FANTASTIKA Fantastika Journal | Volume 1 | Issue 2 | December 2017 EDITOR’S NOTE “Fantastika” – a term appropriated from a range of Slavonic languages by John Clute – embraces the genres of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, but can also include Alternative Histories, Gothic, Steampunk, Young Adult Dystopian Fiction, or any other radically imaginative narrative space. The third annual Fantastika conference – Global Fantastika – held at Lancaster University, UK on July 4 & 5, 2016, considered a range of Global topics: productions of Fantastika globally; themes of contact within and across nations and borders; fictional and real empires; themes of globalization and global networks, mobilities, and migrations; and (post)colonial texts and readings, including no- tions of the ‘other.’ Some of the articles in this second issue of Fantastika Journal originate from the conference. The issue also includes articles and reviews from a range of international scholars, some of which are inspired by this Global theme. We are especially pleased to feature editorials from all of the keynotes speakers of the Global Fantastika conference. We hope this special Fantastika issue will stimulate discussion and contemplation of topics that are becoming so crucial and imperative in the world today, as we become a truly global community. Charul (Chuckie) Palmer-Patel HEAD EDITOR 1 Fantastika Journal | Volume 1 | Issue 2 | December 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS HEAD EDITOR Charul (Chuckie) Palmer-Patel CRITICAL CO-EDITORS AND NON-FICTION REVIEWS EDITORS Francis Gene-Rowe, Donna Mitchell FICTION AND NON-FICTION REVIEWS EDITOR Kerry Dodd ASSISTANT FICTION REVIEWS EDITORS Antonia Spencer, Monica Guerrasio DESIGN EDITOR AND COVER DESIGNER 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 down- load 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. All authors publishing with us accept these as the terms of publication. The moral rights of the authors have been asserted, and have not been waived. 2 Fantastika Journal | Volume 1 | Issue 2 | December 2017 CONTENTS EDITORIALS FROM world sf (VIA, IF WE MUST, World Sf) TO world-sf: AN INTRODUCTION Mark Bould 12 WEIRD OR WHAt? – THE NAUTICAL AND THE HAUNTOLOGICAL David Punter 26 FEMINIST REWRITINGS OF THE SPIRITUAL AND PHYSICAL WILDERNESS OF THE BUSH Chloé Germaine Buckley and Sarah Ilott 32 Articles A MYSTERIOUS LIGHT: FLYING SAUCER NARRATIVES IN POST-WAR USA John Sharples 37 This article investigates post-war flying saucer narratives within US popular culture. After the initial sighting by Kenneth Arnold in July 1947 which triggered the phenomenon, the flying saucer began appearing in a variety of media and material forms directed at numerous audiences. Newspaper reports, films, toys, and novels utilised this new cultural form. The flying saucer narrative, its beginnings, public response, and domestication, are considered as a whole and through an individual text. In particular, this article will consider Lucrece Hudgins Beale’s 1954 children’s story Santa and the Mars King – perhaps the earliest intersection of flying saucers and Santa Claus. Santa and the Mars King was one of the annual children’s stories Beale wrote between 1942 and 1968. These stories were serialised and syndicated by the Associated Press to member newspapers, beginning with Santa and the Skeptic and ending with Santa and the Hippies. Each involved a topical theme, presenting the concerns of the time comedically, but not entirely carelessly. Appearing ten years after Arnold’s 1947 sighting, Beale’s story reveals the way the saucer could become intertwined with other cultural mythologies of the age. Santa and the Mars King begins with a flying saucer sighting, a sceptical response from the public, and its investigation by the child protagonist, named Tom. Discovering that the saucers have disturbed local witches and Santa’s reindeer, threatening Christmas, Tom flies to Mars and attempts to save the day. Beale’s text highlights the malleability of the flying saucer myth, particularly the disconnection between visual identity and other signifiers; the way flying saucer narratives raised issues of belief and superstition; and the way cultural processes sought to contain and domesticate unfamiliar, uncanny elements. 3 Fantastika Journal | Volume 1 | Issue 2 | December 2017 CONTENTS FROM LOVECRAFT TO HELLBOY: THE CARNIVALESQUE FACE OF THE LOVECRAFTIAN Valentino Paccosi 51 This article analyses the comic book series Hellboy, created in 1993 by American artist and writer Mike Mignola, and the films Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008), by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, in order to shed some light on the nature of the Lovecraftian in the graphic novel and film medium. Using the theories elaborated by Mikhail Bakhtin in his book Rabelais and His World (1965), I will demonstrate how the niche nature of the Lovecraftian can be mixed with other genres and modes in order to make it more appealing to a mainstream audience, without destroying its core element, but turning them into a new reading of the Lovecraftian. In my analysis I will consider the Lovecraftian not as a genre, but as a mode that has some specific characteristics which give to each genre a ‘flavour.’ This approach will allow me to demonstrate howHellboy ’s comics and films, despite being very different from what is considered the ‘Lovecraft canon,’ are still texts which belong to the Lovecraftian and use its elements in order to renovate it. Moreover, these case studies will help setting the foundations for future studies on canon revisions and the necessity of having one at all. TICKETS Please! – TRAINS, STATIONS AND TRAVEL IN THE WORKS OF CHINA MIÉVILLE Chris Hussey 64 The motif of the train appears to be of great importance within the work of China Miéville, with over a third of his novels featuring them, and related elements such as rails, stations, and travel holding a central role within a number of his texts. Some references to trains in Miéville’s work are overt, appearing within the titles of his novels or are visually represented on their covers. In this article, I will examine the world that Miéville crafts, exploring the role of trains within a fantastic setting; and the role of the train as coloniser, or colonial agent, one which exercises control over the landscape and populace. It will explore what the train signifies and represents in terms of aspects of mobility, technology, and innovation, as well as their narrative function within his work, focusing on the texts Perdido Street Station (2000), Iron Council (2004), Un Lun Dun (2007), and Railsea (2012). Drawing on a range of theory on both the social and cultural impact of the train, this paper examines the train’s symbolic nature in Miéville’s work, and concludes by reflecting on the role and function of trains within his writing, including the implications for their usage within his corpus of texts. 4 Fantastika Journal | Volume 1 | Issue 2 | December 2017 CONTENTS DECENTRING AN ISOLATED CULTURE: EXPLORING MAGIC AND CONTACT ZONES IN JIM BUTCHer’s THE CODEX ALERA Matthew J. Elder 78 By examining the intermingling of culturally distinct magic within the three contact zones present in Jim Butcher’s The Codex Alera (2004-2009), the reader is afforded insight into how such transcultural exchanges occur. This contemporary Fantasy series also presents a societal group with an assumed position of cultural isolation and hegemonic superiority; this group is then used to explore the inherent flaws in, and issues with, that position which denies the existence and influence of transcultural exchange. Through an application of Mary Louise Pratt’s contact zones (“Arts of the Contact Zone,” 1991), Arjun Appadurai’s understanding of globalisation and cultural identity construction via distinct, disjunctive flows of power (Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, 1996), and a discussion of the performative, transcultural exchange occurring within those cultural contexts, Butcher’s texts then highlight the role that Fantasy is playing in critiquing the relevant social issues of our contemporary globalised world. NON-FICTION REVIEWS PENTECOSTAL MODERNISM: LOVECRAFT, LOS ANGELES, AND WORLD-SYSTEMS CULTURE BY PHILIP BERNARD AND STEPHEN SHAPIRO (BLOOMSBURY, 2017) Review by James Machin 92 TELLING IT SLANT: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO HELEN OYEYEMI EDITED BY CHLOÉ GERMAINE BUCKLEY AND SARAH ILOTT (SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS, 2017) Review by Rachel Fox 96 SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, AND POLITICS: TRANSMEDIA WORLD-BUILDING BEYOND CAPITALISM BY DAN HASSLER-FOREST (ROWMAN AND LITTLEFIELD, 2016) Review by Peter J. Maurits 100 HAUNTED LANDSCAPES EDITED BY RUTH HEHOLT AND NIAMH DOWNING (ROWMAN AND LITTLEFIELD, 2016) Review by James Machin 104 5 CONTENTS SCIENCE FICTION CRITICISM: AN ANTHOLOGY OF ESSENTIAL WRITINGS BY ROB LATHAM