Science Fiction Criticism

by Rob Latham;

  “Letting the sky into the bush”

  The fourth component of indigenous scientific literacy concerns the aesthetics and experimentation of husbandry, grafting, and planting in ways that do not significantly alter the landscape. To an outside eye, farmed areas can appear to be untouched forest or wild ecoscapes (Posey 30). The migratory patterns of many tribes such as the Ojibwa included the selective harvesting of wild rice grown on banks and cultivated in a manner that does not fit euro-western conceptions of “farming.” The US Dawes Act in the late nineteenth century that sought to “civilize” Indians by giving them farming implements, a small plot of acreage, and a time-frame in which to demonstrate adequate production is one among many miscues. This is the perspective the tallpeople have of the douen; they seamlessly merge with their surroundings and somehow survive in the bush, but who could imagine that they have the ability to plan, implement, and thrive on an indigenous agricultural strategy?

  The open-minded youth of Tan-Tan creates a space for tutelage by Chichibud, who relates the indigenous “art” of innovative grafting and husbandry. Ethnobotanists studying indigenous use of plant resources have described many horticultural and gardening practices that preserve species diversity. “For example, indigenous horticulturalists exhibit a keen interest in the location of rare and useful plants, replanting these when necessary. They often intervene in pollination and succession, thereby protecting threatened species. . . . They may also create anthropogenic islands of forests” (Mulder and Coppolillo 95). Significantly, Chichibud has noted the settlers’ disgust for a local parasitic fungus, and one of his first interactions with Tan-Tan emphasizes the beauty of this tenacious plant, which exists where nothing else catches, in places of rock lacking any soil (Midnight Robber 98). Chichibud remarks on douen sovereignty that “Every douen nation have it own own daddy tree” (179), the sacred spot that Papa Bois has given to the nation for food and shelter. Its immensity is suggested automatically by the sheltering of so many douen and hinte in its boughs and reminds one of the Ceiba or giant silk-cotton or kapok tree considered sacred by the Taino, as well as by many African people who arrived later in the West Indies (Highfield 162). Like a mangrove, fluorescent fungus becomes a guiding light in its chambers, and the wasp-nest structure is carefully woven by the hinte’s beaks. The douen graft all kinds of plants onto the tree, relying on its root system for nurture. Any non-indigenous invasive species introduced accidentally by the tallpeople’s arrivals become for the douen an experiment in adaptation and grafting (182–221). In times of crisis or a sudden need to migrate, the remains of the daddytree are carried with the nation to preserve their statehood. When discovered (though not well-discerned), the douen destroy their home and move away, “letting the sky into the bush” (274–277).

  Ceremonial worlds

  The metanarrative of all four novels replicates the aboriginal method of conveying scientific literacy through storytelling rather than a rote set of instructional procedures, a manual handbook, or a sharply demarcated taxonomic system. “Anansi” stories like these are adaptive stories, techno-trickster tales and narratives that chronicle the stratagems of the West African Yoruban spider, Anansi; of the great white hare and rabbit, the Ojibwa Anansi and Naanabozho; and of Brer Anansi, a “cunning little man who could become a spider” (Midnight Robber 31), part human, part animal-person, part immortal, and a Native, indigenous, and African diasporic metaphor for the intricately structured Web of Being.

  Indigenous scientific knowledge is necessary for adaptive fit, the notion that we survive not by conquering the world but by recognizing ourselves as part of it and “seeking the proper road on which to walk” as Ojibwa colleague Dennis McPherson speaks of it (Cheney 118). In the ceremonial world, metaphors are literalized, and an allegorical spirit haunts taxonomic thinking. In such a world, scientific literacies stand out by slowing us down. In contrast to the accelerating effect of techno-driven western scientific method, the salt-making of the Maroon communities; the herb-cultivating of indigenous, Caribbean, and diasporic communities; and the husbandry of the douen and of the Cayaba islands people offer quiet meditations on the state of the Earth. In practice, her narratives maintain hope through the depiction of regeneration—specifically, of the younger generation’s reawakening to cultural tradition, including scientific literacies. Brown Girl in the Ring depicts the reclamation of Toronto’s inner city. Midnight Robber shows a new generation’s reconnection with Granny Nanny with the birth of Tan-Tan’s son Tubman, “the human bridge from slavery to freedom” (329). Attracted by local and global indigenous revival movements, Calamity’s daughter joins the campaign against the salt farms. By illustrating the trajectory from indigenous primacy to global affliction, Hopkinson offers a holistic worldview in which scientific literacies happen every day.

  Works cited

  Agorsah, E. Kofi. “Archeology of Maroon Settlements in Jamaica.” Maroon Heritage: Archeological, Ethnographic, and Historical Perspectives. Ed. E. Kofi Agorsah. Barbados: Canoe P and the U of West Indies, 1994. 163–187.

  Anderson, M. Kat. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources. Berkeley: U of California P, 2005.

  Attebery, Brian. “Aboriginality in Science Fiction.” Science Fiction Studies 32.3 (2005): 385–404.

  Battiste, Marie, and Helen Semaganis. “First Thoughts on First Nations Citizenship Issues in Education.” Citizenship in Transformation in Canada. Ed. Yvonne M. Hébert. Toronto: U of Toronto, 2002. 93–111.

  Beier, J. Marshall. International Relations in Uncommon Places: Indigeneity, Cosmology and the Limits of International Theory. New York: Palgrave, 2005.

  Bocking, Stephen. “Scientists and Evolving Perceptions of Indigenous Knowledge in Northern Canada.” Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and Their Representations. Ed. Ute Lischke and David T. McNab. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier UP, 2005. 215–247.

  Brooks, Joanna. American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native American Literatures. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003.

  Bruchac, Margaret M. “Earthshapers and Placemakers: Algonkian Indian Stories and the Landscape.” Indigenous Archeologies: Decolonizing Theory and Practice. Ed. Claire Smith and H. Martin Wobst. NewYork: Routledge, 2005. 56–80.

  Callicott, J. Baird, and Michael P. Nelson. American Indian Environmental Ethics: An Ojibwa Case Study. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2004.

  Cheney, Jim. “Truth, Knowledge, and the Wild World.” Ethics and the Environment 10.2 (2005): 101–135.

  Cooper, Carolyn. “‘Resistance Science’: Afrocentric Ideology in Vic Reid’s Nanny Town.” Maroon Heritage: Archeological, Ethnographic, and Historical Perspectives. Ed. E. Kofi Agorsah. Barbados: Canoe P and the U of West Indies, 1994. 109–118.

  Demeritt, David. “Science, Social Constructivism, and Nature.” Social Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics. Ed. N. Castree. Malden: Blackwell, 2001. 173–19.

  Forte, Maximilian C. “‘We are not extinct’: The Revival of Carib and Taino Identities, the Internet, and the Transformation of Off-line Indigenes into Online ‘N-digenes.’” Sincronía (Spring 2002).

  Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. New York: Routledge, 2004.

  Highfield, Arnold R. “Some Observations on the Taino Language.” The Indigenous People of the Caribbean. Ed. Samuel M. Wilson. Gainesville: UP Florida, 1997. 154–168.

  Hopkinson, Nalo. Brown Girl in the Ring. New York: Warner, 1998.

  —. “Code Sliding: About Midnight Robber and My Use of Creole in the Narrative.”

  —. Midnight Robber. New York: Warner, 2000.

  —. The New Moon’s Arms. New York: Warner, 2007.

  —. Salt Roads. New York: Warner, 2004.

  Jameson, Frederic. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. New York: Verso, 2005.

  Johnston, Basil. Ojibway Ceremonies. Lincoln: U of Nebra
ska P, 1982.

  —. Ojibway Heritage. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1976.

  Ketterer, David. Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992.

  Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Totemism. Trans. Rodney Needham. 1963. Boston: Beacon, 2005.

  Mackie, Erin. “Welcome the Outlaw: Pirates, Maroons, and Caribbean Countercultures.” Cultural Critique 59 (2005): 24–62.

  Makinde, Martin O. “Agricultural Biotechnology in African Countries.” Cross-Cultural Biotechnology. Ed. Michael C. Brannigan. Lanham: Rowman, 2004. 119–124.

  Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. 2005. New York: Vintage, 2006.

  Mathis, Ruth, and Terry Weik. “Not just Black and White: African Americans Reclaiming the Indigenous Past.” Indigenous Archeologies: Decolonizing Theory and Practice. Ed. Claire Smith and H. Martin Wobst. NewYork: Routledge, 2005. 281–297.

  Mohanraj, Mary Anne. “Interview: Nalo Hopkinson.” Strange Horizon 1 (Sept. 2000): 1–6.

  Mulder, Monique Borgerhoff, and Peter Coppolillo. Conservation Linking Ecology, Economics, and Culture. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.

  Newmyer, Stephen T. Animals, Rights and Reason in Plutarch and Modern Ethics. New York: Routledge, 2006.

  Oliver, José R. “The Taino Cosmos.” The Indigenous People of the Caribbean. Ed. Samuel M. Wilson. Gainesville: UP Florida, 1997. 140–153.

  Ouzman, Sven. “Silencing and Sharing Southern African Indigenous and Embedded Knowledge.” Indigenous Archeologies: Decolonizing Theory and Practice. Ed. Claire Smith and H. Martin Wobst. New York: Routledge, 2005. 208–225.

  Paci, James C. D., and Lisa Krebs. “Local Knowledge as Traditional and Ecological Knowledge: Definition and Ownership.” Native Pathways: American Indian Culture and Economic Development in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Brian Hosmer and Colleen O’Neill. Boulder: UP of Colorado, 2004. 263–282.

  Posey, Darrell A. A Darrell Posey Reader: Indigenous Knowledge and Ethics. Ed. Kristina Plenderleith. NewYork: Routledge, 2004.

  —. “Upsetting the Sacred Balance: Can the Study of Indigenous Knowledge Reflect Cosmic Connectedness?” Participating in Development: Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge. Ed. Paul Sillitoe, Alan Bicker, and Johan Pottier. New York: Routledge, 2002. 24–42.

  Pulitano, Elvira. Toward a Native American Critical Theory. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2003.

  Rutledge, Gregory. “Speaking in Tongues: An Interview with Science Fiction Writer Nalo Hopkinson.” African American Review 34:4 (1999): 598–601.

  33

  Biotic invasions: Ecological imperialism in new wave science fiction

  Rob Latham

  In an essay on H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898), Peter Fitting argues that tales of “first contact” within science fiction tend to recapitulate “the encounters of the European ‘discovery’ of the New World.”1 They are thus, whether consciously or not, conquest narratives, though “usually not characterized as [. . .] invasion[s]” because they are “written from the point of view of the invaders,” who prefer euphemisms such as “exploration” to more aggressive or martial constructions of the encounter.2 The accomplishment of Wells’s novel, in Fitting’s analysis, is to lay bare the power dynamics of this scenario by depicting a reversal of historical reality, with the imperial hub of late-Victorian London itself subjugated by “superior creatures who share none the less some of the characteristics of Earth’s ‘lower’ species, a humiliation which is compounded by their apparent lack of interest in the humans as an intelligent species.”3 The irony of this switch of roles is not lost on Wells’s narrator, who compares the fate of his fellow Londoners to those of the Tasmanians and even the dodoes, “entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants.”4 Stephen Arata uses the term “reverse colonization” to describe this sort of story in which the centre of empire is besieged by fantastic creatures from its margins; as Brian Aldiss puts it, “Wells is saying, in effect, to his fellow English, ‘Look, this is how it feels to be a primitive tribe, and to have a Western nation arriving to civilize you with Maxim guns!’.”5

  Taking this general argument one step further, John Rieder claims that all manner of disaster stories within SF “might profitably be considered as the obverse of the celebratory narratives of exploration and discovery [. . .] that formed the Official Story of colonialism.”6 The sense of helplessness—geographic, economic, military, and so on—reinforced by catastrophe scenarios lays bare the underlying anxieties of hegemonic power, its inherent contingency and vulnerability, notwithstanding the purported inevitability of Western “progress.” Moreover, disaster stories, by inverting existing power relations and displacing them into fantastic or futuristic milieux, expose the workings of imperialist ideology, the expedient fantasies that underpin the colonial enterprise; for example, “although the colonizer knows very well that colonized people are humans like himself, he acts as if they were parodic, grotesque imitations of humans instead,”7 who may conveniently be dispossessed of land, property, and even life. The catastrophe story brings this logic of dispossession home to roost, shattering the surface calm of imperial hegemony and thrusting the colonizers themselves into a sudden chaos of destruction and transformation such as they have typically visited upon others. Narratives of invasion in particular are “heavily and consistently overdetermined by [their] reference to colonialism,” allowing a potentially critical engagement with “the ideology of progress and its concomitant constructions of agency and destiny,”8 that is, the triumphalist enshrinement of white Westerners at the apex of historical development and the demotion of all others to what anthropologist Eric Wolf calls a “people without history.”9

  Of course, to interpret most invasion stories of SF’s pulp era as critical of Western progress requires reading against the grain, since their evident message is the fearlessness and ingenuity of Euro-American peoples when confronted by hostile forces. The magazine Astounding Stories, during its 1940s golden age, operated under a philosophy that Brian Stableford and David Pringle identify as “human chauvinism,” by the terms of which “humanity was destined to get the better of any and all alien species.”10 Editor John Campbell saw the extraterrestrial expansion of the human race not only as a logical extrapolation of the exploratory impulse of Western civilization, but also explicitly as an outlet for martial aggression; as he remarked in a letter to A. E. van Vogt, when “other planets are opened to colonization [. . .] we’ll have peace on earth—and war in heaven!.”11 One of the few tales of successful “foreign” invasion published during Astounding’s heyday was Robert Heinlein’s Sixth Column (1941), where the invaders are not aliens from space but a Pan-Asiatic horde that occupies the United States, only to be undermined and eventually defeated by an underground scientific elite masquerading as a popular religion; reverse colonization is thus foiled and the Westward trend of empire reaffirmed. Sixth Column is a forerunner of post-war tales of communist menace, such as Heinlein’s own The Puppet Masters (1951), in which slug-like parasites seek to brainwash the US citizenry but ultimately prove no match for the native resourcefulness and righteous rage of humankind: “they made the mistake of tangling with the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting—and ablest—form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can’t be tamed.”12

  The cinema of the 1950s was filled with similar scenarios of sinister alien infiltration and dogged human resistance; essentially, they allegorized the US struggle with global communism and usually ended with the defeat of the invaders. Yet close readings of these stories reveal a strong undercurrent of unease beneath the bland surface confidence in American values. For example, in Invaders from Mars (1953), as I have argued in a previous essay, “the paranoia about alien invasion and takeover may merely serve to deflect anxieties about how seamlessly militarist power has inscribed itself into the suburban American landscape.”13 Similar disq
uiets can be perceived in films that depict literal communist attacks and occupations, such as Invasion USA (1952), which is, as Cyndy Hendershot has shown, as much about fears of US decadence and conformism as it is about Soviet perfidy.14 In other words, even invasion stories that valorize human (that is, Western) cunning and bravery may be troubled by doubts regarding the susceptibility to external incursions, the lurking rot at the imperial core that permits such brazen raids from the periphery.

  By contrast with American treatments of the theme, which were pugnacious in their refusal to succumb to invasion, post-war British disaster stories had a distinctly elegiac tone, a quality of wistful resignation in the face of imperial decline. As Roger Luckhurst points out, British tales of catastrophe had “always addressed disenchantment with the imperialist ‘civilizing’ mission,” but 1950s versions, confronted with the ongoing collapse of the global empire, used the disaster plot as “a laboratory reconceiving English selfhood in response to traumatic depredations.”15 The popular novels of John Wyndham, such as The Day of the Triffids (1951) and The Kraken Wakes (1953), take refuge in pastoralist fantasy as Britain’s cities are overrun by marauding invaders, the imperial hegemon shrinking to beleaguered individual (or small-communal) sanctuaries. Brian Aldiss has coined the term “cosy catastrophe” to describe these sorts of plot, a category in which some have also placed the early fiction of John Christopher, although here, as Aldiss says, “the catastrophe loses its cosiness and takes on an edge of terror.”16 In Christopher’s The Death of Grass (1956) and The World in Winter (1962) there is no refuge from the crisis because the environment itself has grown hostile, stricken by a virus that kills off crops or the advent of a new Ice Age. The absence of an alien menace in these novels vitiates the possibility of heroic resistance, replacing it with an ethos of brute survivalism, whose long-term prospects are desperate and unpromising. The sense of imperial comeuppance is particularly strong in World in Winter, where Britons displaced by glacial expansion flee to Nigeria, only to be rudely treated by their former colonial subjects.