by Rob Latham;
Science Fiction
Criticism
Also available from Bloomsbury
Apocalyptic Fiction, Andrew Tate
Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed, Sherryl Vint
Science Fiction
Criticism
An Anthology of
Essential Writings
Edited by Rob Latham
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1 Definitions and boundaries
1Editorial: A new sort of magazine Hugo Gernsback
2Preface to The Scientific Romances H. G. Wells
3On the writing of speculative fiction Robert A. Heinlein
4What do you mean: Science? Fiction? Judith Merril
5Preface to Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology Bruce Sterling
6Cybernetic deconstructions: Cyberpunk and postmodernism Veronica Hollinger
7The many deaths of science fiction: A polemic Roger Luckhurst
8On defining sf, or not: Genre theory, sf, and history John Rieder
Recommended further reading
Part 2 Structure and form
9Which way to inner space? J. G. Ballard
10About 5,750 words Samuel R. Delany
11On the poetics of the science fiction genre Darko Suvin
12The absent paradigm: An introduction to the semiotics of science fiction Marc Angenot
13Reading sf as a mega-text Damien Broderick
14Time travel and the mechanics of narrative David Wittenberg
Recommended further reading
Part 3 Ideology and world view
15Mutation or death! John B. Michel
16The imagination of disaster Susan Sontag
17The image of women in science fiction Joanna Russ
18Progress versus Utopia; or, can we imagine the future? Fredric Jameson
19Science fiction and critical theory Carl Freedman
20Alien cryptographies: The view from queer Wendy Pearson
21The women history doesn’t see: Recovering midcentury women’s sf as a literature of social critique Lisa Yaszek
Recommended further reading
Part 4 The nonhuman
22Author’s introduction to Frankenstein Mary Shelley
23The android and the human Philip K. Dick
24A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist- feminism in the late twentieth century Donna Haraway
25Virtual bodies and flickering signifiers N. Katherine Hayles
26The coming technological singularity: How to survive in a post-human era Vernor Vinge
27Aliens in the fourth dimension Gwyneth Jones
28Technofetishism and the uncanny desires of A.S.F.R. (alt.sex.fetish.robots) Allison de Fren
29Animal alterity: Science fiction and human-animal studies Sherryl Vint
Recommended further reading
Part 5 Race and the legacy of colonialism
30Science fiction and empire Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.
31Further considerations on Afrofuturism Kodwo Eshun
32Indigenous scientific literacies in Nalo Hopkinson’s ceremonial worlds Grace L. Dillon
33Biotic invasions: Ecological imperialism in new wave science fiction Rob Latham
34Alien/Asian: Imagining the racialized future Stephen Hong Sohn
35Report from planet midnight Nalo Hopkinson
36Future histories and cyborg labor: Reading borderlands science fiction after NAFTA Lysa Rivera
Recommended further reading
List of contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
Chapter 2: By permission of United Agents LLP.
Chapter 3: By permission of Spectrum Literary Agency.
Chapter 4: By permission of the Estate of Judith Merril and the Virgina Kidd Literary Agency.
Chapters 5, 10, 26, 27, 31, and 35: By permission of the authors.
Chapter 6: By permission of the author and Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature.
Chapters 7, 8, 12, 18, 19, 20, 28, 30, and 36: By permission of the authors and Science Fiction Studies.
Chapter 9: By permission of J.G. Ballard’s Estate and the Wylie Agency Ltd.
Chapter 11: By permission of the author and College English.
Chapter 13: By permission of the author and The New York Review of Science Fiction.
Chapter 14: By permission of the author and Fordham University Press.
Chapter 16: By permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Chapter 17: By permission of the Diana Finch Literary Agency.
Chapters 21 and 32: By permission of the authors and Extrapolation.
Chapter 23: By permission of Penguin Random House LLC and The Philip K. Dick Testamentary Trust/Wylie Agency Ltd.
Chapter 24: By permission of the author and University of Minnesota Press.
Chapter 25: By permission of the author and October/MIT Press.
Chapter 29: By permission of the author and Liverpool University Press.
Chapter 33: By permission of the author and The Yearbook of English Studies.
Chapter 34: By permission of the author and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.
Introduction
Over the past two decades, science fiction (SF) literature has moved from the margins to the mainstream of contemporary critical study, as evidenced by the vast number of post-secondary courses that focus on SF and by the proliferation of introductory guidebooks, critical reference works, genre histories, and theoretical studies.1 Up until the 1960s and 1970s, when the first academic journals devoted to the subject were founded, the bulk of SF criticism was produced by reflective writers and editors, or by highly engaged fans. Indeed, SF is rare among popular genres in having a robust critical discourse that is generated and sustained internally, by its practitioners and consumers, in the pages of fanzines and magazines, in the introductions to literary anthologies, and in memoirs and personal histories. After the 1960s, a scholarly discourse about the genre rapidly blossomed, first within periodicals such as Extrapolation and Science Fiction Studies, and then in books released by university presses, including dedicated series such as Liverpool’s Science Fiction Texts and Studies, established in 1995. A glance at the listings on the selective bibliography of SF criticism maintained on the website of Science Fiction Studies shows a remarkable spike in the volume of relevant commentary after the mid-1970s, with the most recent year canvassed—2015—boasting some two-dozen book-length works deemed worthy of attention by scholars and students of the genre.2
This anthology brings together a representative selection of the most important critical essays and approaches to SF studies since the inception of the genre in the nineteenth century, combining in one volume essential works in the history of SF criticism, as well as key theoretical statements that have become touchstones in the field. Reflecting the historical development of the discourse, it contains a strong balance of “amateur” and “professional” work, with fourteen pieces produced by SF authors, editors, and fans and twenty-one by academic scholars. The trajectory of coverage is designed to reflect the growth of SF studies as a discipline, moving from the formalist perspectives that dominated early criticism—and that construe SF primarily as a literary genre—to work that reflects contemporary understandings of SF as a mode of analysis, a way of thinking about alterity and difference that has become a useful critical tool for feminist, antiracist, and other political work. The volume canvasses the most important critical methodologies in the history of SF studies, from structuralism to
feminism and Marxism to queer theory and critical race studies.
Collecting some of the most indispensable works of SF criticism and theory (including four winners of the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pioneer Award for best critical article of the year), this volume is designed to introduce readers to the key developments and statements in SF criticism. The study of SF is now at the center of much contemporary humanities scholarship, as theoretical paradigms such as cyberculture and posthumanism have raised the critical significance of SF’s depictions of nonhuman otherness. At the same time, the importance of SF to cultural engagements with science and technology has been widely recognized by scholars. This volume, thus, not only provides guidance to the most influential methods deployed in the critical study of SF, from formalist/thematic criticism concerned with definitions and narrative dynamics to political and cultural criticism engaged with issues of gender, race, sexuality, and imperialism, it also surveys the various ways the genre has been configured in relation to discourses of science, politics, and popular culture.
The book is divided into five sections: “Definitions and Boundaries,” “Structure and Form,” “Ideology and Worldview,” “The Non-Human,” and “Race and the Legacy of Colonialism.” Selections in each section, which are organized chronologically, are chosen not only to outline the central critical trends in the study of SF but also to show dialogue and exchange as core concepts have been refined over time. The first section explores key attempts to delimit the boundaries of SF as a field. While Hugo Gernsback’s editorial for the first issue of the first SF pulp, Amazing Stories, sought to articulate a cohesive corpus, much of the work in this section is concerned with expanding parameters, with Robert A. Heinlein and Judith Merril seeing SF as part of a larger tradition of “speculative fiction,” while Veronica Hollinger connects recent trends in the genre with postmodern literature and theory. Finally, Roger Luckhurst and John Rieder suggest ways in which the very impulse to define and delimit SF is historically overdetermined and theoretically suspect.3
Section II examines key interventions in the study of SF as a narrative form. It opens with J. G. Ballard’s polemical call for a surrealist mode of SF writing counterpoised to the pulp tradition and then moves into classic structuralist analyses of SF’s textual dynamics by Samuel R. Delany, Darko Suvin, and Marc Angenot. Damien Broderick contributes the key term “megatext” to show how individual works of SF are implicated in a larger body of shared ideas, images, and tropes. Finally, David Wittenberg examines time-travel stories as paradigms for narratological operations relating to temporality and subjectivity.
Section III opens a consideration of SF’s sociopolitical implications, a theme that, in various ways, continues through the remaining sections. It begins with a famous early fan statement of SF’s progressive possibilities by John B. Michel, who defends the vision of the genre as a powerful mode of social criticism. This notion will later be given more rigorous theoretical formulation by academic Marxist critics such as Fredric Jameson and Carl Freedman. On the other hand, Susan Sontag and Joanna Russ point to ways in which the genre is entangled, regressively, with social ideologies. Wendy Pearson’s consideration of SF’s queer subtexts is more ambivalent, exploring a dialectic of repression and revelation that structures SF’s treatments of nonnormative sexuality, while Lisa Yaszek shows how the genre has always welcomed perspectives that arraign prevailing gender norms and values.
Section IV focuses closely on one of the major topics in SF: the representation of nonhuman others (aliens, robots, cyborgs, etc.), considering the formal and ideological implications of these depictions. The section opens with Mary Shelley’s musings on the origins of SF’s first and most famous humanoid creation, Frankenstein’s monster. Both Philip K. Dick’s and Gwyneth Jones’s essays examine, from very different perspectives, the ways in which artificial or extraterrestrial beings reflect—and reflect upon—issues of human identity and community, while N. Katherine Hayles and Vernor Vinge consider the emergence of posthuman life forms linked to cybernetic and information technologies. Donna Haraway and Allison de Fren explore how depictions of cyborgs in SF are deeply enmeshed in the politics of gender and sexuality, while Sherryl Vint exposes how SF’s many forms of alienness serve as displaced representations of animal otherness.
Finally, Section V gathers key statements about SF’s links with imperialist (and neo-imperialist) discourses and the resulting constraints and enablements the genre offers in its engagement with issues of race and ethnicity. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay shows how SF has been historically implicated in the empire-building projects of Western nation states—with the effect of imposing a particular model of technoscientific “progress” that Grace Dillon’s essay on indigenous forms of knowledge contests. While Stephen Hong Sohn critiques SF’s lingering Orientalism and Nalo Hopkinson its stubborn racism, Kodwo Eshun and Lysa Rivera explore ways in which, despite its colonialist legacy, SF can offer resources for social critique and utopian imagination to peoples of color struggling against repressive histories and racist ideologies. Finally, my own contribution to the volume considers the ways in which imperialist concerns are imbricated with issues of ecological transformation in key works of “eco-catastrophe.”
This book has had a long gestation and has benefited from discussions with many scholars and friends. I would particularly like to thank my former colleagues on the editorial board of the journal Science Fiction Studies, especially Managing Editor Arthur B. Evans, who has been generous in providing access to key works in the journal’s archive, and Sherryl Vint, who helped me cull a basic selection of texts. I am also more indebted than I can possibly express to my former colleague at the University of Iowa, Brooks Landon, whose vision of SF as a literature of change has influenced my own thinking profoundly. My intrepid and gracious research assistant, Brittany Roberts, has done a valiant job tracking down copyright holders and securing permissions for reprint. And my amazing editors at Bloomsbury, David Avital and Mark Richardson, have been both patient and foresightful. Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to all the students in my SF classes who over the years have never failed to inspire me with their insights into the genre’s capacity to address important aesthetic, cultural, and sociopolitical concerns.
Notes
1. See the annotated bibliographies contained in this volume for a representative selection.
2. “Chronological Bibliography of Science Fiction History, Theory, and Criticism,” Science Fiction Studies website at http://depauw.edu/sfs/biblio.htm. See also the four surveys contained in the journal’s July 1999 special issue on the “History of Science Fiction Criticism.”
3. The introductory headnotes to the five sections offer more in-depth commentary on their specific contents and the interrelationships among them.
Recommended further reading
Bleiler, Everett F. Science-Fiction: The Early Years. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 1990.
Bleiler, Everett F. Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 1998.
Massive surveys of SF novels and stories from the origins of the genre through 1936 with fully annotated entries and a highly useful critical apparatus, including an extensive thematic index.
Bould, Mark, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts, and Sherryl Vint, eds. The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2009.
The most thorough and valuable of the recent spate of SF reference works, including fifty-six chapters covering SF in print and other media; includes coverage of historical trends and developments, major themes and authors, and important theoretical issues.
Clute, John, David Langford, Peter Nicholls, and Graham Sleight, eds. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, at http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/.
Third (and first online) edition of the most indispensible reference work ever devoted to SF; contains over 16,000 entries, all meticulously cross-referenced, on SF authors, editors, magazines, films, core themes, and much more.
Gunn, James, an
d Matthew Candelaria, eds. Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2005.
A critical anthology that gathers twenty-four essays of SF criticism, eschewing high theory in favor of practical considerations of SF history and the dynamics of SF narrative.
Hartwell, David G. Age of Wonders: Exploring the World of Science Fiction. 1985. Rev. ed. New York: Tor, 1996.
A superb handbook written by a brilliant SF editor, which examines SF as a vital and ongoing dialogue linking authors, editors, fans, and scholars.
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database at http://www.isfdb.org/.
A highly useful, easily searchable database featuring exhaustive bibliographic information on SF authors, magazines, and publishers, with extensive galleries of cover art.
Latham, Rob, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 2014.
Gathers forty-four in-depth chapters that consider SF not just as a literary genre, but as a mass-media and cultural phenomenon, as well as a worldview informed by a range of theoretical perspectives, from feminism to libertarianism to Afrofuturism.
Luckhurst, Roger. Science Fiction. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.
The best narrative history of the genre, focusing on SF as a technocultural discourse, with roots in the late nineteenth century, that tracks prevailing trends in technoscientific discovery and invention.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database at http://sffrd.library.tamu.edu/.
The best resource for accessing the critical discourse of science fiction, indexing over 100,000 items by author, title, subject, source, and keyword.
Stableford, Brian. Science Fiction and Science Fact: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 2006.
A magisterial study of the links between science and SF, including 230 alphabetically organized entries offering detailed discussion of the ways SF deploys, distorts, and disputes scientific concepts and phenomena.
Tymn, Marhall, and Mike Ashley, eds., Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985.
