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Volume 2 Issue 1 FANTASTIKA JOURNAL VOL 2 ISSUE 1 JULY 2018 ISSN: 2514-8915 Fantastika Journal | Volume 2 | Issue 1 | July 2018 “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. FANTASTIKA 1 Fantastika Journal | Volume 2 | Issue 1 | July 2018 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS HEAD EDITOR Charul (Chuckie) Palmer-Patel CRITICAL CO-EDITORS Rebecca Duncan, Francis Gene-Rowe REVIEWS EDITOR Kerry Dodd ASSISTANT FICTION REVIEWS EDITORS Chris Hussey, Antonia Spencer 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. This allows for the reproduction of articles, free of charge, only with the appropriate citation information. 2 Fantastika Journal | Volume 2 | Issue 1 | July 2018 CONTENTS EDITORIALS FANTASTIKA’s ONEIROCRITICON Adam Roberts 11 “AND I BECAME A LEGend”: STORYTELLING, STAR WARS AND THE POLITICS OF MEMORY Andrew Tate 14 A CASE OF ARTIFICIAL JOI: BLADE RUNNER 2049 Brian Baker 20 Articles POST-CYBERPUNK AND THE POTENTIAL ONTOLOGICAL EMANCIPATION OF CYBERSPATIAL EDUCATION IN NEAL STEPHenson’s THE DIAMOND AGE Michael Kvamme-O’Brien 27 This article defines the ‘post’ part of Post-Cyberpunk as it appears in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age (1995). Marketed as a Post-Cyberpunk novel, The Diamond Age adopts some of Cyberpunk’s genre-specific motifs such as setting the novel in a near-future dystopia and embedding cyberspace as a “microworld” (McHale). This article extends and adapts Brian McHale’s definition of Cyberpunk from Constructing Postmodernism (1992) to a definition of Post-Cyberpunk, while showing how Post-Cyberpunk can be considered part of the Romantic tradition. McHale defines Cyberpunk using motifs of “worldness,” motifs of “the centrifugal self,” and motifs of “death both individual and collective.” My analysis shows The Diamond Age is Cyberpunk to the extent it adopts this postmodern worldness and dissolution of self. However, the text is also Post-Cyberpunk because it subverts Cyberpunk’s motifs of individual and collective death. According to Northrop Frye, Romanticism is a “new mythology” that attempts to recover the life-affirming power of nature in magical terms. Stephenson’s subversion of death is Romantic because his protagonist Nell’s quest for a better life is a deliberate rewriting of the life-affirming concerns of Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop (1841). Additionally, Nell’s quest is motivated by the magical realist nanotechnological device – the Primer – which allows her to redefine her world in magical terms. I evaluate the extent to which The Diamond Age is truly Post-Cyberpunk based on Stephenson’s (mis)use of Jung’s spiritual theories and make some suggestions for thinking beyond Stephenson’s version of the genre. 3 Fantastika Journal | Volume 2 | Issue 1 | July 2018 CONTENTS UNSETTLING LANGUAGE: GROTESQUE DESCRIPTION IN THE FLAME ALPHABET Mark Heimermann 41 Ben Marcus’s The Flame Alphabet (2012) draws upon the aesthetics of the grotesque to create a world where categorical distinctions between supposed binaries like animals and humans break down. This is a common preoccupation of the grotesque, which often challenges traditional classifications as a way for forcing readers or viewers to see the world anew. I argue that Ben Marcus challenges human and non-human distinctions as a way of forcing consideration regarding how people dehumanize each other. This dehumanization makes it easier to objectify others. While we often disavow abhorrent behaviour by calling it inhuman, only humans are capable of being inhumane. I argue that in The Flame Alphabet the relationship between metaphor and the grotesque, which both draw upon their ability to force others to see the world anew, is central to the way in which Marcus challenges classifications. Even when Marcus’s figures or images are not literally grotesque, he still uses metaphor to create grotesque juxtapositions based on both appearance and behaviour. He also reveals how the line between victim and victimizer can blur, thus revealing the capacity for people to do harm either through good intentions or a lack of consideration regarding their actions. I argue that The Flame Alphabet’s narrative functions within the realm of the grotesque, and I demonstrate how the concept of the grotesque may simultaneously illuminate both bodies and behaviour. SUBURBAN GOTHIC AND NEOLIBERAL GOTHIC IN STRANGER THINGS (2016) Stuart Lindsay 55 With reference to a range of contemporary Gothic criticism, most notably Bernice M. Murphy’s work on Suburban Gothic, and Linnie Blake and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet’s study of Neoliberal Gothic, this article will analyse the first season of the Netflix-distributed television series, Stranger Things (2016), namely its connection of American suburban life to a neoliberal monstrosity of political and military-industrial dimensions. My argument centres around the series’ single-parent Byers family and their struggle against monstrous forces emerging from a parallel dimension into the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. I claim this event engages with issues of the Suburban Gothic surrounding the single mother as social outcast. The testimony to the supernatural of Joyce Byers, which is explained away as grief resulting from her missing son, Will, reveals the domination of suburbia’s liminal figures by its patriarchal authority. The attacks of literal monstrosity on suburban women, family and the home act as an analogy of American, neoliberal, military-industrial patriarchy – represented by the sinister Hawkins National Laboratory from which the interdimensional invasion originated – exposing its excessive 4 Fantastika Journal | Volume 2 | Issue 1 | July 2018 CONTENTS control over suburbia, its hubris, and mistakes. Despite offering a reconstruction of American 1980s, Stranger Things is relevant to contemporary times. The interdimensional attacks on, and defence of, the Byers suburban home are focused on the walls of the house, rendering them as sites of conflict and horror. In the era that saw Donald Trump’s rise to ultimate political success in part due to his campaign’s discussions concerning improvements to the Mexico-US border wall, Stranger Things taps into an anxiety surrounding the image of the wall as a symbol of American domestic struggle, division, and fear. My analysis furthers this notion to develop the argument that the Hawkins Laboratory constitutes an extended realm of suburbia, exposing the military-industrial and capitalist exploitation of children and mothers as a support for the ideal suburban household, represented by the residence of Stranger Things’ character, Mike Wheeler. THE MAGICAL IS POLITICAL: DECONSTRUCTING THE GENDERED SUPERNATURAL IN TEEN WOLF Tania Evans and Madeline Pettet 68 Fantasy scholars have increasingly recognised that the genre’s key convention, magic, is useful for interrogating accepted ideas about gender and sexuality. Yet little attention has been paid to how magic effects the body, and how it transforms masculine and feminine bodies in different ways. In this paper we build upon existing debates about the magical lycanthropic body to analyse how the supernatural shapes masculine and feminine characters in the MTV young adult series Teen Wolf (2011-2017). Masculine characters in Teen Wolf develop strong, muscular, eroticised bodies, and gain greater access to violence even as they reject this practice as a means of obtaining power. Conversely, supernatural feminine characters are disempowered by magic in ways that reinforce conservative ideas about the female body, femininity, and female sexuality. This is not to say that Teen Wolf unfalteringly promotes subversive masculinities and polices femininities; the text engages in a complex and ongoing ideological struggle over gender normativity and transgression. This interplay is constant throughout Teen Wolf, and by analysing how magic operates upon masculine and feminine subjects, we reveal the complex and often contradictory meanings that young audiences are invited to accept. CHASING CANON IN J. K. ROWLING’S WIZARDING WORLD: TOWARDS A POETICS OF RECEPTION OF TRANSMEDIA STORYWORLDS Katarina O’Dette 81 Are inconsistencies among texts in a transmedia franchise relevant to academics, particularly those interested in textual analysis? Is the question of what constitutes a franchise’s canon
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