Volume 5 • Issue 1 • May 2021 ISSN: 2514-8915
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FANTASTIKA JOURNAL Volume 5 • Issue 1 • May 2021 ISSN: 2514-8915 Fantastika Journal • Volume 5 • Issue 1 • May 2021 EDITOR’S NOTE "Fantastika” A term appropriated from a range of Slavonic languages by John Clute. It embraces the genres of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, but can also include Alternate History, Gothic, Steampunk, Young Adult Dystopic Fiction, or any other radically imaginative narrative space. The goal of Fantastika Journal and its conferences is to bring together academics and independent researchers who share an interest in this diverse range of fields with the aim of opening up new dialogues, productive controversies, and collaborations. We invite articles examining all mediums and disciplines which concern the Fantastika genres. Welcome to this latest issue of Fantastika Journal, one which brings together a truly wonderful array of responses and pieces produced during the unprecedented circumstances of the last twelve months and beyond. We open with an editorial from Rob Maslen as a celebration of the opening of the ‘Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic’ at the University of Glasgow, UK, and its significance for Fantastika studies. Maslen’s editorial not only documents how such a centre came into existence, but productively asks what such a centre should ‘do’ or what it should be ‘for,’ and how that can help us to interrogate what we mean by Fantasy, the Fantastic, or Fantastika itself. Our first article from Eilis Lee explores the representation of female characters from Naomi Novik’s Uprooted (2015) and challenges whether the apparent progressivism of its central protagonists are effective in fulfilling escapes from objectification or consumption. From this, we transition to Carey Millsap-Spears who also fruitfully engages with the representation of the central female character – Vanessa Ives – in the television show Penny Dreadful (2014-2016) in the context of colonial attitudes and Male/Female Gothic depictions and how the show may open the way for a new version of the Gothic heroine. Following on, Mike Ryder focuses on the role of the super-soldier in relation to the Warhammer 40,000 universe, illuminating how the franchise’s representation of military ethics and states of exception are more relevant than ever in a modern-world of black ops and drone strikes. To conclude, Derek J. Thiess explores the notion of ‘prepping’ in relation to Latourian philosophy by putting into dialogue fantastical and real representation of apocalypticism in a manner that keenly resonates with contemporary circumstances – one which is echoed later in Oliver Rendle’s review of Notes from An Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back (2020) by Mark O’Connell. We round out the issue with a wide range of reviews and reports, including reflections on both physical and virtual conferences that have recently taken place. Including contributions on Korean Science Fiction, Indian Children’s Fiction, Alternate History, utopian futures, and Weird Fiction from the fin de siècle to contemporary innovations to name a few, such a sample demonstrates the wonderful creative and critical Fantastika publications released in the last year and beyond. We are deeply thankful to all our authors, reviewers, peer-reviewers, and readers for their contributions and hope you enjoy reading this issue. Kerry Dodd and C. Palmer-Patel Co-head Editors 3 Fantastika Journal • Volume 5 • Issue 1 • May 2021 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS CO-HEAD EDITORS Charul (Chuckie) Palmer-Patel and Kerry Dodd GENERAL EDITORS Rebecca Duncan, Chris Hussey REVIEWS EDITOR Matthew J. Elder ASSISTANT EDITORS Molly Cobb, Sinéad Murphy PUBLICITY OFFICER Marita Arvaniti DESIGN EDITOR Samuel Valentine CURRENT BOARD OF ADVISERS (IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER) Xavier Aldana Reyes, Brian Baker, Sarah Dillon, Matt Foley, Veronica Hollinger, Rob Maslen, Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Adam Roberts, Catherine Spooner, Sherryl Vint We would also like to thank our peer reviewers and board of advisors for their kind consideration and efforts with this issue. This issue is published by Fantastika Journal. Website registered in Edmonton, AB, Canada. All our articles are Open Access and free to access immediately from the date of publication. We do not charge our authors any fees for publication or processing, nor do we charge readers to download articles. Fantastika Journal operates under the Creative Commons Licence CC BY-NC. This allows for the reproduction of articles for non-commercial uses, free of charge, only with the appropriate citation information. All rights belong to the author. 4 Fantastika Journal • Volume 5 • Issue 1 • May 2021 CONTENTS EDITORIALS THE CENTRE FOR FANTASY AND THE FANTASTIC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW: PRACTISING THE IMPOSSIBLE Rob Maslen 13 ARTICLES “ALL OF HER MADE PART OF […] THE WOOD”: CONSUMPTION, TRANSFORMATION, AND THE LIMITS OF SUBVERSION IN NAOMI NOVIK’S UPROOTED Eilis Lee 18 Dragons, hedge-witches, dashing princes, and a menacing forest: Naomi Novik’s Nebula- winning novel Uprooted (2015) draws on many traditional Slavic and Franco-Germanic fairy-tale patterns, archetypes, and tropes. Continuing the adaptation work of many female writers before her, Novik places women at the heart of her novel, offering its female figures – protagonist Agnieszka, village girl Kasia, scandalous queen Hanna, and the monstrous Wood-queen – roles and powers beyond those which their fairy-tale ancestors could possess. Crucially, Novik attempts to destabilise the dynamics of consumption intrinsic to fairy-tale, in which women are objectified, made passive, and consumed by male gazes and desires. Drawing on the work of folklorists like Cristina Bacchilega and Marcia R. Lieberman, alongside (eco)feminist theory and popular culture scholarship, this article considers the efficacy of Novik’s intervention into these physical, sexual, and figurative consumptive patterns. I assert that through moments of rupture, regeneration, and transformation, Uprooted attempts to break free from the gendered restraints of the fairy-tale model. This transformation is often intrinsically connected to nature: the sentient Wood, Uprooted’s antagonist, is both a corrupting and empowering force, giving Kasia, for example, superhuman strength whilst Othering her from society. Using the scholarship of J. Halberstam, Val Plumwood, and Elizabeth Parker, among others, I thus consider whether naturalisation – a transformative mode typically used to delegitimise and disenfranchise women’s agency and sexuality – and the embracing of dangerous natural forces allow Novik’s women to subvert archetypal fairy- tale stereotypes. Ultimately, however, Uprooted’s interventions into fairy- and folk-tale are not entirely progressive or successful. The novel’s male characters perpetuate damaging stereotypes and consumptive behaviours, including attempted sexual assault; many of its women are punished for expressing their sexuality, ultimately remaining bound to oppressive 5 Fantastika Journal • Volume 5 • Issue 1 • May 2021 CONTENTS heteronormativity and male desires. Even after gaining magical or monstrous power, Novik’s women cannot fully escape objectification or consumption. “WHITE IS NOT MY COLOUR”: PENNY DREADFUL, THE POSTCOLONIAL, AND THE CHANGING GOTHIC HEROINE Carey Millsap-Spears 32 Although much has been written about the traditional Gothic heroine in the seminal Gothic novels, there remains a need to discuss the changing role of female characters in contemporary Gothic televisual texts because these characters often operate outside some of the literary Gothic parameters. The nature of the Gothic genre requires a sacrifice of the female characters, and even Penny Dreadful (2014-2016) as a contemporary Gothic text is not immune to this embedded constraint. This article illustrates both how the conventions of Gothic fiction require the sacrifice of female characters, and how Penny Dreadful, though it presents as a modern, postcolonial series, can still be ultimately discussed as a conservative text. Ultimately, the powerful character of Vanessa Ives does not survive the narrative of Penny Dreadful because she is a transgressive female character in a Gothic structure. Vanessa is not a Female Gothic Heroine in the tradition of Ann Radcliffe, nor is she a Matthew Lewis-like damsel-in-distress from the Male Gothic tradition. Vanessa, through her independent choices, subverts the Gothic heroine, and at the same time, the Gothic, as presented in John Logan’s Penny Dreadful, destabilises colonial attitudes. CONSCRIPTS FROM BIRTH: WAR AND SOLDIERY IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE Mike Ryder 47 Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 universe (hereafter referred to as 40k) is one of the biggest and most well-established Science Fiction universes in circulation today. While it has been critically underrepresented to date, this paper seeks to assert the relevance and value of 40k for analysis, and explore some of the real-world implications of the themes the universe explores. Of particular focus in this paper, is the role of the super-soldier Space Marines, and the historical context of the 40k universe, the Horus Heresy. During this time, the Warmaster Horus fell to Chaos, taking many of his brother-Primarchs with him. These events sparked a galaxy-wide civil war between those loyal to the Emperor, and those loyal to Horus. While the individual Space Marines themselves tended to stay loyal to their Primarchs, the whole Heresy reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of military ethics. Given that the Space Marines are