Foundation the International Review of Science Fiction Foundation 119 the International Review of Science Fiction
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Foundation The International Review of Science Fiction Foundation 119 The International Review of Science Fiction In this issue: Matt Englund reassesses Philip K. Dick’s Galactic Pot Healer George A. Gonzalez explores US military policy in Star Trek Foundation Samantha Kountz analyses the representation of immigration in post-war sf cinema Erica Moore evaluates the post-Darwinism of J.G. Ballard’s Crash Nick Hubble reflects on the legacy of 2000 AD Iain M. Banks and Kim Stanley Robinson in conversation on the subject of utopia Vol. 43 No.119 2014 43 No.119 Vol. Conference reports by Paul Kincaid, Paul March-Russell and Robin Anne Reid In addition, there are reviews by: Jeremy Brett, Molly Cobb, Leimar Garcia-Siino, Lincoln Geraghty, Grace Halden, Andrew Hedgecock, Anna McFarlane, Joe Norman, Andy Sawyer, Will Slocombe, Tom Sykes and Michelle K. Yost Of books by: Jeannette Baxter and Rowland Wymer, David Brittain, Stefan Ekman, Simon Ings, Graham Joyce, Paul McAuley, Howard E. McCurdy, Jonathan Oliver, Christopher Sims, Graham Sleight, David C. Smith, and Thomas Van Parys and I.Q. Hunter Cover image/credit: Ian Gibson 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 2015 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 © 2014 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 43, number 119, 2014 Paul March-Russell 3 Editorial Matt Englund 5 The Rejected Text: Expectation and Disappointment in Galactic Pot Healer George A. Gonzalez 16 Star Trek, American Military Policy and the Developing World Samantha Kountz 29 We Come in Peace: Immigration in Post-Cold War Science Fiction Film Erica Moore 41 Concrete and Steel Evolution in Crash Nick Hubble 58 Review-Essay: The Legacy of 2000 AD Val Nolan 65 ‘Utopia is a way of saying we can do better’: Iain M. Banks and Kim Stanley Robinson in Conversation Conference Reports Robin Anne Reid 77 Biology and Manners: The Work of Lois McMaster Bujold Paul Kincaid 81 Irradiating the Object: The Work of M. John Harrison Paul March-Russell 84 SF/F Now 1 Book Reviews Molly Cobb 87 Howard E. McCurdy, Space and the American Imagination Leimar Garcia-Siino 90 Stefan Ekman, Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings Lincoln Geraghty 94 Thomas Van Parys and I.Q. Hunter, eds. Science Fiction Across Media: Adaptation/ Novelization Anna McFarlane 96 Christopher Sims, Tech Anxiety: Artificial Intelligence and Ontological Awakening in Four Science Fiction Novels Joe Norman 99 Jeannette Baxter and Rowland Wymer, eds. J.G. Ballard: Visions and Revisions Andy Sawyer 101 David Brittain, Eduardo Paolozzi at New Worlds: Science Fiction and Art in the Sixties Tom Sykes 103 David C. Smith, The Journalism of H.G. Wells: An Annotated Bibliography Michelle K. Yost 105 Graham Sleight, The Doctor’s Monsters: Meanings of the Monstrous in Doctor Who Jeremy Brett 107 Paul McAuley, A Very British History: The Best Science Fiction Stories of Paul McAuley, 1985-2011 Grace Halden 110 Jonathan Oliver, ed. End of the Road Andrew Hedgecock 112 Graham Joyce, The Year of the Ladybird: A Ghost Story Will Slocombe 114 Simon Ings, Wolves 2 Editorial Paul March-Russell I am writing this editorial on 14th December 2014 – towards the end of my first year as editor of Foundation – and science fiction and fantasy are the flavour of the month. The nationwide BFI season, Days of Fear and Wonder, and the British Library exhibition, Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination (curiously similar titles, those), have been accompanied by coverage in the press, on national radio and BBC TV. The screenings and exhibits have been excellent – the coverage less so. Chief offender has been Dominic Sandbrook’s ‘unearthly history of science fiction’, a disappointingly earthbound series grouped around four tropes – space, invasion, robots and time – that has failed to apply either critical rigour or historical knowledge. Instead, a procession of clichés has been paraded plus the obligatory interviews with the stars of screen (sf literature apparently having ended sometime in the 1960s). None of this should be a surprise. Although sf has been posited as being in the vanguard of a geek culture that has allegedly conquered the mainstream, the opposite is true. The mainstream has assimilated the most digestible products of an emergent, and potentially dissident, culture. This is what capitalism does. Likewise, Sandbrook’s series is in love with screen images, rather than the printed word; TV – like the rest of the capitalist economy – is narcissistic: it desires its own image. TV loves to talk about itself but rarely (pace Jean-Luc Godard) does it play with itself – which is why I am looking forward instead to Charlie Brooker’s Christmas special of Black Mirror (16th December). What dominates this week’s cover of Radio Times, however, is Doctor Who (Peter Capaldi) hovering over the shoulder of Santa Claus (a bewigged Nick Frost). Presumably, it’s Santa rather than Father Christmas because – as he makes clear inside – Steve Moffatt is only concerned with how the series will rate with US viewers. Capitalism rules OK, UK? The fact that the most recent season was an unwatchable train-wreck is of little consequence. But why should that matter? It’s only entertainment, after all. Well no, it does and no, it’s not. Precisely because Moffatt has become so concerned with branding and marketing the series, Doctor Who carries more significance than simply being the longest-running sf serial in TV history. It has become, especially in the wake of the 2012 Olympics, an emblem of Britishness. And since, as Sandbrook’s lamentable history shows, mainstream culture is only concerned with images that it can feast upon, Doctor Who has become the icon by which British sf is known and consumed. Instead, Doctor Who’s mass appeal is, in Marxist terms, a reification; a forgetting of what has made British sf in recent years into a vital phenomenon. 3 If Moffatt really wanted to innovate – as, to be fair, he did show in the first two seasons of Matt Smith’s Doctor – he could have introduced writers who contributed to the British Boom. Writers like Graham Joyce, whose sudden death saddened so many, and whose last book is reviewed in this issue. Instead, we got Frank Cottrell Boyce, a fine writer but significantly the storyteller of the London Olympics. Boyce’s story, a fairy-tale variant of the Gaia theory, was one of the more interesting efforts but it still played into a capitalist myth that the earth will endure, its resources will still be available for humanity to exploit, that the eco-system is there to protect us. But, as last August’s SF/F Now conference emphasized, it isn’t and the earth probably won’t. The greatest disservice sf can do is to lie about – to mystify or to reify – what is scientifically the most likely outcome. Instead, as SF Foundation patron Ursula Le Guin argued at November’s National Book Awards, sf writers – ‘realists of a larger reality’ – have a duty to imagine our way out of our current situation, but only from where we presently stand. No quick fixes, no clichés, no fairy tales. This really is why writers and commentators like Moffatt and Sandbrook are such a sham, and why this issue’s conversation on utopias between Iain M. Banks and Kim Stanley Robinson offers a necessary corrective. This issue also features two complementary articles by George Gonzalez and Samantha Kountz on race and racism in Star Trek and Hollywood sf cinema whilst Matt Englund and Erica Moore reassess Philip K. Dick’s neglected novel, Galactic Pot Healer (1969), and J.G. Ballard’s post-Darwinian (and post-human) masterpiece, Crash (1973). Nick Hubble re-evaluates the legacy of the comic, 2000 AD, through four recent graphic novels. For this issue, we have also adjusted the font. After a three-issue experiment with Century Gothic, we’re hoping that Arial will be an improvement.