps the most widely recognized and applauded science fiction writer of his generation” (162). In the final analysis, Kincaid views a handful of stories and novels as the author’s signal achievements, especially “Hothouse, Greybeard, Report on Probability A, Billion Year Spree, The Malacia Tapestry, and the Helliconia Trilogy” (166)—a canon of masterworks to which I would only add Barefoot in the Head, and all of which (even this last, which he likes much less than I do) Kincaid illuminates with the searchlight of his fine critical intelligence.—Rob Latham, Twentynine Palms","PeriodicalId":45553,"journal":{"name":"SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES","volume":"50 1","pages":"290 - 294"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49122566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1353/sfs.2023.a900281
Sarah Leilani Parijs
ABSTRACT:Speculative fiction often imagines the Earth as animate or elements of the natural world as having supernatural forms of agency. The idea of planetary animacy in American environmentalism is linked to Gaia theory that poses that Earth is an agential, feeling, and holistic planetary synecdoche. What is missing from the history of Gaia theory, however, is an account of racialization. This essay suggests that the vexed history of Gaia theory helps us think about how N.K. Jeminsin's Broken Earth trilogy (2015-2017) uses magic to estrange our imagination of Earth. It argues that Jemisin uses magic as a motif for planetary animacy but complicates ideas of ecological interconnection associated with seeing the planet as a synecdoche. By darkening Gaia, the trilogy exposes the raced violence of the human as an ontological category in Western thought. Ambiguous magic is a heuristic of planetary animacy, symptom of racialized dehumanization, and metonymic for the apocalyptic in black nihilist thought and indigenous science. This paper argues that Jemisin revises Gaia by enchanting its racialized history to theorize inhuman, intercultural planetary animacy in the Anthropocene.
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Pub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1353/sfs.2023.a900288
R. Latham
sf literary traditions as well as (some) unity of genre form, Milner et al. often wrap central questions of sf’s political stakes around the very modern production of the “utopia-dystopia” binary—a sociohistorical contrast that (past and presently) colonized countries and occupied regions often did not have the luxury to experience. Plainly universalizing generic structures are often heralded at the expense of a more complex unfolding of Foucauldian archaeologies of genre knowledge that might more accurately inform us about sf’s reception in parts of the world shaped by colonization, occupation, (sometimes violently) shifting governance structures, neo-(economic and cultural) colonialism, transnational migration and settlement, environmental racism, and regional resistance movements ranging from neofascism to decolonial independence to labor and poor people’s efforts to achieve Indigenous sovereignty. The collection’s more historical approaches to genre production and interpretation shine in their range and level of detail, demonstrating breathtaking cultural perceptiveness. What falters are the boldly formalist engagements that feel over-fixated on categorization. For instance, while Milner aims for a Weberian interpretive insight, for an heuristic grasp of varied pop-culture tropes regarding climate change, his actual sampling of “ideal types” of climate fiction resemble rigid box-shaped Mertonian typological tables. His recent insistence in dividing sf production, world-systems-theory style, into restrictive categories of core, periphery, and semi-periphery results in overwhelmingly favoring Global North speculative fiction for discussion and in generally ignoring the richness of postcolonial sf and Indigenous Futurist literatures (with the rare exception of The Swan Book [2013] by Australian Indigenous Waanyi author Alexis Wright). Since the 1990s, these literatures have carved out a powerful presence in sf anthologies and short-fiction collections. Writers from communities relying heavily on group and networked forms of artistic resistance tend to prefer and find themselves more publishable within multiplicitous polyvocal platforms. Still, critical questions ring out soundly and crucially from the volume’s many-layered readings of global sf: how should we engage “the other”; how might we respond to dystopian fears that extrapolate the worst possible political trends from past and present toward what is to come; how might we start to visualize as viable and executable currently unimaginable utopian alternatives? These are not just literary questions: the stories discussed in Ethical Futures represent the pragmatic dilemmas of achieving a sustainable and just futurity.—Ida Yoshinaga, Georgia Institute of Technology
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Pub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1353/sfs.2023.a900294
Sara Hosey
dramatically underline one of Suvin’s persistent and most important themes: that we cannot separate our cultural productions, even our favorite genres, from the historical and economic circumstances of their origins. Like most of the other essays, it is supplemented by extensive notes and a detailed bibliography. If Disputing the Deluge seems in part a mixed bag of the personal, the critical, and the broadly theoretical, at times reminiscent of the 2011 special issue of Paradoxa, Darko Suvin: A Life in Letters, the overall tone is anything but valedictory. There are indeed some ave atque vale moments; one of his more recent poems includes the lines “Once life was adventure, knowledge, glory/Now it’s anxiety, a wandering recollection, /Disappointment, protest, and reflection ... ”(259-60). But as Hugh O’Connell points out in his introduction, the final words of the book, deliberately re-appropriated and repurposed from Margaret Thatcher, are “There Is No Alternative!” (343), a phrase resonant with major themes throughout the book, from war to the capitalocene to utopia/antiutopia to climate change and pandemics. It is a reminder that, for all his reputation as a fiercely rigorous (and sometimes rigid) theorist, Suvin has never been less than an activist, and never less than passionate.—Gary Wolfe, Locus Foundation
戏剧性地强调了苏文持久且最重要的主题之一:我们不能将我们的文化产品，即使是我们最喜欢的类型，与它们起源的历史和经济环境分开。像大多数其他文章一样，它补充了大量的注释和详细的参考书目。如果说《争论洪水》在某种程度上是个人、批判和广义理论的混合体，有时会让人想起《悖论》2011年的特刊《达科·苏文:书信中的生活》，那么总体基调绝不是告别。确实有一些非常重要的时刻;他最近的一首诗中有这样的诗句:“生活曾经是冒险、知识和荣耀/现在是焦虑、漂泊的回忆/失望、抗议和反思……””(259 - 60)。但正如休·奥康奈尔(Hugh O 'Connell)在前言中指出的那样，这本书的最后一句话是“别无选择!”(343)，这句话贯穿全书的主题，从战争到新资本时代，从乌托邦/反乌托邦到气候变化和流行病。它提醒我们，尽管苏文以极其严谨(有时甚至是死板)的理论家而闻名，但他从来都是一个积极分子，从来都是一个充满激情的人。——加里·沃尔夫，轨迹基金会
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