Review 330 Fall 2019 SFRA
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
SFRA RREVIEWS, ARTICLES,e ANDview NEWS FROM THE SFRA SINCE 1971 330 Fall 2019 FEATURING Area X: Five Years Later PB • SFRA Review 330 • Fall 2019 Proceedings of the SFRASFRA 2019 Review 330Conference • Fall 2019 • 1 330 THE OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL OF THE Fall 2019 SFRA MASTHEAD ReSCIENCE FICTIONview RESEARCH ASSOCIATION SENIOR EDITORS ISSN 2641-2837 EDITOR SFRA Review is an open access journal published four times a year by Sean Guynes Michigan State University the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) since 1971. SFRA [email protected] Review publishes scholarly articles and reviews. The Review is devoted to surveying the contemporary field of SF scholarship, fiction, and MANAGING EDITOR media as it develops. Ian Campbell Georgia State University [email protected] Submissions ASSOCIATE EDITOR SFRA Review accepts original scholarly articles; interviews; Virginia Conn review essays; individual reviews of recent scholarship, fiction, Rutgers University and media germane to SF studies. [email protected] ASSOCIATE EDITOR All submissions should be prepared in MLA 8th ed. style and Amandine Faucheux submitted to the appropriate editor for consideration. Accepted University of Louisiana at Lafayette pieces are published at the discretion of the editors under the [email protected] author's copyright and made available open access via a CC-BY- NC-ND 4.0 license. REVIEWS EDITORS NONFICTION EDITOR SFRA Review does not accept unsolicited reviews. If you would like Dominick Grace to write a review essay or review, please contact the appropriate Brescia University College [email protected] review editor. For all other publication types—including special issues and symposia—contact the editor, managing, and/or ASSISTANT NONFICTION EDITOR associate editors. Kevin Pinkham Nyack College SFRA Review History [email protected] SFRA Review was initially titled SFRA Newsletter and has been FICTION EDITOR Jeremy Brett published since 1971, just after the founding of SFRA in 1970. Texas A&M University The Newsletter changed its named to SFRA Review in 1992 with [email protected] issue #194 to reflect the centrality of an organ for critical reviews of both fiction and scholarship to the SF studies community. The MEDIA EDITOR Leimar Garcia-Siino Newsletter and Review were published 6 times a year until the Independent Scholar early 2000s, when the Review switched to a quarterly schedule. [email protected] Originally available only to SFRA members or sold per issue for a small fee, SFRA Review was made publicly available on the SFRA's ASSISTANT MEDIA EDITOR Thomas Connolly website starting with issue #256. Starting with issue #326, the Maynooth University Review became an open access publication. For more information [email protected] about the Review, visit www.sfra.org/sfra-review. 2 • SFRA Review 330 • Fall 2019 SFRA Review 330 • Fall 2019 • 3 SFRA Review, no. 330, Fall 2019 FROM THE SFRA REVIEW From the Editor ...............................................................................................................................6 From the Managing Editor ............................................................................................................7 Call for Fiction Reviews Editor .....................................................................................................8 Call for Assistant Fiction Reviews Editor ....................................................................................9 FROM THE SFRA EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE From the President .......................................................................................................................10 From the Vice President ...............................................................................................................11 FEATURES Neill Blomkamp's Elysium and SF Allegories of Contemporary Society ..............................12 The SF in Translation Universe #6 ..............................................................................................17 Meet the Future: An Interview with Skye Cervone ..................................................................19 SYMPOSIUM: AREA X: FIVE YEARS LATER On Not Returning Home, an Introduction ...............................................................................23 Mediating VanderMeer’s Area X .................................................................................................25 Annihilation and the Historicity of Horror ...............................................................................29 Not Your Artist Friend: Turning the Tables on the Nonhuman Turn ...................................34 “This End of Everything”: The Southern Reach Trilogy and the Already Ended World ......40 Area X, Tangible Bodies, and the Impossibility of Individuation...........................................49 Symposium Contributor Bios .....................................................................................................55 SYMPOSIUM: PROCEEDINGS OF THE SFRA 2019 CONFERENCE Introduction: Colonialism, Indigeneity, and SF .......................................................................58 Goori-futurism: Envisioning the Sovereignty of Minjungbal-Nganduwal Country, Community, and Culture through Speculative Fiction .....................................................59 Feeling Alternative Futures ..........................................................................................................65 Improving Hawaiian Science Education by Leveraging Science Fiction Conventions .......70 Indigenous Futurisms in Tobias Buckell’s Xenowealth Series .................................................75 “Not One, But Two”: Recognizing the Potentiality of Caribbean Multiplicity through Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber ....................................................................................82 Cultural Appropriation or Much-Needed Representation? On Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning .....................................................................................................................90 “She was standing on the edge of a new world and so ready to jump”: Renovating the Black Technoscientific Genius Trope in Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts ....99 Ways of Knowing: Technology in African Science Fiction ...................................................104 2 • SFRA Review 330 • Fall 2019 SFRA Review 330 • Fall 2019 • 3 A Samoan Socratic Seminar: Pederasty, Hypocrisy, and Freelove ........................................111 Queering the Un-Queer: A Reading of Empire and Queerness in Seemingly Non- Feminist SF ............................................................................................................................118 The Final Frontier: From Utopia to Postcolonialism .............................................................125 Fucking and Copulating: Narrative Authority and Systemic Oppression in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and N. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season.............................134 (Re)Imagined Futures / Revolving Dystopic Presents / Revisionary Pasts: Anglo-Ca- ribbean Speculative Fiction and Relocated Time .............................................................142 Liu Cixin’s Alien Encounter SF as Postcolonial Fantasy ........................................................150 NONFICTION REVIEWS Lingua Cosmica: Science Fiction From Around the World ..................................................156 The Ages of the Justice League: Essays on America’s Greatest Superheroes in Changing Times......................................................................................................................................159 The X-Files and Philosophy .......................................................................................................162 Japan’s Green Monsters: Environmental Commentary in Kaiju Cinema ............................165 Doctor Who and History ...........................................................................................................168 Mr. Robot and Philosophy: Beyond Good and Evil Corp .....................................................170 Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination: Visions, Minds, Ethics ...................................173 The Phantom Unmasked: America’s First Superhero ............................................................176 The Ultimate Game of Thrones and Philosophy: You Think or Die ....................................179 The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy: Subversive Reports from Another Reality 182 FICTION REVIEWS Readymade Bodhisattva: The Kaya Anthology of South Korean Science Fiction .............185 Recursion .....................................................................................................................................188 MEDIA REVIEWS Colossal ........................................................................................................................................191 X-Men: Dark Phoenix ................................................................................................................194 Aniara ...........................................................................................................................................197 4 • SFRA Review 330 • Fall 2019 SFRA Review 330 • Fall 2019 • 5 SFRA Review Editors Emeriti Editors Robert Reginald, 1993 Chris Pak, 2014-2018 Neil Barron, 1990-1992 Michael Klein, 2013 Rob Latham (“Review Editor”), 198?-1989