Science Fiction Criticism

by Rob Latham;

  John B. Michel was one of the founding members of the science fiction fan group The Futurians in the early 1940s. A left-leaning association, the Futurians pushed the genre to mobilize its literary and cultural resources for social-utopian goals. Michel himself was a member of the Young Communist League and also of the Communist Party.

  Wendy Pearson teaches in the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research at the University of Western Ontario. Her areas of scholarly concentration include science fiction, film studies, and queer theory, and she coedited the anthology Queer Universes: Sexuality in Science Fiction (2008). Her essay included in this volume won the Pioneer Award from the Science Fiction Research Association for best critical article of the year in 2000.

  John Rieder is professor of English at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. A senior editor of Extrapolation and a consulting editor of Science Fiction Studies, he is author of the pathbreaking study, Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction (2008). His essay included in this volume won the Pioneer Award from the Science Fiction Research Association for best critical article of the year in 2011.

  Lysa Rivera is associate professor of English at Western Washington University, where she teaches in the areas of Chicano/a and African American literature and culture. Her work has appeared in a wide range of journals, including MELUS: Journal for the Study of Multiethnic Literature, Aztlán: Journal of Chicano Studies, and Science Fiction Studies. Her essay included in this volume won the Pioneer Award from the Science Fiction Research Association for best critical article of the year in 2013.

  Joanna Russ was a major science fiction author and critic, one of the founders of an overtly feminist SF. Her novels include The Female Man (1975) and We Who Are About to . . . (1977), and she won both the Nebula and the Hugo Awards for her short fiction. Her collected essays and reviews were published in 2007 as The Country You Have Never Seen. In 1988, she received the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to SF scholarship.

  Mary Shelley, often cited as the founder of science fiction for her 1818 novel Frankenstein, was a major Gothic novelist, whose other science-fictional works include The Last Man (1826), a postapocalyptic fantasy. She was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004.

  Stephen Hong Sohn is associate professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, where he specializes in Asian American literary and cultural studies. He is the author of Racial Asymmetries (2014) and editor of Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits (2006). In 2008, he coedited a special issue of MELUS: Journal for the Study of Multiethnic Literature on the theme of “Alien/Asian.”

  Susan Sontag was one of the most important cultural commentators of the twentieth century. Her collections of essays include Against Interpretation (1966) and On Photography (1977), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her critical study Illness as Metaphor (1978) explored the implications of the cultural representation of disease.

  Bruce Sterling is a science fiction writer and editor and a noted futurist. His novels include Islands in the Net (1988), which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and Distraction (1999), which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. During the 1980s, Sterling emerged as the major proponent of cyberpunk SF, editing the agenda-setting anthology Mirrorshades (1986).

  Darko Suvin was, along with Richard D. Mullen, a founding editor of Science Fiction Studies. He is author of Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (1979), Victorian Science Fiction in the UK: The Discourses of Knowledge and of Power (1983), and Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction (1988). In 1979, he received the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to SF scholarship.

  Vernor Vinge, professor emeritus of mathematics at San Diego State University, is a major science fiction author and scientific theorist. He has won the Hugo Award for best novel three times, for A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999), and Rainbow’s End (2006). His scientific work centers on theorizations of Artificial Intelligence and its cultural import.

  Sherryl Vint is professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, where she directs the Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies Program. A senior editor of Science Fiction Studies, she is author of Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction (2007), Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal (2010), and Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed (2014). Her 2007 essay on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? won the Pioneer Award from the Science Fiction Research Association for best critical article of the year.

  H. G. Wells was probably the most important British author of science fiction of all time. His many “scientific romances”—including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), and The War of the Worlds (1898)—have been hugely influential in the field. A prolific author and activist, Wells was a founding member of PEN (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) International and served as the organization’s president from 1932–35.

  David Wittenberg is professor of English and Cinematic Arts at the University of Iowa, where he teaches literary theory, twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature, and science fiction. His 2013 book Time Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative received the Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies prize for best scholarly monograph exploring links between technoscience and popular culture.

  Lisa Yaszek is professor of literature, media, and communication at Georgia Tech University. A past president of the Science Fiction Research Association, she is the author of Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women’s Science Fiction (2008) and coeditor of Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (2016). Her essay included in this volume won the Pioneer Award from the Science Fiction Research Association for best critical article of the year in 2005.

  Index

  NOTE: Page numbers in italics refer to pictures/photographs.

  9/11 attacks here, here–here

  21st Century Manzanar (Miyake) here–here, here–here

  1984 (Orwell) here, here–here, here

  2001: A Space Odyssey (film) here

  absent paradigm here, here

  Acampora, Ralph here

  Acker, Kathy here

  Ackerman, Forrest J. here

  Acosta, Oscar Zeta here

  Adaptation (Lo) here

  Adeagbo, Georges here, here

  Adorno, Theodor here, here

  Adventures in Time and Space (Healy & McComas) here

  The Adventures of Alyx (Russ) here

  The Advocate (periodical) here, here

  aesthetics

  of destruction here–here

  of science fiction here–here, here–here

  traditional Japanese here–here, here

  of uncanny here, here

  After Democracy (Wells) here

  Africa here–here, here, here, here, here–here

  Afrofuturism here–here, here, here, here

  and countermemory here

  and digital music here, here

  and extraterrestriality here–here

  and museological institutions here

  proleptic intervention here–here

  and sonic fiction here, here–here

  see also people of color; race/racism

  AFSC, see American Friends Service Committee

  Agamben, Giorgio here, here, here, here

  The Age of the Pussyfoot (Pohl) here, here

  Agorsah, E. Kofi here

  AI, see artificial intelligence

  Aiken, Conrad here

  Akomfrah, John here

  Aldiss, Brian here, here, here, here, here, here, here

  Aldrich, Robert here

  Alexander, W. here

  Algonquin narratives here, here

  alien/alienness here, here, here–here, here–here, here–here, here–here

  animal aliens here

 
; Asians as here–here, here–here

  “first contact” with here, here, here–here

  invasion narratives here–here, here–here

  invisibility of here–here, here

  and language here, here–here

  mid-century women narratives on here–here

  in science fiction films here–here

  typecasts here–here

  Alien Toy (video installation: Torres) here

  “All the Myriad Ways” (Niven) here–here

  Almanac of the Dead (Silko) here

  Alonso, Harriet Hyman here, here, here

  alternate universes here–here

  Altman, Rick here, here, here

  alt.sex.fetish.robots (A.S.F.R.) here–here, here, here

  Amazing Stories (periodical) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here

  see also Gernsback, Hugo

  American Apocalypses (Robinson) here

  American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) here

  The American Japanese Problem: a Study of the Racial Relations of the East and the West (Gulick) here–here

  American New Criticism here

  American science fiction here–here, here, here

  and British science fiction compared here, here, here

  early audiences of here

  history of here–here, here

  nineteenth century here

  see also Campbell, John W., Jr.

  Amis, Kingsley here, here, here, here, here

  Amis, Martin here

  L’Amour Fou (Mad Love) (Breton) here–here, here

  Analog (periodical) here, here, here

  see also Astounding Stories

  Anansi stories here

  Anaya, Rudolfo here–here

  Anderson, Benedict here

  Anderson, M. Kat here

  Anderson, Poul here, here

  androids here–here, here, here–here, here

  Andromeda (Yefremov) here, here–here

  ...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (Rivera) here

  Angenot, Marc here, here

  animal(s)

  animal aliens here

  animal-machine hybrids here, here

  anthropocentric vs. non-anthropocentric views of here–here, here–here

  and boundary with humans here–here, here–here, here, here–here

  and capitalism here, here, here

  human-animal hybrids here–here

  and philosophy here–here, here–here, here–here

  in science fiction here, here, here–here, here, here–here, here, here, here

  sentience and personhood of here–here, here

  social relations with humans here, here–here, here–here, here–here

  speciesism here–here, here–here, here–here, here, here

  talking animals here–here, here

  see also human-animal studies

  Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal (Vint) here

  Animal Liberation (Singer) here

  The Animal That Therefore I Am (Derrida) here–here, here

  anime here–here, here, here, here

  see also Ghost in the Shell

  Anticipations (Wells) here

  anxiety here–here

  about death here–here

  about homosexuality here–here

  about mutation from radioactive materials here

  over Asia here–here

  technological here

  Anzaldúa, Gloria here, here, here

  apocalyptic fiction, see disaster fiction

  Arata, Stephen here

  Arawak Indians here, here, here–here

  Archaeologies of the Future (Jameson) here

  Arendt, Hannah here

  Argosy (periodical) here

  Arkestra (jazz band) here

  Arnold, Jack here

  artificial beings here, here–here

  desire/love for here–here

  and gender here

  performativity of here–here

  and personhood here–here

  see also androids; artificial women; cyborg(s); humanoids; robot(s)

  artificial intelligence (AI) here–here, here, here, here

  artificial women here–here

  fetishism of here, here, here–here, here

  and the uncanny here–here, here–here, here

  unmasking of here–here, here–here, here, here–here, here–here, here

  visual representation of here

  see also alt.sex.fetish.robots; feminism; women

  Ascension (Koyanagi) here

  A.S.F.R., see alt.sex.fetish.robots

  Asia/Asians

  Asian Americans here, here, here–here, here

  thematic linking of aliens with here–here, here

  yellow peril fiction here, here, here

  see also Orientalism; techno-Orientalism

  The Asian Shore (Disch) here

  Asimov, Isaac here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here

  Assembly of First Nations and Seminole communities here

  Astounding Stories (periodical) here, here, here, here, here, here

  see also Analog

  Atkins, Juan here

  Atomic Energy Commission here

  The Atrocity Exhibition (Ballard) here

  Attack of the Puppet People (film) here

  Attebery, Brian here, here, here

  Atwood, Margaret here, here, here–here

  Augustine, Saint here

  Austin Powers (film) here

  Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (Acosta) here

  The Autocracy of Mr. Parham (Wells) here

  Autodesk (firm) here, here

  Avon Fantasy Reader (periodical) here

  Bachelard, Gaston here

  Back to the Future (film) here

  Bakis, Kirsten here

  Bald New World (Tieryas-Liu) here

  “The Ballad of Juan Cortina” here

  Ballard, J. G. here, here, here, here, here, here, here–here, here–here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here–here, here

  Bal, Mieke here, here

  Balzac, Honoré here, here, here

  Banks, Iain M. here, here

  Bao, Karen here

  Baraka, Amiri here

  Barlow, George here

  Barnes, Myra here, here–here

  Barrio Boy (Galarza) here

  Barry Lyndon (film) here

  Barthes, Roland here, here, here, here, here, here

  Bates, Harry here

  Battle in Outer Space (film) here, here

  Baudelaire, Charles here, here

  Baudrillard, Jean here, here, here, here, here, here

  Bear, Elizabeth here

  Bear, Greg here, here, here

  Beck, Ulrich here

  Behold the Man (Moorcock) here–here

  Beiderbecke, Bix here

  Bellamy, Edward here, here, here

  Bell, Andrea here

  Bell, Eric Temple, see Taine, John

  Bellmer, Hans here, here, here–here, here, here–here

  Bello, Walden here

  Benet, Stephen Vincent here

  Benford, Gregory here, here, here

  Benjamin, Walter here, here, here

  Bennett, Tony here, here

  Beowulf here

  Berger, John here, here, here, here

  Bersani, Leo here

  Besson, Luc here

  Bester, Alfred here, here, here

  The Best of Science Fiction (Conklin) here

  Best Science Fiction Stories (Bleiler & Dikty) here

  Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud) here, here–here, here, here, here

  Beyond This Horizon (Heinlein) here, here

  Bhabha, Homi K. here

  Bible here–here

  Bionic Woman (TV series) here

  biopolitics here–here, here, here

  biotechnology here–here, here


  The Birth of Biopolitics (Foucault) here

  The Black Atlantic (Gilroy) here

  Black Audio Film Collective here–here

  Black Christian Eschatology here

  Black Power movement here

  Blade Runner (film) here, here, here, here

  Bleiler, Everett F. here, here, here

  Blind Voices (Reamy) here–here

  Blish, James here, here

  Bloch, Iwan here, here

  Blood Music (Bear) here, here, here

  Bloom, Harold here

  Blue Book (periodical) here, here

  “The Blunder” (Wylie) here

  Bocking, Stephen here

  Bolton, Christopher here–here, here

  borderlands science fiction here, here–here, here

  and colonialism here–here, here, here–here

  “future history” here, here, here

  political activism in here, here–here, here, here, here

  see also Latin American science fiction

  Borges, Jorge Luis here, here

  Boucher, Anthony here, here

  Bould, Mark here, here, here, here, here

  Bourdieu, Pierre here, here, here

  Bowker, Geoffrey here, here, here–here

  Bracero Program here–here, here, here

  Brackett, Leigh here, here

  Bradbury, Ray here, here, here

  Braidotti, Rosi here, here–here, here

  Brantlinger, Patrick here

  Brautigan, Richard here

  Brave New World (Huxley) here

  Brecht, Bertolt here, here, here, here–here, here

  Breton, Andre here–here, here, here

  Breur, Miles J. here

  Brigg, Peter here

  “Bright Illusion” (Moore) here

  “Brightness Falls from the Air” (St. Clair) here

  Brin, David here

  British science fiction here

  and American science fiction compared here, here, here

  matriarchy in here

  post-war disaster fiction here–here

  Broderick, Damien here, here

  Broodthaers, Marcel here

  Brooke-Rose, Christine here, here

  Brooks, Peter here, here

  “Brothers from Another Planet” (Corbett) here

  Brown, Fredric here

  Brown Girl in the Ring (Hopkinson) here, here–here, here, here–here