Fantastika Journal 3
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FANTASTIKA JOURNAL Vol 3 Issue 1 | January 2019 ISSN: 2514-8915 FANTASTIKA Fantastika Journal | Volume 3 | Issue 1 | January 2019 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 annual conference 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. This issue of Fantastika Journal collects articles that have arisen from the 4th annual Fantastika Conference – Performing Fanastika – which took place at Lancaster University, UK on April 28th & 29th, 2017. #fantastika2017 focused on performative bodies in Fantastika, which included performance in theatrical plays and films, as well as an examination of the body itself. How is the body performed and perceived in Fantastika texts? How do Fantastika texts and our interaction with Fantastika texts modulate our understanding of performative bodies? The cover to this issue, designed by Sing Yun Lee, takes design inspiration from vintage theatre posters. Considering the role of performance and performance arts in the context of our Terran reality, the figure represents the power the performer possesses: she offers the audience a glimpse of other worlds and perspectives even whilst she and they are physically rooted in this one, providing brief but intense moments of illumination. The frontispiece to this issue is taken from the programme cover of the Performing Fantastika conference. It was originally designed by Inés Gregori Labarta as homage to Ted Chiang’s short story “Seventy-two Letters” (2000). Finally, the issue concludes with a number of exciting non-fiction reviews, fiction reviews, and conference reports that have taken place over the last year. If you would like to take part in the writing a report or review for Fantastika Journal, please contact us at [email protected]. 1 Fantastika Journal | Volume 3 | Issue 1 | January 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS HEAD EDITOR Charul (Chuckie) Palmer-Patel CRITICAL CO-EDITORS Rebecca Duncan, Francis Gene-Rowe REVIEWS CO-EDITORS Kerry Dodd, Matthew J. Elder GENERAL EDITOR Chris Hussey ASSISTANT FICTION REVIEWS EDITORS Beáta Gubacsi SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Monica Guerrasio DESIGN EDITOR & COVER ARTIST Sing Yun Lee 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. 2 INÉS GREGORI LABarta Fantastika Journal | Volume 3 | Issue 1 | January 2019 3 Fantastika Journal | Volume 3 | Issue 1 | January 2019 CONTENTS EDITORIALS STEAMPUNK AMBIVALENCES Tajinder Singh Hayer 12 Articles RE-IMAGINING EARLY WOMEN’s DRAMA AS SCIENCE FICTION Beth Cortese 17 This article argues that the origins of Science Fiction theatre can be traced back to the seventeenth century and explores the way in which the performance of Science Fiction in early women’s drama cathartically addresses ‘Otherness’ to expose and shape attitudes towards gender and ethnicity. The seventeenth century witnessed the establishment of the Royal Society, along with the development of the telescope. It is no surprise that amidst such a climate of scientific discovery, colonisation, and travel, seventeenth-century texts express a fascination with the existence of other worlds and of life in outer-space. Francis Godwin’s The Man in the Moone (c.1638) and Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World (1666) have recently been hailed as early prose works of Science Fiction but less attention has been paid to the role of Science Fiction on the seventeenth-century stage. Drawing on Christos Callow and Susan Gray’s theorisation of Science Fiction theatre as “psychological inner space, and the social and political spaces between individuals, groups and societies” (65-66), I analyse the way in which Margaret Cavendish’s private and immersive performance of Utopia in The Lady Contemplation (1667) and Aphra Behn’s public and communal Science Fiction comedy The Emperor of the Moon (1687) cathartically reimagine and question existing relations within their society. As Household Drama performed in the Duchess’s stately home, Cavendish’s The Lady Contemplation presents a private, immersive, and intimate performance of Utopia which relies on the imagination, while Behn’s The Emperor of the Moon makes use of lavish costume, special effects, and painted scenery to create her lunar inhabitants in this public spectacle. I consider how each performance of Science Fiction raises questions about gender, the public and the private sphere, the relationship between the body and the mind, self and other, along with the allure of spectacle and fantastical contemplation as a cathartic exercise. 4 Fantastika Journal | Volume 3 | Issue 1 | January 2019 CONTENTS SPOCK: A STUDY OF THE HOMOROMANTIC/ASEXUAL VULCAN Danielle Girard 31 This article seeks to reread Star Trek’s Vulcan race from a contemporary standpoint as an example of a post-identitarian text that more closely manifests as asexual rather than homoerotic. It explores the evident ties between the Vulcan mating cycle and asexuality as well as several key instances of Spock’s sexual performativity acting opposite to his established character (with a particular focus on “Amok Time,” “Journey to Babel,” and “This Side of Paradise”). The article argues against the binaries of a post-identitarian world and instead explores how Science Fiction texts can be used to locate alternative sexualities and romantic identities in order to remap and reshape assumptions embedded by the heteronormative binary. LISTEN TO THE SKY: INVESTIGATING SOUND IN CULTURAL IMAGES OF THE A-BOMB, FLYING SAUCER, AND SPUTNIK, 1945-58 John Sharples 46 This article investigates the intersection between modernity and Science Fiction in postwar US culture. Focusing on the visual symbols of the flying saucer, the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb, and the Soviet satellite Sputnik, it approaches these new shapes in the sky through the sound impressions they made. In this manner, the article is part of my broader research regarding the sensory cultural history of the time, considering the way specific sense impressions – sight, sound, smell, taste, touch – were used to varying degrees to construct identity and meaning at a time of scientific innovation and new possibilities. Expanding the scope of analysis beyond visual culture and printed culture revives and reanimates historical events, lifting them from the two-dimensional page or screen into the realm of lived, everyday experience. Embracing the novelty of newly domesticated audiovisual technologies including television and radio broadcasts, as well as sounds heard on the street, such as warning sirens or the bleeps of passing satellites, allows one to listen in on the past, adding a new dimension to understandings of the era. The intent here is not to negate the importance that visual sensory impressions played in the construction of identity but rather to suggest that excessive focus on these elements can obscure a number of other messages, of alternative micro-histories, and suggest that the cultural identities of the flying saucer, mushroom cloud, and Sputnik were in no way ‘natural,’ but arose from a shaping of visual sense impressions which was both considered and careless. 5 Fantastika Journal | Volume 3 | Issue 1 | January 2019 CONTENTS NON-FICTION REVIEWS SOUTH AFRICAN GOTHIC: ANXIETY AND CREATIVE DISSENT IN THE POST-apaRTHEID IMAGINATION AND BEYOND (2018) BY REBECCA DUNCAN Review by Madelyn Schoonover 63 HAUNTING MODERNISMS: GHOSTLY AESTHETICS, MOURNING AND SPECTRAL RESISTANCE IN LITERARY MODERNISM (2017) BY MATT FOLEY Review by Lucy Hall 67 TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Children’S GOTHIC: FROM THE WaNDERER TO NOMADIC SUBJECT (2018) BY CHLOÉ GERMAINE BUCKLEY Review by Sarah Olive 70 GOTHIC BRITAIN: DARK PLACES IN THE PROVINCES AND MARGINS OF THE BRITISH ISLES (2018) EDITED BY WILLIAM HUGHES AND RUTH HEHOLT Review by Derek Johnston 73 THE FRIGHTENERS: WHY WE LOVE MONSTERS, GHOSTS, DEATH AND GORE (2018) BY PETER LAWS Review by Rowan Bowman 77 THE SHINING (2017) BY LAURA MEE Review by Kevin Corstorphine 82 ESOTERICISM AND NARRATIVE: THE OCCULT FICTION OF CHARLES WILLIAM (2018) BY AREN ROUKEMA Review by Georgia van Raalte 85 CONFERENCE AND EVENT REPORTS GLASGOW INTERNATIONAL FANTASY CONVERSATIONS (APRIL 26-27, 2018) Conference Report by Ruth Booth 90 6 CONTENTS EMBODIMENT IN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE (MAY