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12-2019

Ciencia Ficción / Ficção Científica from

Rachel Haywood Iowa State University, [email protected]

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Part of the Commons, Latin American Commons, Other Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons, and the Technical and Professional Writing Commons

The complete bibliographic information for this item can be found at https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/ language_pubs/242. For information on how to cite this item, please visit http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/howtocite.html.

This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the World Languages and Cultures at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in World Languages and Cultures Publications by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ciencia Ficción / Ficção Científica from Latin America

Abstract Latin American (sf) has come into its own as a field of study in the last twenty ears,y but sf has been written in Latin America since the early days of the in the nineteenth century. The most extensive and consistent sf traditions in the region are those of Argentina, Brazil, , , and, increasingly, , but sf has been produced in all Latin American countries. US-Mexican borderlands sf and the sf of Puerto Rico are also often discussed in conjunction with Latin American sf due to significant intersections and commonalities of language, geography, and socio-political realities. The chapter includes a discussion of sf in the context of canonical literature as well as of neighboring such as literature and magic . It also includes: characteristics and tendencies of Latin American sf; a history of Latin American sf from the long nineteenth century to the present; and a discussion of what the study of sf brings to our understanding of Latin America and what the study of Latin American sf brings to our understanding of science fiction as a genre.

Keywords Latin American science fiction, global science fiction, Global South, Spanish America, azil,Br , fantastic literature, hybrid genres, 1900-present

Disciplines Creative Writing | Fiction | Latin | Other Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature | Technical and Professional Writing

Comments This accepted book chapter is published as Ciencia Ficción / Ficção Científica from Latin America.” The Cambridge History of Science Fiction, edited by Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link, Cambridge UP, 2019, Part 3 Chapter 41;664-79. Doi: 10.1017/9781316694374. Posted with permission.

This book chapter is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/language_pubs/ 242 1

Ciencia Ficción / Ficção Científica from Latin America

Rachel Haywood Ferreira Published in: The Cambridge History of Science Fiction, edited by Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link, Cambridge UP, 2019, pp. 664-79.

ABSTRACT Latin American science fiction (sf) has come into its own as a field of study in the last twenty years, but sf has been written in Latin America since the early days of the genre in the nineteenth century. The most extensive and consistent sf traditions in the region are those of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, and, increasingly, Chile, but sf has been produced in all Latin American countries. US-Mexican borderlands sf and the sf of Puerto Rico are also often discussed in conjunction with Latin American sf due to significant intersections and commonalities of language, geography, and socio-political realities. The chapter includes a discussion of sf in the context of canonical literature as well as of neighboring genres such as fantastic literature and magic realism. It also includes: characteristics and tendencies of Latin American sf; a history of Latin American sf from the long nineteenth century to the present; and a discussion of what the study of sf brings to our understanding of Latin America and what the study of Latin American sf brings to our understanding of science fiction as a genre.

KEYWORDS:

Latin American science fiction, global science fiction, Global South, Spanish America, Brazil, magic realism, fantastic literature, hybrid genres, 1900-present

What is Latin America? Latin American sf has come into its own as a field of study in the last twenty years, but sf has been written in Latin America since the early days of the genre in the nineteenth century. This chapter discusses the full history of the ciencia ficción / ficção científica of Spanish America and Brazil.1 The most extensive and consistent sf traditions in the region are those of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, and, increasingly, Chile, but sf has been produced in all Latin American countries. US-Mexican borderlands sf and the sf of Puerto Rico are also often discussed in conjunction with Latin American sf due to significant intersections and commonalities of language, geography, and socio-political realities.

Latin America is an extremely heterogeneous region with great linguistic, geographic, racial, historical, economic, and cultural diversity. At the same time, Latin American nations have a great deal in common: they form part of the Global South, sharing Iberian colonial pasts; they have heterogeneous populations; they suffer from uneven modernity and widespread income inequality; and a central issue for all of them has historically been the definition and consolidation of national identity. Therefore any history of Latin American sf will necessarily

1 While this region is most accurately referred to as “Ibero-America,” I will generally prefer “Latin America,” the more frequently used term in the field.

1 2 be rife with exceptions, but looking at the genre in the region as a whole provides a broader array of cultural products and makes visible patterns of and variation that might otherwise escape our notice.

What is meant by Latin American science fiction: Sf, the canon, and neighboring genres. Andrew Milner has described sf as “a selective tradition, continuously reinvented in the present, through which the boundaries of the genre are continuously policed, challenged and disrupted, and the cultural identity of the SF community continuously established, preserved and transformed. It is thus essentially and necessarily a site of contestation.”2 The identity of Latin American sf is particularly in flux in comparison to its counterparts because the regional Latin American sf community and national sf communities are less established and smaller in size, because Latin American sf has only recently been the subject of sustained critical attention, because of the reputation of sf as a “borrowed” genre in Latin America, and because other genres with reputations more literary and more local appear to occupy some of the same territory as sf. Definitions of what is and is not sf in Latin America are necessarily affected by many factors: by the role of the definer or the hat(s) s/he is wearing at the time (bibliographer, publisher, reader, scholar, writer); by whether one’s individual background or field of study centers more around genre fiction or the literary canon; and by what one’s society and/or one’s field of study values. In short, what is meant by Latin American sf depends upon whom you ask, when you ask, and for what purpose. There are a great deal more works of sf and works that can be usefully read through an science-fictional lens to be found in Latin America outside the books, magazines, and websites that carry the genre label.

Latin American sf is often described as more connected with canonical literature / disconnected from mass culture than sf written in the North.3 Many Latin American writers have used science-fictional elements in their work without identifying as genre writers. This can happen, as it can in the North, because science-fictional tropes permeate modern culture, and mainstream writers may use them to explore and extrapolate from contemporary reality. For example, Juan José Arreola, Carlos Fuentes, Marcela del Río have been described as Mexican writers who have not thought of themselves as participants in a particular genre,4 and Argentine writers such as , Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Julio Cortázar are also frequently cited as canonical authors of science-fictional or sf-adjacent texts. While mainstream writers such as these do not self-identify as sf writers, this is not to say they are divorced from the genre. Still, Pablo Capanna’s of Argentine sf as “a science fiction that resists recognizing itself as such” remains widely applicable in Latin America.5

2 Locating Science Fiction, (Liverpool University Press, 2012), pp. 39-40 3 See for example: L. C. Cano, Intermitente recurrencia: La ciencia ficción y el canon literario hispanoamericano, (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2006), pp. 18, 262; S. Kurlat Ares, "Argentinean Science Fiction” in L. Schmeink (ed.), A Virtual Introduction to Science Fiction: Online Toolkit for Teaching SF, (2013), pp. 1-11. http://virtual-sf.com/?page_id=806 4 G. Trujillo Muñoz, Biografías del futuro: La ciencia ficción mexicana y sus autores, (Mexicali, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, 2000), p. 17 5 El mundo de la ciencia ficción (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Letra Buena, 1992), p. 177. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated

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The publication of works as mainstream fiction that could be published as sf can occur in Latin America, as in the North, out of an author’s / publisher’s / book seller’s desire to avoid genre stigma and ghettoization, but this genre-avoidance is more prevalent in Latin America. Likewise, the describing of works as mainstream fiction that could be described as sf is more prevalent, as critics and others strive to define their fields of interest in more canonical, socially acceptable terms. Much of the (un)conscious reasoning behind this phenomenon come from the Latin American canon itself. Historically, the Latin American literary canon has always privileged realistic fiction. Latin American fiction is expected to be engaged: to represent local themes and issues, educate the people and address their problems, and work toward social justice by denouncing evils and abuses in society and by instigating change.

Sf has neighboring genres that border, overlap, and intermingle. Latin American genre fiction also has these generic neighbors and the tendency to form hybrids with them, but some of these neighboring genre labels such as the fantastic and magic realism have been preferred by writers and critics over sf to an exaggerated degree when describing Latin American fiction. Unlike sf these genres are not seen as foreign, and they enjoy literary cachet at home and abroad, with their respectability solidified by, for example, the edition of the Antología de la literatura fantástica [Anthology of Fantastic Literature] by Borges, Bioy Casares, and Silvina Ocampo in 1940 and the Nobel Prizes of magic realist writers such as Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967) and Gabriel García Márquez (1982). This is not to take issue with the correct application of these other labels or with the dual labeling of a work. The problem is when science-fictional works are mislabeled or unlabeled,6 when magic realism, for example, is viewed as the Latin American version of sf,7 or when it is assumed that magic realism describes all of Latin America all of the time. As Daniel Croci wrote as early as 1985, “Spanish America today is no longer completely reflected in . Despite our dependency, fragmentation, marginal and peripheral condition, we have technified and industrialized. Our new world is no longer that magical mixture of the aboriginal mythic universe and ambitious Spanish chimera, neither is it—only— the decadence and frustration of that world that García Márquez depicts magnificently.”8

Sf, then, has been condemned in Latin America both for what it is and what it is not perceived to be. Like Northern sf, it has been seen as a lesser literature, as escapist, children’s stories, pulp fiction. It has also been judged as not fulfilling Latin American literary expectations: being un- realistic, not dealing with concrete social and political problems as directly as realist fiction does, even as distorting reality.9 In addition, sf in Latin America is often seen as an imported / borrowed / foreign genre and suffers from negative associations with political and cultural colonialism and . Roberto de Sousa Causo, for example, has characterized a

6 For more on the mislabeling, unlabeling and dual labeling of Latin American sf, see R. Haywood Ferreira, The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction, (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011), pp. 8-11 7 This happened most notably in James Gunn’s introduction to the Latin American section of The Road to Science Fiction (Volume 6: Around the World [Clarkston, GA: White Wolf, 1998] pp. 480-83), but it has also been a fairly common assumption. 8 “Tesis para una nueva literatura fantástica nacional” in Augusto Uribe (ed.), Latinoamérica fantástica (Barcelona: Ultramar Editores, 1985), p. 132 9 E. Honores, Narrativas del caos: un ensayo sobre la narrativa de lo imposible en el Perú contemporáneo (Lima: Cuerpo de la metáfora, 2012), p. 9

3 4 common Brazilian attitude toward sf as “not [being] a good match for Brazilian reality,”10 and Miguel Ángel Fernández Delgado has described a perception of Mexican sf writers as cultural sell-outs, “guided by the malinchismo that could be assumed in the cultivators of a literary movement that came from outside.”11 Such ideas are beginning to change, but these preconceptions remain challenges for writers of sf in Latin America.

What is meant by Latin American science fiction: Characteristics. Because it is still a relatively new field of study, the defining characteristics of Latin American sf have been evolving particularly rapidly, as new knowledge is added and the full scope of genre production in Latin America emerges. “What’s Latin American about it?” is indeed one of the central questions underlying the study of Latin American sf; in order to understand the answers, it is essential to understand the history and context behind them. Case in point: perhaps the most oft-cited characterization of Latin American sf is that it is soft, based on the social rather than the hard sciences. This is logical in part: Latin America is much more a consumer than a producer of science and technology, and notable contributions have been made by Latin American sf writers and critics with backgrounds in the social sciences.

But the description of Latin American sf as soft requires qualification: Latin American sf is predominantly soft or perhaps tends toward the soft. Latin American sf often emphasizes humanistic values either over knowledge of the hard sciences or in concert with that knowledge. The “softness” of Latin American sf has be explained by many critics from a variety of useful angles. Andrea Bell and Moisés Hassón provide literary context for this quality: “An ever-present concern with meeting essential human needs has, to varying degrees over time, informed the thematic and stylistic elements of virtually all literary genres in Latin America, and so it is also with science fiction.”12 Pablo Capanna sheds light on the “soft” designation from a comparative standpoint: “Perhaps the most common feature is that our authors do not write sf based on science, as happens in industrial countries where science is a socially prestigious activity and technology permeates daily life. … [H]ere authors write science fiction based on science fiction.”13 Finally, Mexican writer and critic Pepe Rojo addresses the soft-hard line and the impact of science in the periphery: “[W]hen speaking to the rest of the world, the distinction between hard and becomes blurry. Mauricio-José Schwarz, a Mexican SF author, used to say that some people find it funny that there could be such a thing

10 Ficção científica, fantasia e horror no Brasil, 1875 a 1950 (Belo Horizonte: Editor UFMG, 2003), p. 247 11 “Introducción” in M. A. Fernández Delgado (ed.), Visiones periféricas: Antología de la ciencia ficción mexicana (Mexico D.F.: Lumen, 2001), p. 14. The exception to these rules is Cuba, particularly after 1979, when sf, under the aegis of the Soviet seal of approval, is well-regarded by the Cuban government and by literary critics and is considered engaged, even militant and an instrument for revolutionary change. See D. Chaviano, “Veinte años de ciencia ficción en Cuba,” Revista Unión, 1 (1986): 122-23; D. Chaviano, “Science Fiction and Fantastic Literature as Realms of Freedom,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 15.1 (2004): 5; J. C. Toledano Redondo, “Sputniks cubanos. De como la URSS ocupó la imaginación de una generación,” Kamchatka (July 2015): 187-98. 12 "Prelude to the Golden Age: Chilean Science Fiction, 1900-1959,” , 25.2 (1998): p. 297 13 “La ciencia ficción y los argentinos,” Minotauro, 10 (1985), p. 56

4 5 as science fiction in Mexico, to which he always replied that even if his country didn’t produce much science or technology, it sure did suffer from them. Maybe the way to characterize ‘World SF’ is not as hard or soft, but sharp, when it works well.”14

There are Latin American sf writers who come from the hard sciences and who write hard or at least hard-er sf; this is especially true among nineteenth-century sf authors, among authors writing circa the 1950s and the Cold War,15 and among some of the more recent writers working in . Just as the hard-er moments in Latin American sf parallel some of the hard-er moments in Northern sf, the upswing in softer sf in the at the height of the Golden Age of sf in Latin America parallels the upswing in soft sf during the New Wave in the North.16 Northern sf trends do affect trends in Latin American sf, but events in regional and global arenas are equally strong impulses behind changes in the genre there. If Latin American sf is somewhat softer than Northern sf, then, this softness is more than a reflection of the state of Latin American development: it reflects cultural concerns, strengths, and values, and it reflects global events / movements / discoveries in politics, culture, and science. Hard sf in Latin America is not an aberration, soft sf is not a rule, and there is a lot of gray area in between the two.

In describing sf written outside the US, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay neatly summarizes some of the characteristics of Latin American sf; he writes: “[S]f outside the US … is more prone to social concreteness, to present-centeredness, to stylistic affectation reflecting psychological or literary complexity, and to a fatalism in the face of history.”17 The tendency toward present-centered goes hand-in-hand with a less optimistic historical outlook. Luis Cano has discussed these tendencies in Latin American sf in detail, contrasting the more linear, -centric sf of the North with Latin American sf’s greater focus on an uncertain present and the history that led to it, and tracing “the progressive extinction of the optimistic vision of a future filled with promises and possibilities for change.”18 This pessimism stems both from diminishing hopes that change could be brought about in Latin America through the development and control of technology and, in the political arena, from continuing local and global oppressions and inequalities. This is not to say that there is no optimism in Latin American sf, indeed there are periods that lean optimistic, and these periods tend to parallel periods of greater optimism in Northern sf in response to global events (see the next section for further discussion). However, in a region that has a history of hard-won fights for independence, ongoing national power struggles, and economic dependence, attitudes toward the future are less sanguine. Since these populations have historically been witnesses rather than actors when it comes to reaping any economic benefits of technology or participating in political negotiations that have shaped the world, it is not surprising that the historical outlook and the sf might trend less optimistic than those of Latin America’s Northern neighbors.

14 “Desperately Looking for Others,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 24 (May 2016), lareviewofbooks.org/article/desperately-looking-others/ 15 See my Emergence and “How Latin America Saved the World and Other Forgotten ,” Science Fiction Studies, 43.2 (2016), pp. 207-25. 16 See Y. Molina-Gavilán, Ciencia ficción en español: Una mitología moderna ante el cambio (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2002), p.44 17 “The Global Province (Review),” Science Fiction Studies, 26.3 (1999), p. 484 18 Intermitente recurrencia, p. 72

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The tendency toward social concreteness in Latin American sf is in large part a result of the aforementioned “ever-present concern with meeting essential human needs” in a region where these needs are immediate and pressing. One corollary of this tendency is that Latin American sf is often more overtly political than sf in the North. National politics are a frequent theme, including explorations and denunciations of abuses of power and corruption, and a frequent subtext is the struggle to establish national identity, and to maintain that identity in the face of Northern political, economic, and cultural influence. Sf has proved an excellent vehicle for negotiating these issues: looking backward to consider the legacies of discovery, conquest, and colonization,19 and looking at the present day or extrapolations therefrom to attack neoimperialism and neocolonialism in all of their fora, from politics to big business and consumer culture.20

The stylistic emphasis that has been noted in Latin American sf can be explained from two somewhat overlapping perspectives. From one approach Latin American sf is seen as more literary, as more closely linked to mainstream literature than its Northern counterpart, particularly in times when canonical literature put a premium on literary experimentation and complexity, for example during and the Boom. An alternate focus views even Latin American sf that is consciously written as genre fiction as more literary than Northern sf due to the relative absence of a pulp tradition in Latin America and of US pulp influence in the region.

Some of the other characteristics that have been used to describe Latin American sf include the incorporation of Latin American , both myths originally associated with Latin America by European colonizers (El Dorado, Atlantis) and myths born in the new world (the “City of the Caesars” in Chile; Brazilian cultural myths such as Brazil as tropical paradise and racial democracy; foundational myths such as La Malinche in Mexico).21 Latin American sf is also inclined toward urban settings, stemming from settlement patterns in colonial times as well as internal migrations and the ensuing associations of cities as focal points of national life and culture; this stands in marked contrast, for example, to the of the frontier and the value placed on individualism in US sf.22 The challenges of print publication and the relatively smaller market share for sf in Latin America have also impacted the genre, leading to a prevalence of short stories over longer fiction or multi-volume works. This has also meant that the internet and electronic media have been an especially important development for Latin American writers and fans, easing the process of getting one’s work published, fostering writer and fan communities, and facilitating the continued publication of fanzines and prozines that

19 See R. Haywood Ferreira, “Second Contact: The First Contact Story in Latin American Science Fiction” in B. Attebery and V. Hollinger (eds.), Parabolas of Science Fiction (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2013), pp. 70-88 and A. L. Bell and Y. Molina-Gavilán, “Introduction” in Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003), p. 17 20 A. Bell, “Science Fiction in Latin America: Reawakenings” in A. Bell, R. Bozzeto, and E. Gomel, “Current Trends in Global SF,” Science Fiction Studies, 26.3 (1999), p. 443 21 See A. Bell and M. Hassón, "Prelude to the Golden Age,” p. 292; M. E. Ginway, Brazilian Science Fiction: Cultural and Nationhood in the Land of the Future (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2004), p. 16; M. E. Ginway, “A Working Model for Analyzing Third World Science Fiction: The Case of Brazil,” Science Fiction Studies 32.3 (2005), p. 489 22 See M. E. Ginway, Brazilian Science Fiction, p. 23

6 7 otherwise might be forced by standard costs or hyperinflation to join the throng of sf magazines in Latin America that have folded after only a handful of issues.

If there is one characteristic of Latin American sf that is universally recognized it is the significant influence of Northern sf on the genre in the region, but that influence as well as the global nature of the genre itself have been understood in various ways. Latin American sf has often been described as a synthesis of North-South inputs, a synthesis expressed by Sergio Gaut vel Hartman as “mestización a la fuerza” [forced hybridization],23 or by Ivan Carlos Regina and others in terms of a Southern “antropofagia” [cannibalism] of Northern tropes.24 Some consider Northern sf to be the major influence on Latin American sf writers, others view the influence from the Latin American literary canon and mainstream as predominant. The type and degree of influence vary across countries, time periods, and individual authors and continues to be an issue of cultural politics and debate.

Sf as a genre clearly has its historical roots and traditional stronghold in the North, however, it is increasingly being recognized that sf has been and is being written all over the world, and it bears mentioning how Latin American sf functions within this global genre paradigm. Latin American writers and texts certainly participate in and belong to the genre, and Latin American sf has important contributions in perspective, theme, and content to make to the genre as a whole. The missing piece is the actual sharing of these contributions, integrating them into the sf megatext, since influence has historically been primarily a one-way street. A central challenge is the dearth of translations of Latin American sf into other languages.25 It is notable that (eventual) translation of sf is assumed or considered likely from North-to-South, but that Latin American sf is written for a national ,26 with South-to-North translation not assumed to be in the picture and multilingual readers from outside the Spanish-speaking world far from the norm. In 2000 Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz asserted Mexican sf’s achievement of a conscious and distinct identity within the global sf movement, and he followed that assertion with a call for his fellow writers to contribute to a greater degree of much-needed transculturaltion within the genre as a whole:

“Not to accept, passively, the fashionable trends of the dominant culture without contributing new ideas and concepts that impact it in the opposite direction: from the periphery to the center. This attitude is a point of departure for national science fiction on the verge of the twenty-first century. Not remaining on the local stage repeating imported designs, but using that which is local to build a creative platform that resounds at the Latin American level, at the international level.”27

23 “Prólogo” in Augusto Uribe (ed.), Latinoamérica fantástica (Barcelona: Ultramar Editores, 1985), p. 11 24 See I.C. Regina, “Manifesto Antropofágico da Ficção Científica Brasileira—Movimento Supernova,” 1988 D. O. Leitura 12.138 (1993), p.8; M.E. Ginway, Brazilian Science Fiction, pp. 139-43 25 The landmark Cosmos Latinos anthology edited by A. Bell and Y. Molina-Gavilán has all too little company in the Anglophone arena, for example. 26 See J. A. Brown and M. E. Ginway, “Introduction” in J. A. Brown and M. E. Ginway (eds.), Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 10 and M.E. Ginway, Brazilian Science Fiction, pp. 247-48n194 27 Biografías del futuro, pp. 355-56

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The awareness of the need for a genre that better reflects global diversity exists, but in order to achieve this the North needs to have access to and to understand what the South has to say.

Making Waves. As with Northern sf, the history of Latin American sf can be described in waves. While Northern sf trends have played a role in the formation of these waves, there are many other elements that affect the evolution of the genre in Latin America. The catalysts that spark trends and turning points in the genre in Latin America are international and regional, broad and narrow: political events and scientific developments; literary trends, individual or groups of writers, even single works; changes in the market from the rise of genre magazines to the emergence of genre publishers or imprints; literary prizes, symposia, and fan clubs that foster genre identity and cohesion. Each country in Latin America traces its local history with the genre differently, but some general trends and commonalities have emerged that may provide both useful indicators of larger regional orientations and a contextual backdrop against which individual cases may be viewed.

The long nineteenth century. Latin American sf written during this time period was scattered between countries and within the oeuvres of writers. There were no local schools or communities of sf, and connections to the genre were through Northern works rather than intra-Latin American influence. Among the impulses that turned writers toward the emerging genre and influenced their choice and use of science-fictional tropes were, in the political arena: national independences and processes of consolidation, and the ongoing construction of national identities. The sciences were also extremely influential, as in the nineteenth century, “The obsolete legal discourse of Spanish colonization was replaced by scientific discourse as the authoritative language of knowledge, self-knowledge, and legitimation.”28 The long nineteenth century encompasses the heights of positivistic technophilia, during which it seemed possible that the strides forward in transportation, communication, medicine, and more might leapfrog Latin America toward the forefront of the world stage, as well as the ensuing technophobic lows, when science failed to fulfill its earlier promise in sufficient measure. In literary circles, translations of the works of Poe, Verne, Wells and other writers of early sf arrived with little delay in Latin America, where they mingled with the national foundational being written across the region. Science-fictional works were published in newspapers, in mainstream magazines, or by mainstream publishers as one-offs or as part of the body of an established writer’s works. Popular themes and tropes included fantastic journeys in space and time, usually utopian or dystopian in nature; tales influenced by theories of evolution and also devolution and eugenics; the creation of artificial life; and the importance of alternative as well as orthodox sciences, particularly during Spanish American Modernism. Among the principal authors of this period are Juana Manuela Gorriti, Eduardo L. Holmberg and Leopoldo Lugones in Argentina; Joaquim Manuel de Macedo and Aluísio Azevedo in Brazil; Francisco Miralles in Chile; Pedro Castera, Amado Nervo, and Martín Luis Guzmán in Mexico; Clemente Palma in ; in Uruguay and Argentina.29

28 R. González Echevarría, Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 103 29 For fuller details of authors and works for all time periods see Y. Molina-Gavilán, A. Bell, M. A. Fernández Delgado, M. E. Ginway, L. Pestarini, and J. C. Toledano Redondo, “Chronology of Latin American Science Fiction, 1775-2005,” Science Fiction Studies, 34.3 (2007), pp. 369-431,

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Between the wars (circa 1920-early 1950s). In a wave schema of Latin American sf this time period forms something of a trough, although it includes a number of writers and texts that are landmarks in the genre. Sf ebbs during these decades in part due to the continued popularity of realism in the wake of the impact of phenomena like the Mexican Revolution and the Great Depression. There was not a significant pulp era in Latin American sf, nor were there genre magazines or editors like or John W. Campbell around whom the genre could coalesce.30 This period is one of relative hibernation for sf in Latin America,31 with genre elements dissolving into the mainstream, particularly into works of fantastic or “adventure” fiction. Major writers include: Borges and Bioy Casares in Argentina; Gastão Cruls, Monteiro Lobato, and Menotti del Picchia in Brazil; Francisco Urquizo and Diego Cañedo in Mexico. We also see the emergence of a few forebears of genre sf such as Jerônimo Monteiro in Brazil and Ernesto Silva Román in Chile.

The Golden Age (mid-1950s-c.1970). The sf of this time period is commonly referred to as golden age sf, genre sf, or modern sf. It is now that writers are first identifying themselves as genre authors writing as part of an identifiable movement in Latin America and/or in individual countries. The beginning of this wave is usually dated by the publication of the Los Altísimos by Chilean writer Hugo Correa in 1959, the Argentine magazine Más Allá (1953-57), or the original El Eternauta comic by H. G. Oesterheld and Francisco Solano-López (1957-59), and by political phenomena such as the Cuban Revolution and the Cold War. The ending of the Golden Age is usually associated with the Moon landing, with the growing tide of social and political movements, both local and global, and with increasingly repressive dictatorial governments in Latin America. This era combines the optimism of the space race and the possibilities of atomic energy with the flip-side pessimism of ICBMs and the atomic bomb. The 1950s is largely a decade of unabashed technophilia and a rise in hard sf in Latin America, but the next decades criticize the 50s sf for its “optimistic attitude toward the use of science, for its vision of a better future when the evidence against this is accumulating before our very eyes.”32 The 1960s and 70s see increasing pessimism with regard to technology and growing interest in the social sciences, social problems, and softer sf along with stylistic experimentation, as discussed above. The sf marketplace experiences a mini-boom during this time period. We see the rise of genre magazines that include stories by local writers for the first time, for example: Más Allá and Minotauro in Argentina, Crononauta in Mexico, the Magazine de Ficção Científica in Brazil, and Espacio-tiempo in Chile. Influential genre publishers and imprints emerge, such as Franciso (Paco) Porrúa at Ediciones Minotauro in Argentina and Gumercindo Rocha Dorea and his Edições GRD in Brazil, and anthologies of national and international Latin American sf appear in ever greater profusion. All of this activity gives rise to the first sf fan clubs; to several and the Latin American entries in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, J. Clute, D. Langford, P. Nicholls and G. Sleight (eds.) (London: Gollancz), www.sf-encyclopedia.com/; for more on the long nineteenth century, see the contents and bibliography of R. Haywood Ferreira, Emergence. A very useful source for this section has also been R. de Sousa Causo, "Uma sistematização histórica dos períodos e tendências da ficção científica brasileira, do século XIX ao presente," unpublished manuscript 30 See A. Bell, “Science Fiction in Latin America,” p. 441 and R. de Sousa Causo, Ficção científica, pp.233-93 31 L. C. Cano, Intermitente recurrencia, pp. 149-50 32 G. Trujillo Muñoz, Biografías, p. 345

9 10 national and international symposia and conventions (in Argentina Bairescon [1967] and Mardelcon [1968] and in Brazil the Simpósio de FC/SF Symposium [1969]); and to the first works of sf criticism written in Latin America, most famously Pablo Capanna’s El sentido de la ciencia ficción [The Meaning of Science Fiction] (1966) and André Carneiro’s Introdução ao Estudo da “Science Fiction” [Introduction to the Study of “Science Fiction”] (1967), both of which, however, focus largely on Anglophone sf. Latin American sf writers that emerge in these years include: H. G. Oesterheld and Angélica Gorodischer in Argentina; continued production by Jerônimo Monteiro plus new authors André Carneiro, Fausto Cunha, Dinah Silveira de Queiroz, and Rubens Teixeira Scavone in Brazil; Hugo Correa in Chile; Ángel Arango, Óscar Hurtado, and Miguel Collazo in Cuba; Álvaro Menén Desleal in El Salvador; Arreola, Diego Cañedo, Colombian-born René Rebetez, Chilean-born Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Carlos Olvera in Mexico; José Adolph in Peru; Luis Britto García in Venezuela, and numerous others.

The Slump (-mid-1980s). Almost across the board Latin American sf experiences a slowdown during some or all of this time period, primarily due to the rise of repressive political regimes and to widespread economic instability and social unrest. Beleaguered publishers tend to stick to safer best-seller-type works. Paradoxically, however, sf is able to survive because its reputation as a popular, marginal genre makes government censors believe it to be less of a threat; sf is also employed by genre and mainstream writers to disguise politically sensitive ideas.33 Some of the principal authors in the genre continue to write sf and important new authors emerge, among them: Gorodischer and Carlos Gardini in Argentina; Carneiro, Cunha, Herberto Sales, and Ignácio de Loyola Brandão in Brazil; Correa and Elena Aldunate in Chile; Arango in Cuba; Cañedo and Costa Rica-born Alfredo Cardona Peña in Mexico, Adolph in Peru; Tarik Carson in Uruguay. This was a period of continued stylistic experimentation, with popular themes including , apocalypse, and allegorized political critiques.34

Revivals (mid-1980s-present). At least two waves of sf have emerged in Latin America in recent years, one beginning in the mid-1980s and another circa 2000, with many writers from both generations continuing to publish today. The first surge in sf occurred as many Latin American nations transitioned from dictatorship to democracy. Latin American sf from this period shows an increase in local settings, characters, and perspectives, with the priority for a Latin American and/or national sf crystalizing in places such as Regina’s “Cannibal Manifesto of Brazilian Science Fiction,” Brazilian cyberpunk or tupinipunk,35 and nationally and regionally themed anthologies. Fan organizations proliferated, as did magazines and fanzines of increasing longevity, particularly after the advent of the internet; among the publications in in Argentina alone are: El Péndulo (second period), Minotauro (second period), Sinergía, Cuasar, and Axxón (est.1989, 276 issues and 41m views and counting). New literary prizes such as the Premio David in Cuba, the Premio Más Allá in Argentina, and the Premio Puebla in Mexico are also a major stimulus for the resurgence in sf. There is something of a sea change in Latin American sf around the turn of the millennium, with the emergence of a new generation of writers who draw inspiration from currents like cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk, , the , and genre fusions, especially with horror. The genre has also received increasing

33 For more see A. L. Bell and Y. Molina-Gavilán, “Introduction,” pp. 9-10 and P. Capanna, El mundo, pp. 184-85 34 R. de Sousa Causo, "Uma sistematização” 35 A term coined by Roberto de Sousa Causo, see M. E. Ginway, Brazilian Science Fiction, pp. 151-65

10 11 scholarly attention over the past two decades both in Latin America and in the North, though institutional support and acceptance has been slower to come in Latin America. Important initial groundwork has been laid in the publication of bibliographies, genre histories, and theoretical studies of Latin American sf: guidebooks and compasses for a field that is rapidly coming into its own. If sf has yet not broken out of the genre ghetto and gained broader acceptance in Latin America, and if Northern sf influences remain important, still, sf in Latin America is self-sustaining and and it has achieved a sense of national and regional identity in the twenty-first century. A necessarily truncated list of writers from this period includes: Gardini, Marcelo Cohen, and Alejandro Alonso in Argentina; Jorge Luiz Calife, Braulio Tavares, Roberto de Sousa Causo, Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro, and Ana Cristina Rodrigues in Brazil; Jorge Baradit and US-Argentine Mike Wilson in Chile; Daína Chaviano and Yoss (José Miguel Sánchez Gómez) in Cuba; Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz, José Luis Zárate, Pepe Rojo, and Bef (Bernardo Fernández) in Mexico.

What sf brings to Latin America and What Latin America brings to sf. Sf is often touted for its ability to help Latin American writers think outside boxes. This ability is often expressed in terms of freedoms, albeit largely the mixed-blessing freedoms of the outsider: freedom from the norms of regional sociopolitical dialogues, freedom from the limitations of national literary and cultural expectations, freedom from sf genre expectations, and even the greater freedom to innovate of the writer who does not make a living from his/her craft.36 Sf is also seen as an instrument for bringing about national and regional change and as a tool for understanding Latin America's uneven modernity, both by evaluating the social impact of modernization projects37 and in its role as “a catalyst for all of these contradictory realities, as a fermenter of the chaos that obsesses us.”38 In addition to the initial divergence between mainstream and genre writers, a diversity of perspectives exists within the genre itself. M. Elizabeth Ginway identifies three main ideological groups, for example, in the Brazilian sf community, “those who believe in the universalist principles of science fiction, those who believe that science fiction should adopt the principles of high art and literary experimentalism, and those who believe in a distinct nationalist contribution of Brazilian science fiction.”39 In the end, what sf brings to Latin America can be different for different people.

The Global South and the economic periphery have contributed to the sf megatext for over a century and have an important role to . As a genre associated with the Global North, Sf as a genre can suffer from what Capanna has aptly described as “the incapacity, characteristic of all imperial centers in history, to understand what occurs far from the center of power, or how those who live in the periphery think.”40 The economic periphery is one place is one place to turn in searching for renewal, revision, and extension of the sf megatext. Latin America brings

36 See S. Kurlat Ares, “Argentinean Science Fiction,” p. 8; Y. Molina-Gavilán et al., “Chronology,” p. 369; A.E. van Vogt, “Prólogo” in B. Goorden and A.E. van Vogt (eds.), Lo mejor de la ciencia ficción latinoamericana (Barcelona: Ediciones Martínez Roca, 1982), p. 11 37 L. C. Cano, Intermitente, p. 23 38 G. Trujillo Muñoz, “El futuro en llamas: Breve crónica de la ciencia ficción mexicana” in G. Trujillo Muñoz (ed.), El futuro en llamas (: Vid, 1997), p. 26 39 Brazilian Science Fiction, p. 141 40 “Entrevista con Pablo Capanna (Interview by Eduardo Carletti),” Axxón, 106 (2000), axxon.com.ar

11 12 an infusion of new regional/local myths, of cultures and cultural fusions, of literary traditions and hybrid formations, of linguistic variety. It provides alternate experiences of encounter, colonization, and independence from which to write, as well as explorations into measures of superiority or success that lie outside the hard sciences. Latin American sf brings the genre new stories and just plain more stories. With all that Latin American sf has to say, it is earnestly to be hoped that publication, translation, and distribution continue to increase, enabling it to better be heard at home and abroad.

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