Arabic Science Fiction: Science, Society and Religion in Selected Texts
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Durham E-Theses Modern Arabic Science Fiction: Science, Society and Religion in Selected Texts DICK, BARBARA,KATHLEEN How to cite: DICK, BARBARA,KATHLEEN (2016) Modern Arabic Science Fiction: Science, Society and Religion in Selected Texts, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11907/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Modern Arabic Science Fiction: Science, Society and Religion in Selected Texts Barbara Dick Abstract This thesis examines a selection of original SF or SF-inflected texts written in Arabic from the 1960s to the present day. It is a thematic study, considering their presentation of and attitudes to science and technology, utopias and ideal societies and religion. Although some critics attempt to figure SF as a continuation of the Thousand and One Nights fantastical tradition and the mirabile literature of the Middle Ages, Arabic science fiction, as an essentially modern genre, traces its earliest origins to the late 1950s in Egypt. It has experienced several sudden efflorescences during the following decades in the texts of a handful of authors, most of whom are Egyptian. In the past ten years, following a 2006 seminal essay by Iraqi-German engineer and SF critic Achmed Khammas on “The Almost Complete Lack of the Element of ‘Futureness’”, media and academic interest in Arabic science fiction has burgeoned, with both established (Ahmed Khalid Towfik) and new (Noura Noman) authors publishing in the genre in the past five years. In light of the relative lack of criticism of the Arabic corpus, this thesis seeks to begin the project of conducting a full critical study through a reading of selected texts from the 1960s to the present day, the majority of which have not previously been translated into English. The approach taken is broadly sociological, examining the texts in the light of three themes outlined above – science, ideal societies and the treatment of religion - that frequently frame SF criticism in English. 1 Modern Arabic Science Fiction: Science, Society and Religion in Selected Texts A Dissertation Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Barbara Kathleen Dick Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University 12 December 2016 This Dissertation does not exceed 98,000 words in length. 2 Table of Contents Abstract and Contents 1 Notes and Acknowledgements 6 CHAPTER 1: ARABIC SCIENCE FICTION 1.1 Introduction 7 1.2 Arabic Science Fiction 12 1.3 Definitions 16 1.4 Selection and Structure 20 CHAPTER 2.1: THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO SCIENCE FICTION 2.1.1 The Right Lens 24 2.1.2 Negative Critical Perception of Science Fiction 26 2.1.3 A New Historicist Approach 28 2.1.4 Reception Theory 30 2.1.5 The Sociology of Science Fiction 30 2.1.6 The Sociology of Literary Taste 32 2.1.7 Science Fiction and Marxist Criticism 34 2.1.8 The Sociology of Arabic Science Fiction 36 2.1.9 Conclusion 40 CHAPTER 2.2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.2.1 Introduction 42 2.2.2 Achmed Khammas 44 2.2.3 Book-length studies 45 2.2.4 Articles 49 2.2.5 Doctoral theses 52 2.2.6 Conclusion 55 3 CHAPTER 3: TRANSLATION AND THE ORIGINS OF MODERN ARABIC SCIENCE FICTION 3.1 Translation 57 3.2 The Origins of Modern Arabic Science Fiction 67 3.3 Conclusion 70 CHAPTER 4.1: THE DISCOURSE ON ‘SCIENCE CULTURE’ IN THE ARAB WORLD 4.1.1 Introduction 73 4.1.2 Ānā al-Sharq: Disparaging views of scientific progress in the Arab world 75 4.1.3 Progress 80 4.1.4 ‘Islamic Science’ 82 4.1.5 The Didactic Function 83 4.1.6 Conclusion 87 CHAPTER 4.2: SCIENTIFIC THEMES IN ARABIC SCIENCE FICTION 4.2.1 Introduction 91 4.2.2 Space and Aliens 92 4.2.3 War Machines 100 4.2.4 Robots 104 4.2.5 Corpus and Animus 112 4.2.5.1 Immortality and the Elixir 113 4.2.5.2 Disease 119 4.2.5.3 Cloning and Genetic Engineering 120 4.2.5.4 Mind Control 125 4.2.6 Scientist Heroes and Villains 127 4.2.7 The Dream of Arab Scientific Dominance: Archaism and Futurism 133 4.2.8 Verisimilitude 140 4.2.9 Time Travel 148 4 4.2.10 The Ghost in the Machine: Science and Spirituality 150 4.2.10.1 ESP and the Pineal Gland 159 4.2.14 Conclusion 162 CHAPTER 5: RELIGION AND MAGIC: THE SUPERNATURAL IN MODERN ARABIC SCIENCE FICTION 5.1 Introduction 167 5.2 Arab Utopias 169 5.3 Locus 172 5.3.1 Alternative Loci 180 5.4 Uchronias, or Allohistories: Archaism and Futurism 183 5.5 Internationalism 191 5.6 Government 193 5.7 Labour and Leisure 207 5.8 Colonialism and Race 213 5.9 Israel 218 5.9.1 Other Enemies 223 5.10 Gender 225 5.10. Queer Sexuality in Arabic SF 244 5.11 Conclusion 244 CHAPTER 6: RELIGION AND MAGIC: THE SUPERNATURAL 6.1 Introduction 249 6.2 The Role of Religion in Western SF 251 6.3 Religion in Arabic Literature 252 6.4 Religion in Arabic SF 254 6.5 Angels and Demons 272 6.6 Moral Behaviour: Violent Acts 278 6.7 Magical Thinking: Shirk and the Supernatural 283 5 6.8 Conclusion 292 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION 298 BIBLIOGRAPHY 309 Transliteration The International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) transliteration system has been used throughout, except when referring to authors, book titles or names of characters for which alternative anglicised versions already exist or have been previously used by other commentators. Translation All of the translations from Arabic into English are my own work, except where declared otherwise (for example, I have used Chip Rossetti’s translation of Ahmed Khaled Towfik’s Utopia (Doha: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, 2011.) Declaration and Copyright I declare that this dissertation is the result of my own work, and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration with others. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Acknowledgments I acknowledge with profound thanks the invaluable help and support of my supervisor, Professor Paul Starkey, at all stages during the production of this thesis, and for providing me with my copies of Ahmed Khaled Towfik’s Utopia in both Arabic and English. I am also deeply grateful to Ahmed Khaled Towfik, who travelled from Tanta to Cairo in June 2013 to discuss his work with me and provided me, unasked, with full copies of Yusuf Al-Sharuni’s Al-Khayāl al-ʽIlmi fī Al-Adab Al-ʽArabī Al-Muʽāsir and Mahmūd Qāsim’s Al-Khayāl al-Ilmi: Adab Al-Qurn Al-‘Ashrīn, as well as the contact details of Dr. Nabil Farouk, to whom I am also grateful for the interview granted. I would also like to thank Professor Christopher Lloyd and other staff at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures for their comments, suggestions and support. Finally, I would like to thank the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW), whose studentship funded this study; I am most grateful. 6 Chapter 1: Arabic Science Fiction No man can have in his mind a conception of the future, for the future is not yet. But of our conceptions of the past, we make a future; or rather, call past, future relatively.1 1.1 Introduction Science fiction is presently in its infancy in the Arab world, with fewer than a hundred novels written by Arab writers in Arabic.2 Following the first symposium on Arabic Literature and Science Fiction at the University of Casablanca in April 2006, the Iraqi-German engineer and environmentalist Achmed Khammas, who has published SF stories under the pseudonym Ghassan Homsi,3 identified an absence of major SF works in the Arab world in his seminal essay “The Almost Complete Lack of the Element of Futureness” (many articles found via any internet search for “Arab(ic) science fiction” cite, or heavily borrow from, this source). The 2006 symposium concluded that “there was much too much Western theory for much too little Arabic material”,4 drawing our attention to the relative lack of Arabic SF texts. Khammas’ essay makes a persuasive and enticing case for a contextual and comparative study of the SF genre in the Arab world, arguing in very general terms that the region struggles with imagination and vision, despite having produced mediaeval Utopias predating Thomas More, and lamenting that “…the Arab world still does not have any academics similar to Fred Hoyle, Isaac Asimov or Carl Sagan”.5 Khammas posits a link between the relative lack of interest in Arabic SF and general anomie following the failure of Arab liberation movements, pan-Arabism, socialism and religious political parties, opining that 1 Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (1640): Chapter 4:7.