The IntFernoatiounanl Redviewa otf Sicoiennce Fiction 123 Foundation The International Review of Science Fiction In this issue: Will Slocombe in conversation with Alastair Reynolds Una McCormack in praise of Sylvia Engdahl Andrew M. Butler and Nick Hubble on thirty years of the Clarke Award George A. Gonzalez on the politics of globalization in Justice League Unlimited Victor Grech goes god-hunting in Star Trek F o u Anna McFarlane on Neal Stephenson’s Reamde as a critique of gamification n d a Patricia Monk considers the fate of genetically engineered humanity in C.J. Cherryh t i o n Paul Graham Raven proposes a new typology for science fiction V Mark P. Williams on Savoy Books, the New Wave and the New Weird o l . Umberto Rossi’s conference report on why ‘we are all astronauts’ 4 5 . 1 N o . In addition, there are reviews by: 1 2 3 2 Lucas Boulding, Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Carl Freedman, Andrew Hedgecock, Jacob 0 1 Huntley, Paul March-Russell, Joe Norman, Alejandra Ortega, Will Slocombe and Kayte 6 Stokoe Of books by: Kathryn Allan, Greg Bear, Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link, Eileen Gunn, China Miéville, Jayant V. Narlikar, David Ian Paddy, Alastair Reynolds, John Scalzi and Zoran Živković C over image/credit: Alastair Reynolds c/o Barbara Bella (2011). Alastair Reynolds: Interview and Reviews Foundation is published three times a year by the Science Fiction Foundation (Registered Charity no. 1041052). It is typeset and printed by The Lavenham Press Ltd., 47 Water Street, Lavenham, Suffolk, CO10 9RD. Foundation is a peer-reviewed journal. Subscription rates for 2016 Individuals (three numbers) United Kingdom £20.00 Europe (inc. Eire) £22.00 Rest of the world £25.00 / $42.00 (U.S.A.) Student discount £14.00 / $23.00 (U.S.A.) Institutions (three numbers) Anywhere £42.00 / $75.00 (U.S.A.) Airmail surcharge £7.00 / $12.00 (U.S.A.) Single issues of Foundation can also be bought for £7.00 / $15.00 (U.S.A.). All cheques should be made payable to The Science Fiction Foundation. All subscriptions are for one calendar year; please specify year of commencement. Address for subscriptions: The Science Fiction Foundation, c/o 75 Rosslyn Avenue, Harold Wood, Essex, RM3 0RG, U.K. Email: Roger Robinson, [email protected] – all messages should include ‘SFF’ in the subject line. Back issues can be obtained from Andy Sawyer – see contact details below. Editorial address (for submissions, correspondence, advertising): Dr Paul March-Russell, [email protected] Articles should be up to 6000 words in length, double-spaced and written in accordance with the style sheet available at the SF Foundation website (www.sf-foundation.org). Books for review: Please send to Andy Sawyer, Science Fiction Foundation Collection, Sydney Jones Library, University of Liverpool, PO Box 123, Liverpool, L69 4DA, UK. Please clearly mark ‘For Review’. Reviews (up to 1500 words in length) should be sent to [email protected] All contents copyright © 2015 by the Science Fiction Foundation on behalf of the original contributors ISSN 0306-4964258 Foundation The International Review of Science Fiction Editor: Paul March-Russell Book Reviews Editor: Andy Sawyer Editorial Team: Cait Coker, Dean Conrad, Andrew Ferguson, Heather Osborne, Maureen Speller Contents Volume 45.1, number 123, 2016 Paul March-Russell 3 Editorial George A. Gonzalez 5 Justice League Unlimited and the Politics of Globalization Victor Grech 14 Deicide in Star Trek: The Ultimate Expression of Humanism? Anna McFarlane 24 Neal Stephenson’s Reamde: A Critique of Gamification Patricia Monk 37 Ari, Azi and the Future of C.J.Cherryh’s Gengineered Humanity Paul Graham Raven 50 The Rhetorics of Futurity: Scenarios, Design Fiction, Prototypes and Other Evaporated Modalities of SF Mark P. Williams 64 Underground Assemblages: Savoy Dreams and The Starry Wisdom Features Andrew M. Butler and Nick Hubble 78 The Arthur C. Clarke Award: Thirty Years On Will Slocombe 90 Ideas, Inspirations and Influences: An Interview with Alastair Reynolds Una McCormack 101 The Fourfold Library (2): Sylvia Engdahl Umberto Rossi 104 We Are All Astronauts: Conference Report PB 1 Book Reviews Lucas Boulding 108 Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link, eds. The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction Jacob Huntley 111 David Ian Paddy, The Empires of J.G. Ballard Kayte Stokoe 113 Kathryn Allan, ed. Disability in Science Fiction Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay 116 Jayant V. Narlikar, The Return of Vaman Carl Freedman 119 China Miéville, Three Moments of an Explosion Andrew Hedgecock 122 Eileen Gunn, Questionable Practices Paul March-Russell 125 Zoran Živković, The Five Wonders of the Danube Joe Norman 127 Greg Bear, War Dogs Alejandra Ortega 130 John Scalzi, Lock In Will Slocombe 133 Alastair Reynolds, Poseidon’s Wake and Slow Bullets 2 3 Editorial Paul March-Russell In a cinema (actually, a vast number) not that far away (there’s no avoiding it), a certain film landed on Planet Earth. And, somehow, the internet didn’t crack under the weight, first, of expectation and, then, post-credits analysis. Before its opening last December, Star Wars: The Force Awakens had been trailed and dissected for longer, it often felt, than the actual franchise has been in existence. But the welter of commentary since its premiere has been staggering and it seems that everybody has to have an opinion about it. Does the film effectively reboot the franchise for a new audience or merely wallow in nostalgia? Does it have the epic grandeur of the original or is it empty pastiche? Is Rey a feisty new protagonist or an unrealistic superheroine? Is Kylo Ren a suitably menacing villain or a hipster with daddy issues? Is Finn a flawed hero we can identify with or tokenism to tick the diversity box? Is...? And so on, and so on, and so on. As Andrew M. Butler notes in this issue, social media has become an echo chamber. The blogs, posts and forums that have sprung up around The Force Awakens are a perfect example of this phenomenon. I am sure they will provide valuable material for analysts of fan culture. But, what I have read – and, here, I admit my outsider status not only with regards to Star Wars fandom but also the blogosphere – has been fairly disappointing. Not necessarily the quality of the arguments but the need to be seen to have an opinion, an interpretation; to act out the role of critic. It is well-known that the echoing effect of social media has political consequences, deluding us into thinking that the views expressed within an ever-circling network of more or less anonymous friends somehow reflect the views of the offline world. The shock for many in 2015, including the opinion pollsters, when the Conservatives were returned to power in the UK despite the pre-established consensus that the General Election would result in either a hung Parliament or narrow Labour victory was, in part, an effect of this discrepancy between the online and offline worlds. But, the echo chamber of social media also has aesthetic consequences. As the American cultural critic Susan Sontag observed in her 1964 essay, ‘Against Interpretation’: ‘To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world – in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings”. It is to turn the world into this world.’ The virtual space of social media is, quite literally, Sontag’s spectral realm and the mistake of those who inhabit it is to conflate the virtual with the actual. In ‘a culture’, as Sontag puts it, ‘based on excess’, ‘the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience.’ Both the act and volume of interpretation, by overproducing the meaning(s) of the art-object, add to this process, blunting 2 3 our apprehension of the external world. In ‘The Imagination of Disaster’ (1961), Sontag dismissed sf cinema for failing to reflect on real-world conditions that shape Cold War paranoia. I suspect if Sontag was still here she would dismiss The Force Awakens for similar reasons. But, in ‘Against Interpretation’, she moves seamlessly between the avant-garde cinema of Alain Resnais and the equally anti-symbolic qualities of George Cukor and Howard Hawks. So I suggest that sf readers – and more particularly bloggers – should reacquaint themselves with Sontag’s arguments. Her appeal for ‘an erotics’, rather than ‘a hermeneutics’, ‘of art’ would not only clear social media of its congested spaces but would also fashion a critique calculated to read against the grain of Disney merchandising (the true Evil Empire). We might even approximate something of the innocent eye, the uncluttered perspective (say) of a ten-year old boy experiencing his first 3-D blockbuster in a Canterbury cinema on the first day of his Christmas vacation. (He gave the film 9½ out of 10.) Whether or not this edition of Foundation achieves that aim is another matter but it is an eclectic issue that ranges from Justice League Unlimited to Savoy Books. There is a pleasing mix of older and younger scholars, from Patricia Monk – returning to the pages of Foundation after thirty years – to Anna McFarlane, Vector’s co-editor. I am delighted that Butler’s ‘partial history’ of the Arthur C. Clarke Award is complemented by Nick Hubble’s account of the Award and gender diversity since 2000. Equally, Will Slocombe’s interview and reviews of Alastair Reynolds, plus Una McCormack’s feature on Sylvia Engdahl, reaffirm our exploration of the writing process in practice as well as in theory. Lastly, I am pleased to announce that the winner of the 2016 Foundation Essay Prize is Selena Middleton, whose article on Greg Bear’s Queen of Angels (1990) will appear in our summer issue’s special section on utopia and sf.