324 Spring 2018

Editor

Chris Pak SFRA [email protected] A publicationRe of the Scienceview Fiction Research Association Nonfiction Editor Dominick Grace In this issue Brescia University College, 1285 Western Rd, London ON, N6G 3R4, Canada. SFRA Review Business Phone: 519-432-8353 ext. 28244. Appreciation...... 2 [email protected] Magical Thinking...... 2 Assistant Nonfiction Editor Kevin Pinkham SFRA Business College of Arts and Sciences, Ny- We Rock!...... 3 ack College, 1 South Boulevard, #SFRA2018...... 4 Nyack, NY 10960. Phone: 845-675-4526845-675- The Fall of the Tower: One Feminist Science Fiction Reader Responds to 4526. Losing Ursula K. Le Guin...... 5 [email protected]

Fiction Editor Feature 101 Jeremy Brett Silicon-Based Life Forms in Star Trek...... 7 Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, Texas A&M University, Cushing Memorial Library & Nonfiction Reviews Archives, 5000 TAMU College A Sense of Apocalypse: Technology, Textuality, Identity...... 10 Station, TX 77843. [email protected] Company and Fellowship: Two Views of the Inklings...... 11 Creating Life from Life: Biotechnology and Science Fiction...... 15 Media Editor The Inklings Coloring Book...... 16 Leimar Garcia-Siino Gothic Science Fiction: 1818 to the Present...... 17 Atlantic University College, Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, USA. Fiction Reviews [email protected] Beneath the Sugar Sky...... 19 Submissions The Stone Sky...... 20 The SFRA Review encourages sub- Binti: The Night Masquerade...... 21 missions of reviews, review essays that cover several related texts, inter- views, and feature articles. Submis- sion guidelines are available at http:// Media Reviews www.sfra.org/ or by inquiry to the ap- Star Trek: Discovery: Season 1...... 23 propriate editor. All submitters must Annihilation...... 24 be current SFRA members. Contact the Editors for other submissions or for correspondence. Announcements The SFRA Review (ISSN 1068-395X) Call for Papers—Conference...... 27 is published four times a year by the Call for Papers—Articles...... 27 Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA). Individual issues are not for sale; however, all issues after 256 are published to SFRA’s Website (http:// www.sfra.org/).

PB SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 1 SFRA Review Business INCOMING EDITOR'S MESSAGE Magical Thinking EDITOR'S MESSAGE Sean Guynes-Vishniac Appreciation IN THEIR TEXTBOOK This Thing Called Literature, Chris Pak Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle call literature a tool for “magical thinking.” I like teaching Bennett and SALUTATIONS and welcome to another issue of the Royle’s book in my Intro to Literary Studies course SFRA Review. This instalment comes amidst a time of precisely because of its emphasis on the magic, change as I prepare to leave the helm to our incoming the alchemy of difference, that literary encounters make possible for university students, lay readers, will appear shortly after SFRA 2018. I’m excited to and of course scholars (it also makes for a good seeeditor, how Sean the SFRA Guynes-Vishniac, Review transforms whose under first Sean’s issue defense of why I rarely teach anything “canonical” capable guidance, and am proud to have had the opportunity to help steer the publication along its have some stake in the “magical” (sorry, Suvinians) course over the last four years. It’s a curious thing, in my courses). As scholars of science fiction, we television, comics, video games, and other popular to think how the publication that I intended to shape thinking made possible by literature, as well as film, alsolooking ended back up to shaping the first me. issue Through that Imy edited role asin editor2014, Through the reviews and essays curated under his I’ve had the opportunity to meet and work with many tenurenarrative as editor forms of to SFRA which Review science, Chris fiction Pak has clings. kept people who have provided intellectual stimulation, support and friendship. While this is my last issue as editor, I’m looking forward to many more years as a providedthe magic aof virtual our field critical alive, probedgathering the space depths for of SFRAwhat member of the SFRA. membersscience fiction outside studies the conferencescan offer the and humanities, more formal and Immediately following this column is a message academic journals. As the incoming editor, I intend from our incoming editor. Sean brings a body of to keep SFRA Review a lively locus of SFRA activity. experience that promises to energise the SFRA So send us your reviews, send us your essays, and Review, and I’m sure you’ll all join me in welcoming let’s build the future of the review together. him at the helm. In the rest of this issue, Marleen S. A few words about me, so you know what SFRA’s Barr offers a heartfelt reaction to the news of Ursula getting itself into with this transition. I’m a doctoral K. Le Guin’s death in “The Fall of the Tower: One candidate in the Department of English at Michigan Feminist Science Fiction Reader Responds to Losing State University, where I’m writing a dissertation Ursula K. Le Guin.” In “Silicon-Based Life Forms (tentatively) titled A Future Imperfect: American in Star Trek,” Victor Grech and Sinagra Emanuel Science Fiction and the Midcentury Crisis, which explore the franchise’s fascination with alternative rethinks so-called “golden age” (and especially structural foundations for life. And, as always, our and crisis over social, political, and historical shifts reviews complete the issue. in1950s) the US science and the fiction world as during a period the of postwar anxiety, and concern, early regularAll that series remains of non-fiction,is for me to fictionoffer my and warmest media Cold War years. This project began with my interest thanks: to the EC committees and review editors in the Futurians, a group of leftist sf fans and writers with whom I’ve collaborated over the years, past that included Asimov, Blish, Knight, Kornbluth, and present, and to my fellow SFRAers who’ve made Merril, Pohl, and Wollheim, among others, in the late editing the SFRA Review such a rewarding endeavor. 1930s and early 1940s. I also work on the history of fantasy, transmedia franchises, and to a lesser extent comics. I've co-edited Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling (Amsterdam UP, 2017) and Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics (The Ohio State UP, forthcoming).

2 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 3 I’m also the former editorial assistant to The SFRA Business Journal of Popular Culture and current book reviews editor of Foundation: The International Review of PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Science Fiction. I’m looking forward to bringing my experience to the SFRA Review, to working with the We Rock! editorial team and SFRA board members, and to producing a review that you will enjoy reading every Keren Omry few months. Qapla’! CONFERENCES, conferences, conferences! So much of what we do as scholars, students, and researchers seems to begin with or culminate in a conference; a bringing together of people for dialogue. Whether it’s within a panel, during the Q&A, or over the drinks that so often follow, I’ve often found that many of best ideas as well as my warmest acquaintances come from these meetings. I’m just back from one of the biggest American Studies conferences outside the US, the European Association of American Studies, hosted this year by the British AAS, where it seems as though more and more scholars from outside the world of sf are twigging onto the fact that, well, frankly, we rock. We’ve known this all along of course. During this conference, I had the great pleasure not only of joining forces with numerous long-standing SFRAers but of attending an entire array of sf-related panels, often in the guise of a ‘regular’ panel, a

video games and virtual environments, science and reflective roundtable, even a keynote. These were on detectives, afro-futurism, folk music, and on and on andeco-imaginings, on. It has become films, verynovels, clear superheroes, that speculation, animals, in the generic sense, has become a primary currency in the exchange of ideas. Obviously, I’m preaching to the choir here but it’s a fascinating realization. The EAAS has several networks, among them a women’s network and a visual culture & media studies network, and others, which can provide exciting and fruitful avenues of collaboration for our members. These are certainly potential platforms for our European-based contingent to continue spreading the word of sf and worth looking out for. Where possible we’ll continue to share information on sf- related conferences and events. Last time I wrote, the SFRA Awards committees were just wrapping up their deliberations and the conference call was just about to be sent out; Chris Pak, our trusty SFRA Review Editor had just decided to step down, and EC elections were far in the future. Since then, our well-deserving award winners have been announced; what looks like a 2 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 3 VICE-PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE new Editor for the SFRA Review has been selected; andfabulous we’re conferencefast approaching program the next is being elections finalized; for two a #SFRA2018 Executive Committee members. As you can see, it’s been a very busy quarter! I want to express deepest Gerry Canavan gratitude and appreciation to the award committee members, the tireless conference organizers, the ACCEPTANCES ARE OUT for SFRA 18 and additional SFRA Review Editor, and my colleagues on the EC. information will be coming your way over the next All of these positions are volunteer-work and they few months. We at Marquette are incredibly excited demand incredible commitment, dedication, time, to host the conference and are eagerly looking and effort. With this in mind, I’d like to encourage forward to hosting panels on neo-cyberpunk, race our members to consider volunteering for one of the award committees and/or running for one of the two animals and ecology, video games, sex work, William and empire, artificial intelligence, the Singularity, positions coming up for election after the conference: Gibson, Philip K. Dick, and much, much more besides. Vice President and Treasurer. We will be sending out I can’t wait to see you all in Milwaukee! If you can’t make it, follow the action at #SFRA18 on Twitter. meantime if you have any questions about any one In the meantime, we’ll be announcing the location ofmore these specific positions—or information if you’re in due unsure course but but feel in likethe for SFRA 2019 and 2020 soon. We’ll also be soliciting you want to know a bit more, please do reach out to the slate for the interim elections for vice-president me or to anyone else on the Executive Committee. and treasurer; if you are interested in serving on the We’ll be more than happy to convince you! I want to executive committee in either capacity, please write end by warmly congratulating Sean Guynes-Vishniac me or David Higgins for details on the positions and for being selected to be our incoming SFRA Review what the work entails. Being the VP of SFRA has Editor and wish you luck in the new position! been a very positive experience and I’m sorry to see I look forward to seeing you all in Milwaukee. it come to an end. The @SFRAnews and Facebook sites continue to promote CFPs and other events of interest to the

have an event to promote, please send me an email! scienceFinally, fiction I’d also studies like researchto welcome community; Sean Guynes- if you Vishniac in his new role as editor of SFRA Review and offer a heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Chris Pak for his many years of exemplary, tireless service. Thank you so much Chris!

4 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 5 The Fall of the Tower: One from this distinguished group because her mother Feminist Science Fiction Reader Le Guin grew up surrounded by Ishi’s participation Responds to Losing Ursula K. Le inand two her worlds. father It were is this professionals Ishi-centered in anthropological the same field. interaction which informs the interplanetary cultural Guin constructs in her Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, The Marleen S. Barr Word for World Is Forest, and The Dispossessed. I think Le Guin’s childhood exposure to her I WAS WATCHING the PBS News Hour on January 22 mother’s focus upon Ishi is the basis for her when I suddenly saw a picture of Ursula K. Le Guin astounding ability to think outside the western appear on the upper left hand corner of my television cultural patriarchal box. In The Left Hand of Darkness, screen. The thought that such pictures are only Genly Ai, an anthropologist emissary, experiences an alternative to gender difference which is affecting In the split second between the appearance of that to the extent that readers become estranged from pictureshown whenand anchor people Judy die flashedWoodruff through matter my of mind.factly stating that Le Guin had died, I hoped against hope ‘The King was pregnant’—to my mind the most scientific gender norm reality. Genly’s observation that maybe Le Guin was being pictured to celebrate startling sentence in contemporary literature—does her latest achievement. When Woodruff said the not sound dissonant to readers. Ishi, the last of his kind, might have inspired Le Guin to create society’s ‘no,’ and thrust my arm toward the television. It only abused child in “The Ones Who Walk Away from wasdefinitive the loudest word and ‘died,’ most I clenched resounding my ‘no’ fist, I shriekedhad ever Omelas.” American Indians, who revered nature and uttered—what my teacher Leslie Fiedler called No! did not embrace western technology, could have In Thunder. inspired the ‘churten transilience’—spaceships I have calmly experienced deaths of people close fueled by telling stories, i.e. by reader response to me as well as the demise of celebrity authors. I theory—Le Guin described in “The Shobies’ Story.” want to use this piece to try to understand why my response to Le Guin’s death was so visceral. I generate mother—the anthropological work of Theodora I believe that the influence of her professional meaning via my experience as a feminist science Kroeber—made Le Guin extraordinary. Le Guin, the daughter of an accomplished mother, was the as emerging from within the reader. I refer to the branchfiction scholarof literature steeped and inpsychology defining interpretationtheory called I shrieked ‘no’ when Le Guin died—and merely mother of the science fiction community. I think reader response criticism. manifested silent mourning upon the death of other Le Guin, born on October 21, 1929, was the only daughter of two anthropologists: Alfred L. Kroeber, something other and larger than the death of an celebrity writers—because Le Guin’s death signified an expert on the Native Americans of California, and Theodora Quinn Kroeber, who wrote the acclaimed community who, like Queen Elizabeth, seemed individual. Le Guin was a pillar of the science fiction study of California’s “last wild Indian” Ishi In Two always to be permanently there to offer direction Worlds. The Kroeber family spent summers at an and stability. I did not respond to Le Guin’s death in old Napa Valley ranch called Kishamish where terms of the demise of a person. I felt exactly as I did intellectuals and California Indians gathered. To when—as a native New Yorker and an eyewitness understand Le Guin’s achievement, it is important to the event—the World Trade Center towers fell down. The death of Le Guin is the loss of science literary lionesses experienced separation from mundaneto recognize western that society science during fiction’s their great childhoods, doyenne iconic American literary genius. fiction’s rock solid mother, the loss of a towering their versions of retreating to Kishamish. Doris I coined the term “textism” to denote discrimination Lessing grew up in Southern Rhodesia; James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon) went on several family trips to against science fiction. I devoted my professional central Africa; Margaret Atwood spent much of her derided the extent that it was called “crap.” Feminist life to science fiction criticism, a genre which was childhood in the back woods of northern Quebec with her entomologist father. Le Guin stands out even beyond the pale of crap. Le Guin, creator of the science fiction was once upon a time seen as being 4 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 5 country called Orsinia, in addition to being part of Afraid of Connecting Ursula Le Guin to Virginia the pride of literary lions extraordinaire, was loved Woolf?” Foundation) by us all because, to use the parlance of the moment, that Le Guin is the Virginia Woolf of our “shithole country.” When she asked questions such time. I now realize that this statement asshe “Why rescued Are scienceAmericans fiction Afraid from of beingDragons?” called the a needs revision: Le Guin is the American Shakespeare for all time which the science articulating the loudest roar emanating from science science fiction community heard Le Guin, our pride, Le Guin was a liberator, a Simone de Beauvoir, Lefiction Guin’s community rest is silence. bequeaths There to will the future.be no more afiction’s Simone pride Bolivar. of literary In 1994, lions. I wrote (in “Searoad new Ursula K. Le Guin stories. We will celebrate the Chronicles Of Klatsand as a Pathway Toward New stories she gave us for the rest of human history. Directions in Feminist Science Fiction: Or, Who’s

6 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 7 Feature 101 and tin lie below carbon and silicon on the periodic table but these are correspondingly heavier elements which therefore form weaker bonds with Silicon-Based Life Forms in Star other atoms and are less capable of producing the long and complex molecules that are thought to be Trek required for life. Victor Grech and Sinagra Emanuel This article will review the varied depictions of silicon based life in Star Trek (ST) and will then Introduction discuss the chemical possibilities and properties of LIFE REQUIRES a veritable legion of complex such life. molecules in order to exist. The formation of such molecules necessitates key atoms that bind stably Episodes with other atoms in order to form long and complex Quite early in the ST timeline, it is stated that on an chains of molecules. The periodic table contains “M class planet. All life forms down there should over a hundred different types of elements but only be carbon-based” and not silicon based (Vejar, a very few have this requisite property. "Observer Effect"). “M-class” stands for “Minshara- The human body is composed of a small handful class, […] suitable for humanoid life” (Livingston, of different elements, with over 97% of the body “Strange New World”). composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, Indeed, in another episode, when the ship engineer phosphorous, sulfur, calcium, iron, potassium, claimed that he saw aliens emerging from rocks, it sodium and zinc. turned out to be a simple hallucination (Livingston, Carbon is the crux, forming the basis of so-called "Strange New World"). A century later, it is still organic chemistry since this element is arguably believed, including by the Doctor, that “silicon-based the best at forming bonds with the abovementioned life is physiologically impossible, especially in an elements. In addition, carbon is also capable of easily forming long chains with itself, resulting in long and branching complex molecules with diverse existoxygen for atmosphere.” brief periods The in [our] Science atmosphere Officer is before not as properties. Indeed, no other element is capable of returninginflexible, speculatingto its own “Doctor,environment.” [such a] Shortly creature after can so readily forming large and complex molecules this exchange, the heretofore entrenched viewpoint as carbon. This is partly because each carbon is overturned with the discovery of the viviparous atom can bond to four other atoms. Despite these Horta species (Pevney, “The Devil in the Dark”). molecules’ inherent stability, they are relatively The creature is accidentally shot by a phaser and easily rearranged and transformed into different the Captain enjoins the Doctor: “It’s wounded. Badly. molecules with the help of enzymes. Moreover, You've got to help it.” The doctor is taken aback carbon is common on Earth and therefore readily “Help that? […]. You can’t be serious. That thing is available for the chemistry of life. virtually made out of stone! […] I’m a doctor, not a It is commonly believed that life can only be based bricklayer.” The Captain refuses to take no for an on carbon, an assumption that Carl Sagan termed answer: “you’re a healer. There’s a patient. That's an “carbon chauvinism” in 1973 (46), while admitting order.” Spock is sympathetic to the Doctor, informing that carbon is more abundant and therefore a likelier the Captain “that this is a silicon-based form of life. candidate to support life on other planets (47). Doctor McCoy’s medical knowledge will be totally Victor Stenger has taken this further, questioning useless.” The resourceful Doctor however succeeds: our basic assumptions about life by stating that it is “molecular chauvinism” to assume that molecules It won’t die. By golly, Jim, I’m beginning to are required at all for life to occur (Silber). think I can cure a rainy day. […] I cured it. […] I had the ship beam down a hundred pounds elements other than carbon, and the most favoured is of […] thermoconcrete […] the kind we use to silicon.Science This fiction is because is replete silicon with is stories just under of life carbon based on in build emergency shelters out of. It’s mostly the periodic table and is therefore also theoretically silicon. So I just trowelled it into the wound, capable of forming complex molecules. Germanium and it’ll act like a bandage until it heals. Take 6 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 7 a look. It’s as good as new. neutronium mantle of a collapsed star” (Eastman, “Prey”). Silicon based life in ST has been shown to occur in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from Discussion microscopic to huge structures. The smallest life Silicon is considered the likeliest substitute for carbon form seen in the series was a silicon-based virus as the base element for life. In 1891, the German that rather improbably infected members of the Enterprise crew (Vejar, “Observer Effect”). This was silicon might be a suitable replacement for carbon. of meteoric origin and highly contagious, producing Jamesastrophysicist Emerson Julius Reynolds Scheiner pointed first out speculated that the heat that stability of silicon compounds may allow life to exist pain, sweating, and mental confusion followed by at very high temperatures (Darling 373). lossflu-like of consciousness symptoms of and coughing, death. vomiting, physical Silicon is abundant in the universe (Croswell) An engineered form of life is also depicted: and belongs to the same group of the periodic table “silicon-based parasites which feed on duranium of elements as carbon itself. For example, carbon forms alkanes and the silicon analogues are silanes. gene sequences. The parasites are synthetic.” They Carbon can form long chains of alkanes as well as werealloys. created […]. We by analysedthe renegade them members and found of artificialan alien other hydrocarbons based on carbon-carbon bonds. generation ship who wish to break it down into smaller parts in order to escape from the main group analogous to the saturated alkanes with a silicon (Livingston, “The Disease”). numberHowever, greater it is difficult than 8. to prepare and isolate silane The “microbrain” of Velara III was somewhat larger Silicon based chains can form when another and constituted a sentient and highly intelligent element is found in the chain. Examples of this are life form. The composition is described as “silicon. the silicone compounds in which silicon and oxygen Germanium. […] Transistor material. […] Gallium alternate in the backbone of a polymeric material. In fact, silicon-oxygen chains are found in silicone impurities, sodium salts. […] Conductor” thereby furtherarsenide. emphasising […] Cadmium the selenide alienness sulfide. of this […] life. Water, It is very stable materials. described by the Enterprise crew as “very beautiful,” rubbers,One feature glass of fibres life is andthe passing quartz andon of these information are all an unreciprocated sentiment as the aliens refer to through DNA. It has been conceived that other humans as “ugly giant bags of mostly water” (Allen, compounds might be capable of storing information “Home Soil”). just as DNA stores information in a chain. One The humanoid Excalbians are depicted as a possibility is a mineral that might store information shapeshifting species, “almost mineral. Like living in two dimensions. Crystal growth occurring when rock with heavy fore claws” (Daugherty, “The Savage new atoms arrive on the crystal surface would Curtain”). be analogous to the initiation of a new organism, The largest silicon life form in ST is the “crystalline carrying information from one generation to the entity,” a spaceborne cosmozoan that is able to attain next. However, there is no evidence that minerals supraluminal velocities (Bowman, “Datalore”). It is pass information on in this manner. described as “a great crystalline entity which feeds The possibility of life being based on elements other on life, insatiably ravenous for the life force found than carbon cannot be totally excluded. However, in living forms, capable of stripping all life from an our knowledge of chemistry suggests that it would entire world.” Since it is a cyrstalline structure, it is exist in an environment which would be hostile to destroyed by a transmission from the Enterprise, us. Conditions that sustain us would be equally which produces a frequency that causes the entire hostile to silicon based life as silanes are pyrophoric structure to shatter by inducing vibrations through and thus undergo spontaneous combustion in air. the phenomenon of resonance (Bole “Silicon Therefore the possibility of silane based chains in an Avatar”). oxygen rich atmosphere is low. Silicones are more A silicon lifeform is also mentioned in boast stable, but are water repellent and water is crucial by a Hirogen, a member of a hunting species: “I once tracked a silicon-based lifeform through the carbon based life forms to co-exist with silane based to life. These incompatibilities make it difficult for 8 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 9 chains. “Prey.” Dir. Allan Eastman. Star Trek: Voyager. Para- mount. February 1998. “Silicon Avatar.” Dir. Cliff Bole. Star Trek: The Next WORKS CITED Generation. Paramount. October 1991. “Strange New World.” Dir. David Livingston. Star Croswell, Ken. The Alchemy of the Heavens. Oxford, Trek: Enterprise. Paramount. October 2001. Oxford University Press, 1996. “The Devil in the Dark.” Dir. Joseph Pevney. Star Trek: “Datalore.” Dir. Rob Bowman. Star Trek: The Next The Original Series. Paramount. March 1967. Generation. Paramount. January 1988. “The Disease.” Dir. David Livingston. Star Trek: Voy- “Home Soil.” Dir. Corey Allen. Star Trek: The Next ager. Paramount. February 1999. Generation. Paramount. February 1988. “The Savage Curtain.” Dir. Herschel Daugherty. Star “Observer Effect.” Dir. Mike Vejar. Star Trek: Enter- Trek: The Original Series. Paramount. March 1969. prise. Paramount. January 2005.

8 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 9 Nonfiction Reviews none of these are “mere” tools. To use any of them One supposes that this ‘multi-layered paradigmatic A Sense of Apocalypse: changewith skill in requiresour thinking’ a modification (9) has come of the about brain between itself. pre- and post-industrial technologies because of the Technology, Textuality, Identity nature and/or the strength of the impact of those Virginia Allen technologies upon the sensory and psychological experiences of “the subject” (a narrative term to designate the self as represented in a work of art) Marcin Mazurek. A Sense of Apocalypse: Technology, in a postindustrial society and even that such Textuality, Identity. Literary and Cultural Theory, vol. 40. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Edition, and, by extension, upon the process of identity 2014. Hardback, 138 pages, $40.95, ISBN-13: formation’technologies (9). exert Mazurek an influencegoes from ‘uponthis modest experience claim 978-3631648124 ISBN-10: 363164812X. to the vague assertion ‘the rampant development of electronic technologies and the theoretical Order option(s): Hard

YOU MAY SAY that Marcin Mazurek’s A Sense of numberreconfiguration of discursive of the claims subject’s regarding premises those ideas [say Apocalypse is a metaphor for the postmodern whichwhat?] play ... force a formative us to redefine role in and the re-interpret process of identity a large cultural condition, if you like, and although the construction’ (9). ‘This’ demonstrative pronoun, unleavened by a noun, has apparently wrought ‘a “Introduction: The Argument,” instead of argument pervasive sense of distrust’ towards all sorts of things wefirst get:18 page‘The sectionoverall ofassumption this 138-page underlying text is titled this that constitute ‘the cornerstones of identity as space, book is that of a multi-layered paradigmatic change body, locale, relationship with nature, reliability of in our thinking of technology (sic), the subject, the relationship between the two, and the ways in which of the real’ (9). this relationship is represented’ (9). theActually, sign and, “this” last butmight definitely explain not a least,lot. The the statussignal As nearly as I can make sense of it as argument, intellectual work of our epoch is the pursuit of an we are now confronted with ‘a new subject,’ a understanding of animal, human, and/or machine post-human subject, for whom ‘the body no longer cognition. We know some things with a fair degree of certainty: for example, biologically normal human construction appears to be that preindustrial beings acquire the language they hear uniformly, technologydefines human was agency’ ‘mere (34).tools,’ The a phrase warrant Mazurek for this without regard to IQ, and without instruction. repeats several times. The new ‘postmodern Our shared understanding of those languages is subject in the context of global circulations of data, demonstrable, profoundly systematic, and almost invisible electronics and ever-present simulation’ entirely unconscious. Being human, we do make thus ‘depicted’ is ‘inscribed’ into a ‘discourse mistakes, and those mistakes can be productive of identity crisis’ (18). The ease and frequency of the understanding we seek. Second, I will point with which Mazurek dismisses pre-industrial to glossolalia as a well-documented phenomenon technology as ‘mere tools,’ seemingly exempt from found among religious ecstatics and schizophrenics. participating in the construction of human identity, Pentecostals take it as a criterion of Truth, proof strikes me as an unearned claim. The protohuman that the speaker has been touched by the Holy was not a promising animal in the competition for Spirit. Absent the Holy Spirit, the habit of producing survival. Barefoot and naked, not particularly well- syntactically well-formed utterances, sentences muscled, nor very large among competitors, the produced with intentionality but without intelligible key to its survival was a plastic brain. The ability semantic content, is treated as pathological. I cannot to adapt to a tool as an extension of the self, to prove the Holy Spirit is not involved, but absent some wield it automatically without a drain on conscious compelling counter evidence, whoever would make attention, was something new in evolution. The club, the claim carries the burden of proof. the sword, the stirrup, the bicycle, the typewriter: Postmodern literary theorists (as bodies and as 10 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 11 subjects) are aptly represented in this catalog of folly by Mazurek’s A Sense of Apocalypse. Again and again emphasis on paradigmatic instability, liberation to come across unintelligible prose in the course of fromconclusion all possible about social science and fiction: natural ‘with laws its[say constant what?] our academic work represents a challenge that—to put the matter plainly—requires an explanation. technology, has anticipated and illustrated most A continuing and often remarked upon problem contemporaryand, last but definitelyphilosophical not least,issues’ appreciation and, mirabile of with postmodern literary theory is its display of dictu, ‘thus producing a number of reality-concepts verbal gibberish and philosophical naivety. As Gavin seemingly based on non-referential paradigms’ (32). Kitching puts it: ‘even the very best students who Say what again? fall under postmodernism’s sway produce radically A free-wheeling synopsis of the text would put incoherent ideas about language, meaning, truth those issues forward, something like this, perhaps: and reality’ (The Trouble with Theory, 2008, xi). Alan Sokal famously focused on pomo’s confusion between Identity: a sense of self. Apocalypse: a sense ontology and epistemology. John Searle zeroed in on of impending doom. Postmodern literary Derrida’s false charge of binary oppositions running riot through philosophy of language, linguistics, paradigmatic change. Terminal identity: psychology, cognitive science, and literary analysis. atheory metaphor is apocalyptic, for the a signifierhuman-technological of an essential For me, however, the most troubling aspect of this merger. Some part of this change is, somehow, deeply troubled text is the way in which it implicates strategy of interpretation; removing the Mazurek bases his understanding of sf on a actualto see thewriting author body as anfrom artificially the immediate imposed profoundscience fiction. misreading of Bruce Sterling’s Preface hypertextual horizon. The reading subject to William Gibson’s Burning Chrome (1986), is no longer a passive consumer of a ready- made textual product. A second method of effectively eradicating the author: image fromdemonstrating all social firstand Sokalnatural and law’ then (32) Searle’s and takes set addiction is no longer posited as a disease: ‘deconstructionpieces. He asserts of ontological that science boundaries fiction is as ‘liberated the sine it has instead become the very condition of qua non’ of the genre’s existence (32). According to existence in postmodern culture. [Say what?]

human/nonhuman, reality/simulacrum, nature/ So I re-read Sterling’s Preface, now thirty years technologyhim, it is the thaturge todramatically dissolve such narrows fixed binaries the gap as hence. These guys, you may recall, were not playing between sf literature and postmodern theory. with the net down, and those who teach and theorize He picks up on Joanna Russ’s reference to sf as ‘a the genre shouldn’t either. As Sterling concluded way place ancient dualities disappear. Day and night, up back then: ‘we are lean and hungry and not in the and down, “masculine” and “feminine” are purely best of tempers’ (Harper-Collins e-books, 2014, no page numbers). I can’t think this book will do much mythologized by people’ (33). Searle would be quite to improve his mood. atspecific, ease with limited Russ’s phenomena statement: which‘... the distinctions have been between literal and metaphorical, serious and non-

and false admit of degrees and all apply more or less. Company and Fellowship: Two Itserious, is, in short, fiction generally and nonfiction accepted and, that yes,many, even perhaps true most, concepts do not have sharp boundaries, and Views of the Inklings since 1953 we have begun to develop theories to Bruce A. Beatie explain why they cannot’ (“Literary Theory and Its Discontents,” The Emperor ReDressed, 1995, pp. 166- Diana Pavlac Glyer. Bandersnatch. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. 67). Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the In- Mazurek, like Derrida before him, having leapt to klings. Illustrated by James A. Owen. Kent, OH: an unwarranted conclusion extrapolates upon his Black Squirrel Books, 2016. Paperback, 224 mistake about science, extending it to an unwarranted 10 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 11 pages, $18.95, ISBN 978-1-60635-276-2. Kindle, Bandersnatch is available both on Kindle and as a $10.99, ASIN B018RB6FNY. trade paperback with a James Owen drawing of a dragon on the cover (and, reversed, as frontispiece), Order option(s): Paper | Kindle | Audio and blurbs praising Company on the back cover and pages i-iv. Inside, each chapter is preceded by a full- Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski. The Fellowship: The page Owens drawing—all but the last two picture Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. individual Inklings, but the penultimate shows “The Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams. New York: Inklings Gathered” in Lewis’s study, and the last is Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. Hardcover, 657 of “Master Samwise in His Study.” Each chapter ends pages, $35.00, ISBN 978-0-374-154097. 2016. with a boxed comment by the author, each titled Paperback, 656 pages, $17.00, ISBN 978-0-374- “Doing What They Did.” While Company has detailed 53625-1. Kindle, $9.99, ASIN B00PF6QL1G. end-notes following each chapter, the “Notes” section in Bandersnatch (172–184) simply provides Order option(s): Hard | Paper | Kindle brief source information for quotations. If we compare the respective contents pages, IN A REVIEW-ESSAY I wrote for the SFRA Review Bandersnatch looks quite different from its source. (Winter 2008) titled “Three Perspectives on Though both books have eight numbered chapters (in Company, the “Introduction” is not numbered), Diana Pavlac Glyer’s The Company They Keep: C. S. the Company chapter titles are properly scholarly Tolkien,”Lewis and theJ. R. firstR. Tolkien of the as threeWriters perspectives in a Community was and descriptive: (Kent State University Press, 2007). When her new book Bandersnatch was offered for review, I asked Impact,” “Resonators:its first Supportingfour chapters Progress,” are “Inklings: and to undertake it. When checking the book’s price on “Opponents:Building Community,” Issuing Challenge.” “Influence: The parallel Assessing titles Amazon, I saw a blurb for the Zaleskis’ Fellowship, in Bandersnatch are more allusive than descriptive, and decided (with the approval of SFRA’s reviews suggesting a different argument: “Dusting for editor) that another review-essay was in order. Fingerprints,” “‘An Unexpected Party’,” “The Heart of the Company” and “‘I’ve a good mind to punch your I head.” On the verso of the title page of Bandersnatch, a Bandersnatch is completely new and very personal, “Publisher’s Note” pointed out, to my surprise, that focusingAnd on indeed,Glyer’s theearly first experience numbered of chapter Tolkien’s of Bandersnatch was ‘abridged and adapted from The Company They Keep [….]’ (viii). My comments on comments on the publication of The Hobbit and the Bandersnatch will therefore focus mainly on the beginningsand Lewis’s of fictions, The Lord and of includes the Rings some; it parallels of Tolkien’s the differences between the two versions of this book. “Íntroduction” to Company, which is also personal in Company is an expansion to 312 pages of Glyer’s tone, but different in content. 1993 dissertation. It seems unusual to encounter, However, when one compares the subtitles of the as a reviewer, a dissertation-based book published chapters in both books, the differences between them fourteen years after the dissertation was completed, almost disappear. Company, and then revised for a wider audience almost another for example, they are: “Lewis and Tolkien, 1929,” decade later. Out of curiosity I obtained a copy of the “Tolkien Shares HisIn Mythology, the first chapter 1931,” of“C. S. Lewis dissertation and, though it is probably less than a Renews His Faith, 1932,” “Warnie Comes Home,” quarter the length of Company, the argument of the “The Inklings,” “Guests and Gate-Crashers,” “Charles later books was already clearly made, and the use of Williams,” “Ritual and Routine,” and “Tuesdays at the many chapter subtitles was already entrenched. Bird and Baby.” The subtitles of the second chapter The most obvious difference between Bandersnatch of Bandersnatch are “Elves and Men,” “True Myth,” and Company is on the outside. Company was issued “Warnie Comes Home,” “The Inklings,” “Charles as a typical university press book in both hardcover Williams,” “Ritual and Routine,” “The Bird and Baby,” (purple cloth binding, title and author on the and “Famous and Heroic.” Five of the last six subtitles spine) and trade paperback (decorative front cover, in Bandersnatch are identical, and a page-by-page probably the dust-jacket of the hardcover printing). comparison of the texts of the parallel chapters of 12 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 13 the two books shows them as mostly identical. chapter by chapter in my 2008 review, I will not The subtitles of chapters 3 and 4 in Bandersnatch repeat that summary here. This book is certainly are similarly mostly repetitions of those in chapters more accessible to a general reader interested 3 and 4 in Company, as are the contents; chapter 2 in the Inklings as a whole and any of its members of Company (the shortest chapter), in which Glyer individually, and should have a much wider audience introduces the concept of “resonators” borrowed than Company. As I suggested above, her dependence from Karen LeFevre’s 1987 Invention as a Social Act, on the “resonance” concept, while still present, is is not repeated in Bandersnatch. My only criticism much reduced. The opening sections of the repeated of Company in the 2008 review was that the ‘rigid chapters are mostly more reader-friendly than the framework’ imposed by LeFevre’s concept ‘led to original ones, and even in the fully-repeated sections a substantial amount of repetition and overlap she often makes stylistic changes that improve the between the chapters […]’ (7–8). This framework is accessibility of the text. James Owen’s drawings of much less obtrusive in Bandersnatch, where LeFevre the Inklings were, for me at least, more interesting is quoted only twice (in chapter 7, pp. 151 and 156). than the photos that seem to recur in most earlier Chapters 5–8 of Bandersnatch (“Drat that Omnibus!”, books on the Inklings. “Mystical Caboodle,” “Faces in a Mirror,” and “Leaf I found it interesting, perhaps surprising, that while Mold and Memories”) show more revision and new the Company “Works Cited” list includes some forty- material: only four of the twenty-seven subtitles in those four chapters recur. Bandersnatch includes only four critical works dated Bandersnatch’s “Epilogue: Doing What the Inklings 2007five entries or later. dated The 1993 MLA or International later, the “Bibliography” Bibliography of Did” echoes the style of the boxed paragraphs at lists nine publications under the subject “Inklings” the end of each chapter, but offers instead new published between 2007 and 2013, only one of comments: a subtitled set of suggested “steps [we] which is included in her bibliography. It would have can […] take to maximize our own efforts to connect been interesting had she considered commenting and collaborate[.]” (161). They are “Start Small,” on Sam McBride’s 2010 article in Mythlore, “The “Stay Focused,” “Embrace Difference,” “Start Early Company They Didn’t Keep: Collaborative Women in and Intervene Often,” “Criticize But Don’t Silence,” the Letters of C. S. Lewis.” “Vary Feedback” (the only section that mentions The differences between Company and “resonating” [166, though the index cites p. 165]), Bandersnatch are generally positive; she has taken “Increase the Channels,” “Try More than Once,” thought for what might appeal to a non-scholar. “Think Outside the Group,” and “Taking First Steps.” Bothersome only were the boxed “Doing What They Each of the subtitled sections ends with a short Did” comments closing each chapter; they reminded paragraph headed “Takeaway” (italics in original). me too much of the “Reader’s Guide” sort of While Bandersnatch as a whole addresses an aimed at young adults. suggestions are by implication addressed to fellow appendices to many books of fiction and nonfiction writers.audience Since simply my interested readers inhere the are Inklings, scholars these of finaland II writers about SF and fantasy, I would recommend Since Company, Bandersnatch, and Fellowship also Sandra J. Lindow’s “Love and Death in the Vorkosiverse. An Interview with Lois McMaster Carpenter’s 1977 Tolkien and his 1978 The Inklings, Bujold” (in Lois McMaster Bujold. Essays on a Modern Iall found depend it interesting to a significant to compare degree the on backgrounds Humphrey Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy, 9–15—see of the authors. According to the MLA International my review in Extrapolation, January 2015), as well Bibliography, Glyer’s published work has focused as Bujold’s own afterwords to the early collections almost exclusively on Tolkien and the Inklings. of the Vorkosigan novels and the 2007 collection According to their Wikipedia entries, Carol Zaleski Lois McMaster Bujold: Dreamweaver’s Dilemma. is a much-published Professor of World Religions Short Stories and Essays. Bujold’s comments on her at Smith College, her husband Philip is an author practice as a writer could well serve as a supplement and editor of a number of books on religion and to Glyer’s suggestions. spirituality, and Fellowship Since I summarized Glyer’s argument in Company literary study. Carpenter, on the other hand, ‘was is their first venture into 12 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 13 born, died, and lived practically all of his life in the (200). After a chapter introducing us to Williams, city of Oxford,’ and is widely known not only for a number of literary biographies, but for his studies of together the work of all four of the titular Inklings literary groups: The Brideshead Generation: Evelyn beforethe eleventh and during and twelfthWorld War discuss II. for the first time Waugh and His Friends (1990) and Geniuses Together: The remaining numbered chapters, while generally American Writers in Paris in the 1920s (1988). chronological, alternate between individual authors Fellowship, as its subtitle suggests, is closer to and “the fellowship”—chapter thirteen on Lewis, Carpenter than to Glyer, though its focus on “Literary fourteen through sixteen on Inklings interactions, Lives” is narrower: while both Glyer and Carpenter seventeen mostly on The Lord of the Rings, eighteen in their different ways discuss all or most of the and nineteen of the last years of the Inklings. On twenty possible Inklings (see the Biographical Notes in Carpenter), the Zaleskis limit their consideration the life of the great Inklings came to an end’ (505). to four: Yet TheDecember “Epilogue: 14, 1997, The ‘when Recovered Barfield Image,” closed hiswithout eyes, their study, at 645 pages, is more than double the number or subtitles, is something of an elegy. The length ofTolkien, Carpenter’s Lewis, 287 Barfield, pages. Like and both Williams. of Glyer’s Zaleskis conclude that “‘the dispute over the exact books, Fellowship has multiple subtitles in each nature of the Inklings—cabal or club?—has faded as chapter; Carpenter’s thirteen chapters are divided history has stepped in with a third alternative: that among four untitled “parts.” Both Carpenter and the whatever the Inklings may have been during their Zaleskis include sections of photographs (sixteen most clubbable years, today they constitute a major pages in each volume, in Carpenter twenty-three of literary force, a movement of sorts’ (509), and that people, a map, and a manuscript page; in Fellowship thirty-three of people, two of buildings). All three urgent need: not simply to restore the discarded versions of Glyer’s work argue a thesis, and are so image,‘the Inklings but to fulfilled refresh whatit and many bring find it back to be to alife more for (and similarly) organized. the present and future’ (512). While Carpenter’s book is loosely chronological, The authors said in their “Prologue: Dabblers in Fellowship is strictly so. After a general “Prologue: Ink” that the four titular Inklings ‘make a perfect Dabblers in Ink,” it begins with a chapter solely on compass rose of faith: Tolkien the Catholic, Lewis Tolkien’s life up to his meeting with Edith, followed the “mere Christian”, Williams the Anglican (and by one on Lewis’s early life with particular stress Given this on his lifelong friendship with Arthur Greeves. The statement and the fact that none of the authors’ third chapter goes back to Tolkien (the beginnings magus),many previous Barfield publications the esotericist’ has been (12). a “literary of his mythology and his war experiences), and then life” or on a literary subject (even Carol Zaleski’s back to Lewis (Oxford, his wars of battle and faith, Otherworld Journeys, 1988, discusses and Mrs. Moore). Fellowship then introduces us Christian visions), one expects a strong bias toward thefirst religious book, lives of their authors. In fact, the book is conversion to Rudolf Steiner, and the proto-Inklings), andto Owen back Barfieldto Tolkien (his (his “Sophianic marriage, Revelations,”academic career his Inklings are treated as extensively and intelligently at Leeds and Oxford, and the pre-1930 “Sketch of the (andquite aswell exhaustively—the balanced; the fictions book isand overlong) poetry ofas thesetheir Mythology”). religious writings and activities. There are occasional After the seventh chapter returns to Lewis’s life odd side-references to religion. About Lewis’s and activities from 1920–1926 (meeting Tolkien, Narnia books, the authors note that ‘among the non- The Pilgrims’s Regress Christian literary and academic vanguard, Narnia two chapters to the real beginnings of the Inklings; though most of the ninth), the chapter Zaleskis focuses finally mainly devote on admirers like Brady characterized Lewis as leader The Hobbit, it does conclude with two sections on ofonly an intensified“Oxford Circle” resentment of evangelizers against scarcelyits author; helped that the situation’ (391). About Tolkien’s Mount Doom, of a typical Thursday meeting “a patchwork” (196— they point out that ‘Tolkien uses the Old English CarpenterBarfield and admits Lewis. it Afteris “imaginary” calling Carpenter’s [137]), they account assert word [Doom] a hundred times in The Lord of the that “[the] truth is that Lewis and Tolkien served as Rings, registering its full range of meanings: a fate twin pillars, elevating the Inklings to greatness …” decreed, a judgment pronounced, a world destroyed’ 14 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 15 (417). Discussing “rumors of grace,” they note that the inevitable noise is well worth it for the amount of ‘Help comes “unlooked-for”—a homely expression signal that gets through, no matter how small. Tolkien prefers to abstract theological words like The topics of the essays vary within the broader “providence”; “unlooked-for” occurs sixteen times in scope of biotechnology, including obesity, prion The Lord of the Rings, and with mounting frequency— diseases, climate change, diabetes, agriculture, twice in The Fellowship of the Ring, six times in The cognitive enhancement, and race. The two essays Two Towers, eight times in The Return of the King (as that bookend the collection summarize the history well as eight times in The Silmarillion, but not at all and potential future consequences of biotechnology, in The Hobbit)’ (421). respectively. The stories, interspersed throughout The book is well-written, well-documented, and the essays, deal more or less directly with the preceding topics. With one exception, the stories misinterpretations. On the other hand, it offers little are written by different authors than the essays, and thatinformative, is new, and and its I length found norequires significant patience errors on the or many of the stories are written by Berne herself. reader’s part. The extensive back matter (512–645) The stories succeed in humanizing the issues that includes “Notes,” (only sources of quotes, as in Bandersnatch), “Bibliography,” “Acknowledgments,” depersonalized) prose and, to me, represent the most “Index,” “Permissions Acknowledgments,” and “A interestingare relayed aspect in traditional of the volume. scientific They (and are, therefore after all, Note about the Authors” (645). what keeps this volume from being only a handful of essays summarizing various biotechnological concepts—a book that, while still useful, would have a very different audience. Berne’s desired synthesis is at its most successful when faces and stories are Creating Life from Life: attached to the concepts that remained abstract and Biotechnology and Science Fiction sterile in the essays: Eduardo A. Nillni’s essay on obesity, for example, frames it as a problem to be Kristen Koopman solved, while Berne’s companion story (“Madeline”) paints a stark picture of the dehumanization of Rosalyn W. Berne. Creating Life from Life: Biotechnol- obese people. The other stories follow suit, imbuing ogy and Science Fiction. Singapore: Pan Stanford, biotechnology with human stakes at personal, social, 2015. Hardcover, 298 pages, $99.95, ISBN 978- and geopolitical levels. 981-4463-58-4. Yet the most successful pairing occurs with “The Promise and Pitfalls of Cognitive Enhancement” and Order option(s): Hard “Dr. Hyde,” both written by David Carmel. It is also not a coincidence, I think, that this is the only story IT WOULD BE an understatement to call Creating Life written by the author of the essay, and the effect is from Life: Biotechnology and Science Fiction, edited striking. The other essays are mostly overviews or by Rosalyn W. Berne, an ambitious experiment. As Berne outlines in her introduction, the volume aims implications couched in terms similar to what would straight statements of scientific facts, with human and generalized, with speculation limited to the questionsto bring together that biotechnology scientific research creates. in biotechnologyBy alternating concludingbe seen in aparagraph. scientific grant Yet Carmel’s proposal: essay both takesgeneral a essaysand science on biotechnology fiction to highlight (written the bysocial the andscientists moral much more personal approach, both in terms of its

resonant topics, Berne invokes a dialectic process tothemselves) be experienced with science by the fiction reader. stories The result dealing of withthis personstyle (first-person plural and singularpassive andvoice largely used activethroughout voice, dialectic should be generative questions about thecompared other essays) to the and third-person its content. Carmel singular speculates or first- biotechnology: about social implications, moral freely, explicitly grappling with arrays of potential consequences, and normative desires. Like a particle consequences of cognitive enhancement on an individual scale, beginning where many of the other at high speeds; and like any worthwhile experiment, essays left off: where they concluded by saying we accelerator, Berne collides science and science fiction 14 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 15 as a society should think seriously about these issues, process and her willingness to put that theory into Carmel says I will think seriously about these issues practice makes for a unique reading experience. now. He does so both in his essay and his story, Although most of the pairings of stories with essays which illustrates exactly the phenomenon that most fall short of the ambitious aim of the book, Carmel’s concerned Carmel. success suggests promising next steps, and ones that This is the synthesis that Berne aims for. As she says I hope to see. in her introduction, ‘By eliciting moral imagination, can provide a means not only of making predictions butscience also fiction, of creatively when paired considering with scientific core questions writing, regarding the implications of science and technology: The Inklings Coloring Book What is it we value? What is it we mean to be? What Lisa Macklem may we be able to do?’ (Berne, 7–8). Although Berne aims to induce this dialectic in the reader, Carmel James A. Owen. The Inklings Coloring Book. Kent, shows that it may occur in the author, as well. It Ohio: Black Squirrel Books, 2016. Paperback, 32 may be a coincidence that the only author to write pages, $9.95, ISBN 978-1-60635-298-4. their own accompanying story was the only author to diverge so wildly from the dehumanized style of Order option(s): Paper way to replicate the dialectic Berne aims to cultivate. IF YOU DON'T own a coloring book, chances are scientificThis suggests writing, to but me if thatnot, thethen true it may value point of tothis a still good that you know someone who does. Until volume may not reside in its content, but in its fairly recently, that person was likely under ten, structure. While the essays are interesting and the but adult coloring books are currently a hot trend. stories are well-written (“Carnivore’s Game” by Certainly, you can’t walk into a bookstore without being confronted by a huge display of them. There particular), their overlap is mostly in content, making are a wide variety of books to choose from, ranging itBerne seem and more “Rōnin” like a byone-sided Lena Nguyen response stand (the out story in from basic geometric patterns to books themed for author responding to the essay writer) than a true your favorite book or television show, such as Harry synthesis. On the one hand, if “interesting and well- Potter, Dr. Who, or Game of Thrones. There are also written” is the faintest praise that can be mustered, a series of books that invite the colorer to contribute it speaks highly of the volume. Yet Carmel’s example provides a potentially useful exercise in getting objects. scientists to think humanistically about their work, toThe the picturebooks haveand embarkalso sparked on a quest a debate to find on hidden why one that deserves even more enthusiastic praise. adults have suddenly turned to this pastime and whether there is any value to it beyond the basic teachers or professors trying to encourage their entertainment value. In writing about escapist studentsMost likely to think to findholistically this volume about science; useful, then, scholars are literature, Tolkien defended fairy-stories: ‘I have curious about this kind of foray into the relationship claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, interested in this example of writing to a prompt. it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity Ratherbetween than science scholarship and science about fiction; and writers with which “Escape” is now so often used: a tone for Creating Life from Life is an example of the kind of which the uses of the word outside literary criticism popularization-of-science work seen science in workshops fiction, give no warrant at all’ (J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, such as the Joint Quantum Institute’s Schrödinger 1939/1947, http://www.theologynetwork.org/ Sessions and University of Wyoming’s Launch Pad Media/PDF/JRR_Tolkien-fairystories.pdf). It seems Astronomy Workshop. likely that he would have approved of coloring as Overall, this book doesn’t so much have an argument well. The New York Public Library has even instituted as it has a goal. Berne is far from the only scholar an Adult Coloring Group as a way for like-minded interested in the relationship between science adults to enjoy the activity together. Participants can bring their own materials or use those provided. The 16 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 17 and science fiction, but her take on it as a dialectic coloring fad has sparked a debate about whether may be useful in an Education or Psychology class, coloring rises to the level of art therapy in providing it’s unlikely to be especially useful as an addition to mindfulness or meditation or whether coloring is a course in Science Fiction. truly a creative artistic expression. Regardless, art therapists, neuroscientists, and colorers everywhere agree that it is a great stress reliever. It’s also another way that fans can connect with their favorite subject. Just as the subject of coloring books varies, so too Gothic Science Fiction: 1818 to the does the quality and detail of the artwork. James Present Michelle K. Yost drawings in the book are skillful and detailed. Given A. Owen is first and foremost an illustrator, so the Sian MacArthur. Gothic Science Fiction: 1818 to the on Narnia and Tolkien (both movie and novel Present. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. versions),the number this of bookcoloring is really books for that fans focus of Owen. specifically There Hardcover, vii + 176 pages, $109.99, ISBN 978-1- 137-38926-8. Ebook ISBN 978-1-137-38927-5. illustrations in total, and don’t expect the artwork to reachare, however, the level somewhat of Owen’s disappointinglyother published onlyworks. fifteen One Order option(s): Hard | Kindle should bear in mind that if the illustrations were as detailed and shaded as the images in Starchild, there WHILE ITS EARLY chapters might serve as an would be no real room (or possibly need) to color interesting analysis for students interested in the images. In fact, the images from the coloring book, more distinctly shaded, appear in Diana Pavlac contribution to the Palgrave Gothic Series leaves a Glyer’s book on the Inklings, Bandersnatch: C.S. greatthe Gothic deal to andbe desired, science including fiction, more Sian MacArthur’sengagement Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the Creative Collaboration of with other academic work. The initial premise is the Inklings, also from Black Squirrel Books, which that this book will ‘attempt to understand the ways Owen illustrated. Each image in the coloring book appears on the recto page with the facing verso linked’ (3). Nowhere does Brian Aldiss receive any page left blank. Images have a short accompanying creditin which or sciencediscussion fiction for andhis own traditional contributions Gothic areto caption at the bottom of each page. this question in 1973 with Billion Year Spree. By As the title indicates, the subject is the Inklings and the concluding chapter, though, this has changed to those connected to them: J.R.R. Tolkien, CS Lewis, fully established and credible genre; that it exists Charles Williams, and Warren Lewis. Interspersed an attempt ‘to prove that Gothic science fiction is a withOwen pictures Barfield, of the Hugo famous Dyson, authors Christopher in some Tolkien,of their and that it has its own set of tropes and conventions more famous haunts, such as The Eagle and Child thatindependently mark it out of as both such’ Gothic (159). and In this, science MacArthur fiction, Pub and Magdalen College, are pictures which could has overreached, since her examples go as far as to have come from their works but which are captioned include Doctor Who, Star Wars, and Batman, which somewhat generically, such as “Elf Queen” rather cannot be wholly partitioned off now into their than Galadriel. The real fun of this book comes from the Bandersnatch which is hidden—or not so hidden—in virtually every image. Thus, the book battleown genre of good of Gothicagainst scienceevil, the fiction. battle Thefor morality broadly becomes both a coloring book and a puzzle book. anddefined humanity themes and of Gothicthat which science allows fiction [us] being to keep ‘the The blank pages may encourage some readers to our integrity intact’ (161), means we would have to add illustrations, though the author doesn’t invite look much further back than 1818, to the Bhagavad readers to do so. While this is clearly an “adult” Gita and The Odyssey, for the start of Gothic science coloring book, that term doesn’t preclude younger readers, and one of the encouraging aspects of the book is the inclusion of all the Inklings. Thus, fans storyfiction. of Frankenstein and certain features of the Gothic,The first such chapter as ‘the revisits manic the need well-trodden to procreate origin or the other, less well known, Inklings. While this book of Tolkien and CS Lewis may find this a gateway to 16 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 17 generate life’ (4), ‘the theme of survival’ (10), ‘struggle between good and evil’ (16), and ‘repression’ (16). television shows that are staples in the discourse of theto read’ Gothic (24). are cast To this aside, end, as is other critical novels, engagement, films, and in favor of the easy and pleasing. toMacArthur the modern joins technological this to David environment’ Seed’s definition (3). These of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (3rd Ed) offers themesscience arefiction more as broadly‘socially exploredrelevant, inand the responsive following a very damning perspective in its entry on Gothic three chapters, focusing on the quintessential Mad Scientist, the Apocalypse, and the Monster. These are better developed chapters, starting with Nineteenth genresscience (like fiction: the Gothic, ‘1) no or one its taleeven willmore fit artefactual perfectly century examples and following their evolution into any structural definition (such as Gothic SF); (2) clearly in retrospect’ (http://www.sf-encyclopedia. media. MacArthur demonstrates the Gothic roots of com/entry/gothic_sf).offspring Gothic SF) To are overcome normally this, defined MacArthur most eachTwentieth- ‘recurrent and theme Twenty-first or sub-genre century of Gothicliterature science and is more than a collection of broadly similar themes. To proposewould need an entirelyto convince distinct us that genre Gothic of Gothicscience science fiction apocalypticfiction’ (23)—meaning and monstrous that areGothic subgenres science offiction Gothic is not a subgenre of science fiction, but rather that the It is the next three chapters where MacArthur thanfiction, annotations a more firm of descriptionprophecy, ofprocreation, those uniquely and wandersscience fiction. off into major media topographies and defining aspects ofThe the Castle genre of must Otranto be given,and Revenge rather attempts to co-opt them into Gothic science of the Sith. And the idea that Doctor Who, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Star Wars, and Batman (with moraland Batman conflict ‘rely in on the Gothic to produce story brief mention of other super heroes). While there after story that meet our expectations’ (160) is likely fiction:are certainly Gothic elements in some episodes/ to meet academic and fan resistance on every front; storylines from these multimedia megaliths—tropes they are powerhouses unto themselves that will not already explored in the preceding chapters—these be easily shifted into MacArthur’s subgenre. would be better illuminated as part of a unifying If it is a generalist’s introduction to the Gothic that Gothic theme (e.g. immortality as experienced by you seek, as either educator or student, then Fred both The Doctor and the Sith) rather than a rundown Botting’s Gothic from Routledge’s New Critical Idiom of each source’s varying Gothic imagery. MacArthur series is still a better investment of time. If you are too easily gives in to the obvious counterarguments to her own theses, conceding that ‘for the most part Gothic, there is Gothic Science Fiction: 1980–2010 Doctor Who (edslooking Sara for Wasson texts that and merge Emily scienceAlder, 2014) fiction from and the oriented’ and that it only ‘occasionally reverts to a more traditional is very Gothic futuristic storyline’ and science(113). Yet fiction an series providing more depth on current entries entire chapter has been given over to The Doctor; University of Liverpool’s The science Gothic fiction Imagination: studies while an admirable character in his own right, it Conversations on Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction seems this space might have been better spent on in the the Media field. There(2011, is also also Palgrave Macmillan), and another theme or more focused media series (i.e. John C Tibbetts’s discussions with creators and Alien). Countless other authors and Gothic tropes experts in the Gothic, such as Ray Bradbury and Kim might have been utilized, and it is this noticeable Stanley Robinson. MacArthur does at least provide a absence that renders the second half of the book starting point for inquiry into some common themes frustratingly shallow. What about the Gothic settings of cyberpunk and steampunk? What about prophecy Apocalyptic, and the Monstrous are facets of SF that and procreation in Battlestar Galactica? Or mocked holdof Gothic one’s scienceinterest, fiction; there are if theworse Mad places Scientist, (such the as Gothic à la Rocky Horror Picture Show? But MacArthur Wikipedia’s one-paragraph entry) to venture into admits in the introduction to choosing her ‘favourite the Gothic. sub-genres to investigate’ and those ‘most enjoyable

18 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 19 Fiction Reviews to their rightful places in the world. McGuire does her usual skillful job of playing with these pieces, making them unfamiliar enough to create an entertaining Beneath the Sugar Sky story while not making them unrecognizable. Where Every Heart and Sticks and Bones stuck Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook tightly to a single story, however, Sugar Sky meanders between characters and between worlds. It’s an Seanan McGuire. Beneath the Sugar Sky, New York: entertaining tour but, in the end, lacks the impact of Tor.com, 2018. 176 pages, hardcover $17.99. the previous two books—which is perhaps only to ISBN 9780765393586. be expected given the yeoman’s labor McGuire put in transferring issues as complicated as gender and Order option(s): Kindle | Hard | Audio | CD personal identity into a fairytale framework without

BENEATH THE SUGAR SKY is the third in McGuire’s The same attention to detail is evident here but, Wayward Children series, all centered around forfalling some prey reason, to oversimplification the story doesn’t or reductionism.gel in the same Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. The way and the payoff, while fun, isn’t as satisfying. Home is a sanctuary for those who have stepped out Confection doesn’t seem as deeply thought out an of this world and into another one for some period otherworld as The Moors or the Halls of the Dead; of time, then returned. The two previous books in it works on a kind of Tim Burton-esque logic which the series, Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among seems unsatisfyingly familiar to anyone familiar the Sticks and Bones, have been exceptionally strong. with either the retold fairytale genre or Burton’s McGuire’s story-telling skills and world-building recent attempts at Wonderland. ability stand her in good stead here but there’s no avoiding the fact that Sugar Sky does not have the so many of the children are involved, there is no one, same muscle as the previous two books. clearThe narrator. story also Instead, struggles we with jump finding between a voice; characters since Rather than focusing on a particular child or in a way that almost seems indecisive. The reader children—Nancy in Every Heart and the siblings will never be lost—McGuire’s grip on narrative is Jack and Jill in Sticks and Bones—Sugar Sky takes a team approach. Set after the events in Every Heart, wishing that Christopher had been chosen to the catalysts for the action are newcomers to the commenttoo strong onfor thisthat—but scene theyinstead may offind Rini themselves or Cora Home, Cora who longs to return to her mermaid instead of Nadya and this works to the detriment of world; Nadya, a Drowned Girl from another aquatic the story in pulling the reader out of the immersive world; and Rini, a native of Confection. Readers of experience so beautifully created in the two previous Every Heart will remember Confection as the world books. that Sumi, Nancy’s roommate, had visited. Rini and In the end, while it doesn’t reach the same height her home are in trouble and she has come in search as Sticks and Bones, Sugar Sky is an entirely enjoyable of her mother, Sumi. Confection has fallen victim read; readers familiar with the previous two to a dictator—the Queen of Cakes—whom Sumi is books will enjoy going on a roadtrip with favorite destined to defeat; the only problem is that Sumi characters again and seeing more of at least two died in our world, a victim of Jill’s desperation to different worlds. return to The Moors. In order to solve the problem of Sumi’s death, Cora, Nadya, Rini, and familiar

out how the skills learned from their otherwordly experiencesHome tenants can Christopher help to rescue and ConfectionKade have fromto figure the Queen. The building blocks of the story are, as in the previous Wayward Children novellas, the stuff of fairy tales: an impossible quest, an unlikely group, a tyrant who must be toppled, people who must return 18 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 19 The Stone Sky to exploitation and prejudice. Thus, all three novels describe a post-apocalyptic world that must survive Amandine Faucheux its catastrophic decision to overuse the Earth’s

N. K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky. New York: Orbit, 2017. chilling take on our current environmental moment. 464 pages, e-book, $11.99. ISBN 978-0-316- resourcesThe complexity for its own of selfishJemisin’s purposes, multi-genre a timely world and 22925-8. systemic oppression that structures the narrative Order option(s) Vol 2: Kindle | Paper | Audio throughoutbuilding is reflectedthe series. by In the her intricate prolonged framework metaphor, of the oppression of orogenes (whose derogatory N. K. Jemisin’s The Stone Sky concludes her Hugo nickname “roggas” transparently informs the Award-winning Broken Earth trilogy, preceded by reader as to their symbolic meaning) both ensures the excellent The Fifth Season (2015) and The Obelisk society’s survival and dooms it. The orogenes that Gate the menacing Fulcrum trains and controls ensure the main character Essun, who wakes up once again the protection of major cities from the recurring after (2016).having Innearly this final destroyed novel, we the continue world withto follow her and catastrophic natural disasters that plague the orogenic powers (abilities to control tectonic plates world. At the same time, the population’s prejudice and other seismic phenomenon) in an attempt to against and hatred of orogenes frequently results protect her newly-found comm of Castrima. Her in disasters, as provoked orogenes accidentally destroy cities and kill in self-defense. As Nassun explains, ‘it isn’t right, Schaffa. It isn’t right that meanwhilepersonal mission, become to as find powerful her daughter an orogene Nassun, as Essun, taken people want me to be bad or strange or evil, that intertwinesaway by her with father her in overall the first goal: volume to bring and backwho hasthe they make me bad…’ (loc 1127). The orogene-led Moon into the Earth’s orbit and end the apocalyptic rogue comm of Castrima serves as an example of Seasons once and for all. For Nassun has the opposite what would happen if orogenes were in control objective, namely to turn all of humanity into Stone rather than enslaved, as they successfully manage Eaters, “living” immortal statues. Ultimately, as both environmental dangers. The problem, thus, is not so struggle to control the Obelisks which function as much the Seasons but how the systemic structure of oppression upon which society is built continues to Nassun’s sake and is turned into stone. Nassun is damage both oppressed and oppressors: ‘But there catalysts for their power, Essun sacrifices herself for are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, mission and captures the Moon. as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, movedJemisin’s by the multi-layered sight and decides series to refreshingly fulfil her mother’s brings together multiple genres, from fantasy, to science was done to them…Conquerors live in dread of the The Fifth dayterrified when their they victims are shown will to someday be, not dosuperior, back what but Season and The Obelisk Gate use clever plot twists to simply lucky’ (loc 2639). revealfiction, that to post-apocalyptic what the reader assumed narrative. to beBoth a commonly Jemisin’s elaborate metaphor for the enslavement primitive, far-in-the-past fantasy setting actually of African-Americans and its aftermath resonates exists so far in the future as to contain unfathomably in her narrative with current issues. In The Fifth advanced technology (that translates as “magic” to Season, Essun breaks Nassun’s hand to teach her to control her powers even when faced with violence, a of Hoa, Essun’s Stone Eater ally and narrator of all scene that brings to mind the necessary discussion threeus). In volumes. this volume, Forty we thousand finally discover years theago, backstory Hoa was some black people in the US have with their children conceived as a “machine” by the futuristic city of Syl to teach them how to protect themselves from police Anagist, in order to use the Earth’s power to fuel brutality. In The Obelisk Gate, Essun is forced to murder their technology. The anthropocentric presumption her own infant son to protect him from becoming a of this society—to subsume the Earth as they node-maintainer (a physically restrained, alive but enslaved “inferior” individuals like Hoa—consists unconscious machine) in a scene reminiscent of Toni of the original crime that formed the Seasons and Morrison’s Beloved (1979). In The Stone Sky, the end doomed orogenes (descendants of that inferior race) of Seasons means that orogenes will have to struggle 20 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 21 to live with non-orogenic people in a world in which Nnedi Okorafor’s rapidly expanding body of work— they are no longer “needed,” but the lesson is that which now includes Binti: The Night Masquerade, change is possible: ‘Imprisonment of orogenes was the worthy and valuable conclusion to the Hugo and never the only option for ensuring the safety of Nebula Award winning SF series—often centers on society…Lynching was never the only option…All such transformations. In her 2014 novel Lagoon, these were choices. Different choices have always for example, the narrator echoes Von Braun, saying been possible’ (loc 4961). that the central character, a biologist named Adaora, In the way that she successfully subverts genre- knows that ‘matter could be neither created nor destroyed. It just changed form’ (138). Reading complex array of narrative structures and world through the Akata series and the Binti series of late, I building,specific tropesJemisin’s to oeuvre address clearly political belongs issues to the via best a traditions of Afrofuturism as well as feminist and ofhave the come human to condition,see that Okorafor’s no matter work its form. is defined From her by contemporary authors such as Nalo Hopkinson or debutimages work of transformations Zaharah the Windseeker and change (2005) as reflections through Annqueer Leckie, speculative Jemisin fiction. casually Following peoples highly-acclaimed her worlds The Night Masquerade, Okorafor’s plots continually with a racial and gender diverse cast of characters. explore transformations, particularly the oft-painful This book alone features Tonkee, a transwoman in losses that arise as her characters and their worlds a same-sex relationship and Dushwha, a non-binary change. person who goes by “they,” while in the previous We have witnessed Binti’s transformation from novel Essun was engaged in a polyamorous triad a wide-eyed adolescent leaving her family for with Innon and Alabaster, respectively bisexual and university across the galaxy in Binti, to the powerful gay. Women of all races are frequently and naturally woman who struggles to fully realize and control in positions of power, and in a world built around her many abilities as a “harmonizer,” (the term survival to natural disasters, the most prized genetic among Binti’s people for one who brings peace amid factors include a bronze-brown skin (to protect from Home the sun) and “ashblow” hair (natural kinky hair that back the curtains on several illusions she had come protects from ash, acid rains, and diseases). The toconflict), cherish in about people,. In this finalher home,chapter, and Binti herself. must pullShe casual diversity of her books reveals Jemisin’s ability must not simply put aside childish ideals but rather

reinvent its more tired tropes and characters in In doing so, however, Binti risks losing everyone and compellingto showcase ways. speculative fiction that isn’t afraid to everythingtry to create she a world holds where dear. thoseBut as ideals Binti can underwent flourish.

contact with the warrior race the Meduse in Binti, sogenetic she must and transform physiological herself changes (and be from transformed her first Binti: The Night Masquerade by another species again) to challenge her people in The Night Masquerade. Jonathan P. Lewis Okorafor centers transformation and the horrors of loss in Binti’s journeys, and in The Night Nnedi Okorafor. Binti: The Night Masquerade, New Masquerade. Binti herself faces the extinction of her York: Tor, 2018. 226 pages. Paperback. $14.99, family, her ethnic group, and herself as Okorafor ISBN 978-0-7653-9313-5. relentlessly builds tension by taking away Binti’s material comforts, familiar roles, and stable cultural Order option(s): Kindle | Hard | Paper | CD practices. In the opening pages of the series, Binti is caught up in the interstellar colonial war between Thomas Pynchon’s 1973 novel Gravity’s Rainbow the Meduse and the Khoush (Binti’s people): while opens with an epigram from Wernher Von Braun: all others on her ship are killed, through the healing ‘Nature does not know extinction. All it knows is properties of the Himba’s sacred otjize pigmented transformation’ (“Why I Believe in Immortality” clay, Binti fashions a truce. That truce comes at the in William Nichols’ Third Book of Words to Live By cost of her locked hair, which is replaced by the (1962)). Meduse’s tentacles called okuoko. Early in The Night 20 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 21 Masquerade, Binti submerges herself in water and existence as well as the horrors of loss—particularly washes away all traces of otjize from her body before the loss of familial identity through the deaths of confronting the Himba elders, as vulnerable as if she loved ones and the broader losses of culture through colonialism, war, and prejudice. Among Okorafor’s as from her words, and over the course of the novel, greatest talents is building narrative tension shewere further naked. risksThey flinchpersonal at the extinction sight of heras Okoraforas much between the quest for self-knowledge through offers a fresh expression of traditional heroic tropes. family, ancestry, and home, and the sense of loss In addition, here is one of the chief joys of The stemming from an equally common desire to leave Night Masquerade: Binti’s voluntary embodiment home, to strike out for the unknown, and make a of, as one character puts it, change and revolution, new life for ourselves. Further, among the joys of any through becoming an amalgam of all the identities of Okorafor’s texts is her consistent ability to engage pressed upon her. The process recalls another key familiar tropes (here the hero’s journey), without a theme in Okorafor’s work: transformation beyond reliance on cliché. The great power of Okorafor’s storytelling in “Moom!” (the prologue to Lagoon) and the titular The Night Masquerade is her ability to focus on maindeath, character previously of seenThe Bookin the of great Phoenix fish. Inthat this opens way, The Night Masquerade joins these works to offer contextualizing loss and memory is central to being scholars of African Speculative Fiction another human,Binti’s innereven as and Binti outer herself, conflicts both at the and opening show thatand iteration of this pattern of change and rebirth. Okorafor deftly captures the thrills and joys of into something beyond the human. close of her story, defies extinction and transforms

22 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 23 Media Reviews Discovery seems like a “grim and gritty” wartime take on Star Trek, especially duringCaptain its Lorca. third While and fourth at first episodes, which focus on Star Trek: Discovery: Season 1 Lorca’s dubious actions, the story arc’s trajectory Steven Mollmann ultimately serves as a refutation of Burnham’s initial impulses as well as Lorca’s utilitarian morality. Unfortunately, this through-line isn’t quite as clear Fuller, Bryan, and Alex Kurtzman, creators. Star as it could be. The action that Burnham attempts Trek: Discovery, Season 1. CBS Television Studios, 2017-18. CBS All Access, www.cbs.com/shows/ star-trek-discovery. unprovoked) seems as though it actually would have workedto take given to stop T’Kuvma’s the war rhetoric, (firing and on her the rejection Klingons of utilitarian morality comes a little too quickly and too Star Trek: Discovery marks the return of the Star Trek time since went off the air in about what Federation morality should be, it feels Star Trek: Enterprise easily. When she gives a speech in the final episode 2005. franchise Though todrawing its small on screenthe visual roots aesthetics for the first of unearned, as we’ve never really seen her confront the J.J. Abrams-spearheaded big screen reboot of the why franchise (2009’s , 2013’s survival. The Klingon nationalist arc’s conclusion is Star Trek Star Trek Into she was so willing to sacrifice her morality for Darkness, and 2016’s Star Trek Beyond), Discovery is set in the so-called “Prime timeline” home to the about-face wrapping up the Klingon war quickly. Still,especially longtime rushed, fans with of a key character’s will enjoy unjustifiedthe series’ previous six Star Trek Star Trek commitment to the ideals of optimism in times Star Trek (1966–1969), television the show shows focuses and theon firstthe characterten films. of Set Michael about tenBurnham years before(Sonequa the originalMartin- not entirely succeed, but a similar speech in the earlierof darkness; episode Burnham’s “What’s Past speech Is Prologue,” in the finale where may the Shenzhou and the human foster daughter of Spock’s father Sarek Discovery Green), a Starfleet officer on the USS the crew to the pluralistic values of the Federation, ’s first officer Saru (Doug Jones) commits Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars,” chronicles is a stand-up-and-cheer moment. Burnham’s(James Frain). involvement The first two-part in the story,instigation “The Vulcan of a The real joy of Discovery is in the parts outside Federation-Klingon war; the remaining thirteen of the main story arc. Unlike many contemporary episodes detail Burnham’s adventures on the USS streaming shows, Discovery is not structured as one continuous story, but as a series of individual Discovery under Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) during the war. episodes against a common backdrop, much like its predecessor (1993–1996). This The main story arc of Discovery is about the war, Deep Space Nine allows the show to play with genres, a staple of and like much Star Trek, it is a none-too-subtle Star mirror for our own times. The faction of the Klingons Trek going back to the original series’ jumping from that instigates the war is led by T’Kuvma (Chris Obi), who employs nationalist rhetoric about the , disaster story to Vietnam War allegory in succession. cultural gladiator fights to 1920s gangster comedy to cosmic not military, threat of the Federation, arguing the At its best, Discovery reworks well-trod Star Trek Federation’s multiculturalism will assimilate and tropes; more so than any other Star Trek series, it gradually eliminate traditional Klingon values. He feels like it was designed for people who grew up sees “we come in peace” as more of a threat than watching Star Trek (and other genre media). The physical attack. On the other side, the Federation in best episode in this regard is “Magic to Make the general, and Michael Burnham in particular, struggle Sanest Man Go Mad,” a time loop episode in the mold with the ethics of wartime: Burnham initially of The Next Generation’s “Cause and Effect” (1992) proposes a violent course of action that her captain, or Stargate SG-1’s “Window of Opportunity” (2000), Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) dismisses as but one that acknowledges that there have been so many time loop stories told in sf television in the becomes the proponent of Federation values butting headsconflicting with withthe ends-justify-the-means Federation values; later attitudes Burnham of spend time introducing and explaining the concept. Instead,past twenty-five it can just years play that with the it. story The doesstory not innovates need to 22 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 23 in a couple ways, depicting the time loop from the Annihilation perspective of an unaware character—but because the viewer is familiar with these kinds of stories, they Benjamin J. Robertson can follow what the character cannot. Additionally, it explores some of the trope’s implications: the Annihilation. Dir. Alex Garland. Perf. Natalie Port- villain Harry Mudd uses the time loop as a learning man, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, Jennifer experience to carry out a heist, reiterating the same Jason Leigh, Oscar Isaac. Paramount. 2018. events with incremental improvements every time until he’s able to achieve his goal. At the same time it Annihilation, plays with these common sf television tropes, it also Alex Garland’s production of Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 novelAS WITH of the ANY same novel-to-film name, raises adaptation, questions about the some backstory to a pre-existing Star Trek character relationship between the original text and what it (Muddfinds moments appeared for in charactertwo episodes introspection, of the original adds becomes when rewritten for and visualized in an series), and indulges in some black comedy. altogether different medium. Although I cannot avoid implicit, and sometimes explicit, comparisons along spin on old concepts through a visit to the “mirror these lines in this review, my intent is to address the Later in the first season, the show puts a new in the original series episode “Mirror, Mirror” to the weird, a genre of writing associated with HP (1967)universe,” and the revisited dark alternateon both Deep timeline Space first Nine seenand Lovecraftfilm itself and Clarkthink Ashtonthrough Smith its status and, in more relationship recently, Enterprise. Like in many previous mirror universe with VanderMeer, China Miéville, Steph Swainston, episodes, the characters pretend to be their mirror and others. counterparts, but Discovery explores the moral cost The weird has rarely been adapted to cinema of this more than previous Star Treks, with Burnham with any success, in sharp contrast to other forms having to spend multiple episodes impersonating of horror, such as the Gothic, which has long been a staple of cinematic horror. Annihilation does not, how easy it is to become that person. On the other unfortunately, prove to be a clear exception to this hand,her brutal, the show genocidal understands counterpart, that andthe findingentire idea out of the mirror universe is inherently goofy and isn’t the written form do not seem to translate well to afraid to mock itself, such as the revelation that one visualrule. The media. effects Despite weird some fiction truly produces stunning by moments way of of the main cast, Cadet Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), of beauty and horror, Annihilation largely fails to has a counterpart nicknamed “Captain Killy.” Not achieve the weird insofar as it falls into conventions everything about the mirror universe works—the idea that the mirror universe Terrans literally don’t the Gothic. like light is silly, and Discovery’s revelation about moreOf course, clearly associatedwe might withread the Annihilation disaster film as and a the origins of a key character strips that character success nonetheless. Whatever its shortcomings as of some of the nuance the show had previously built up—but Discovery’s foray into the mirror universe I believe many readers of this review would like proves to be the most effective and interesting one toweird see film,more it representsof: cerebral the and sort thought-provoking of science fiction since its original 1967 appearance. rather than muscular and action-oriented, small and Discovery returns to classic Star Trek values claustrophobic rather than grand and “epic,” focused (arguably sorely needed in these pessimistic times) on women and people of color rather than on white and is willing to innovate with tropes that had become men, artistic rather than popular. Along such lines, tired by 2005, after nineteen continuous years we must celebrate Annihilation and support it. material. I remain a little skeptical that this had to cannot articulate in a visual and/or aural form the beand a twenty-fiveprequel (it carries seasons a oflot churned-out of the usual franchisebaggage overallNonetheless, weirdness I find of VanderMeer’s it disappointing novel that for the the filmfact of prequels, but there are times it does shed a new that this inability comes with the cost of losing the light on the original series), but Discovery provides a novel’s environmental and planetary concerns. In potent case study for how the best 2018, this sin may be unforgivable. manages to balance the old with the new. Annihilation tells the story of Lena (Natalie franchise fiction 24 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 25 is or what it means to the future of the world, the professor of biology at the Johns Hopkins University other human narrative frame begins with joy and specializingPortman), ain formerthe life Armycycle of officer the individual and present cell. light. Here we meet Lena and her husband, Kane, the Her husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac), a Special Forces former an academic and the latter a career special operative, deploys on a mission that seems to Lena operative. Whatever their differences, however more mysterious than usual. After he fails to return, much time they spend apart, they nonetheless seem Lena tries to discover what became of him and to love each other, or at least lust after one another. where he had been deployed, but she runs into too They spend a good deal of time in bed, playfully many dead ends and eventually gives up. When Kane leading up to sexual intercourse. These moments of

and very disoriented, Lena and he are both taken they nonetheless set the stage for Lena’s motivation. captivefinally doesby showa government up at their agency home, unannouncedtasked with Atlevity some are point, perhaps it seems, the least she believable has had an in affairthe film, with but a exploring and understanding something called “the shimmer,” an area in a remote part of the American coast surrounded by what looks like a giant soap missioncolleague. into Kane, the inshimmer. a manner Lena not chasesclear from after the him film, in bubble. Inside the shimmer, animal and plant life anfinds attempt out about to atone the for affair what and Dr. therefore Ventress takes(Jennifer the have mutated in impossible ways as the result of an Jason Leigh), a psychologist who goes on the mission unknown event that took place three years earlier. with Lena, suggests is common act of self-destruction In order to discover a means of healing her husband, that nearly all living things undertake for reasons whose health rapidly deteriorates after he returns to that remain murky. the normal world, Lena enters the shimmer with a These two narrative frames are largely absent from group of four other women, each of whom has her the novel and serve here as humanized entry points own reasons for undertaking what is more than once referred to as a “suicide mission.” Each of the four narrative, no matter the dehumanizing nature of the women other than Lena meet some strange and/or oneinto orwhat the wouldlack of otherwisebelievability be of a thevery other. difficult Whereas main grisly fate during the expedition. Lena alone returns the novel could rely on the biologist’s interior to tell the tale, although she may no longer be the monologue to hint at her motivation and the events person who set out on the journey to begin with. that led to her involvement with the expedition, the

shimmer, is framed by three narratives. I shall return draw the audience out of the shimmer on numerous The film’s primary narrative, of the mission into the occasions.film must visuallyFar from represent reinforcing these the weirdnessevents and found thus inside the shimmer, these moments serve to index ato human the first being, of these shows narratives us Lena’s in a interrogation/ moment. The that weirdness to a human scale. The shimmer second narrative frame, and the first which involves threatens the world with destruction, as if the world headquarters of the agency investigating the shimmer ratherdebriefing than upon the returningpart of the to Areaworld X affected(in the film, by the human faculties through the cold logic of science. event that causes the shimmer). This interrogation Thewere shimmer some well-defined provides a placemeans apprehensible for salvation byor is, in a word, dehumanizing. Lena’s affect, and redemption, as if the self-destruction of a single especially that of her interrogator (Benedict Wong), individual (or any number of individuals) matters in the face of the cosmic forces, the weird forces, at acting throughout, perhaps in an attempt to convey work inside. weirdnessis stilted and or horror). cold (the It is film shot features in stark unemotional right angles The anthropocentric and anthropomorphic and features people largely concealed by hazmat suits. The interrogator’s questions suggest profound what is perhaps the most cosmic moment in it, the ignorance and utter lack of concern for the human tendencies within the film manifest, strangely, in being sitting across from him. Nonetheless, as I shot, Annihilation shows us what seems to be a discuss below, this interrogation serves mainly to meteorfirst of thecrashing film’s through narrative our frames. planet’s In atmosphere its opening humanize the shimmer to the extent it is possible and into a lighthouse. The lighthouse will turn out to do so. In contrast to this interrogation, which in to be the center of the shimmer and the setting for the end reveals very little about what the shimmer 24 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 25 the film’s climax. However, the scale of this opening sequence does not grant access to some scale beyond be weird because they remain for a human audience the human, the scale at which the Anthropocene and in human terms, representations that seek to operates, for example. Rather, when coupled to convey a given meaning to an audience that only the ensuing narrative, it turns Annihilation into a knows how to think in terms of what means to it. The human scale at which they take place, and the genre implies. Lena and company enter the shimmer fact that they are so easily apprehended by human todisaster understand film, completeit and, ultimately, with the defeat human it scale and save that faculties, may say something about the metaphorical the world from destruction. When Lena, in the end, and real relationships between human knowledge encounters her own double, she blows it up with a and sight, the sense most clearly associated with grenade. As a result, the lighthouse and the strange Hollywood cinema. Whatever the case, Annihilation tunnel within it begin to burn and the shimmer does not escape from the human to the extent that VanderMeer does in his novel. Lena and Kane, who alone have returned from Again, in and of itself, it may be too much to call thecollapses. shimmer, The are film’s no longer final shothuman, suggests but the that loss the of Annihilation a failure for this reason. After all, doing the weird and non-anthropomorphic space of the shimmer reduces this inhumanity to some kind of abstract standard created by human knowledge horror-from-within, a horror more characteristic of practicesso suggests and that applied the film as a should measure be judgedas if it bywere an the Gothic than the weird. objective and true. However, in the era known as the Anthropocene, an era in which humanity has come genuinely weird moments. Hearing a human scream to understand both its relationship to planetary comeI do fromwish theto note terrifying that the mouth film doesof a mutant contain “bear” some forces and the degree to which these forces outstrip that attacks Lena’s expedition on two occasions is, in our every effort to grasp them, we need a means to word, unsettling. The images of the plants, and the measure how well our cultural productions grapple plant-animal hybrids, that run rampant throughout with such issues. Weirdly, this measure cannot itself the shimmer are stunning in their color and be human, if “human” refers us to modern notions of apparent pervasiveness. Josie’s (Tessa Thompson) subjectivity, knowledge, politics, science, criticality, stepped transformation into a human-shaped tree is capitalism, or history—the very notions that in part produced the Anthropocene to begin with. In claim about the shimmer before her death—‘It’s not the end, Annihilation relies on an anthropocentric likestrange—and us. It’s unlike strangely us. I beautiful.don’t know Dr. Ventress’swhat it wants. final and anthropomorphic indexicality for its effects, Or if it wants.’—hints at something irreducible to for its frights, for its weirdness. In 2018, when we human concerns. However, with few exceptions, understand (if dimly) that the ground beneath our these moments seem mainly, and simply, aesthetic— feet cares nothing for such indexicality, perhaps window dressing that attempts to convince us that we need newer, weirder means through which to something weird is taking place rather than effective represent—or, better, experience—the planet. production of the weird itself. These moments fail to

26 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 27 Announcements and mediated) • Playing Science/Science Fiction (cosplay, games, gaming) Call for Papers—Conference Submission: Please submit a 200-300 word Title: Science Fictions, Popular Cultures abstract of your presentation, plus a 100 word bio Deadline: Priority acceptance 15th May 2018 to SFPC conference co-chair Carrie J. Cole, using the (although later submissions will be considered) online form at http://www.caperteam.com/sfpc/. Contact: Inquiries to Carrie Cole at SCIFIPOPCON@ Proposals will be reviewed on a rolling basis; submit caperteam.com early to ensure best opportunity for acceptance. Dates: Thursday 13th – Sunday 16th September, 2018 Accepted presenters may also be invited to participate in HawaiiCon public panels. Attendance SCIENCE FICTIONS, POPULAR CULTURES is a to the entirety of the larger HawaiiCon conference scholarly, academic conference which runs in is included with the SFPC registration fee, as well conjunction with HawaiiCon (September 13-16, as a copy of the published peer-reviewed, academic 2018) at the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel & Bungalows on proceedings. the western coast of the Big Island of Hawai’i. For more information on SCIENCE FICTIONS, SCIENCE FICTIONS, POPULAR CULTURES seeks POPULAR CULTURES, see http://www.caperteam. com/sfpc/ or email [email protected].

research,to both defy scholarship and redefine and how creative the academy endeavors views science fiction and popular culture—and the academic conference proceedings is being published Call for Papers—Articles inof conjunction those working with the across event. these fields. A formal, SCIENCE FICTIONS, POPULAR CULTURES is soliciting 20-minute academic presentations from Title: Monographic issue “Horror and the Fantastic” th a wide spectrum of disciplines addressing the Completed Chapter Deadline: 10 June 2018 narratives and performances of science, science Contact: http://revistes.uab.cat/brumal/pages/ view/callforpaper platforms, and cultures. As scholars, we create intersectionsfiction, and popularwith public entertainment programming across at HawaiiCon media, SINCE ITS BIRTH, the fantastic has been an excellent which leverages the intellectual engagement way to explore our fears of the unknown – “the oldest audiences bring to their enthusiastic appreciation and strongest emotion of mankind”, as Lovecraft and deep knowledge of pop culture. stated in his well-known essay The Supernatural Possible topics include but are not limited to: Horror in Literature (1927). The aim of the fantastic is to destabilise the codes that we have established • World-building in genres & across media to understand and represent the real: when we are • Science in/of Science Fiction • Universe creation (Cosmos to Marvel) possible and the impossible in a realistic world like confronted with the conflictive coexistence of the • Teaching of/with Popular Culture & ours, our certainties about the real stop working. Science Fiction (across disciplines) Faced with this, fear is our only defence. • STEM, STEAM, and Science Fiction This is the type of experience that we want to • Translating/Adapting Science Fiction examine in this monographic issue of Brumal. For this across media and cultures reason, we will exclude forms of fear that arise from • Interdisciplinary Science Fictions a natural source (serial killers, terrorism, animal • Popular interpretations and implications of Science Fictions on the multiple ways through which what we have attacks, etc.). Instead, we encourage reflections • Cultures of Science Fictions called “metaphysical fear”– an effect that is inherent • Cultures of Science Fiction fandom and exclusive to the fantastic – is spread, generated • Performing Science/Science Fiction (live by the transgressive irruption of the impossible. 26 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 27 This monographic issue of Brumal will accept of values, often those systems of value are or could works focused on the relationship between Horror be understood to be religious. This Special Issue and the Fantastic in literature, cinema, TV, comic, of Religions journal will explore the ways science theatre, etc. Some areas of research include, but are not limited are either explicitly or implicitly religious, both in to: recastingfiction constructs received religious social systems forms, and of meaning in imagining that new forms of its own. What wider social assumptions • Theoretical perspectives on horror are being rehearsed when the crew on Battlestar • The rhetoric of fear • From classical fears to postmodern horror we all”? Or when any imagined community functions • The monster as the fantastic anomaly accordingGalactica joins to shared in the (orritualized at least affirmation enforced) general“So say • Space as source of horror principles that take on the power of religious norms? • Horror and its boundaries recalibration, or rejection might be at work in Brumal will only consider works of a fantastic resistanceWhat religiously to those motivated social processesfoundations? of refinement, Our focus will be on the issues—aesthetic, ethical, spiritual, accepting papers on other non-mimetic genres such nature as defined by the journal, hereby only social frameworks for answering the religious are related to the fantastic narrative. questionpractical—raised “How shall by we science live?” fictionand its asconcomitant, it invents as the marvellous or science fiction if and when they “How shall we not live.” Articles addressing science Submission: Please visit the Brumal website at http://revistes.uab.cat/brumal/about/ and television, are welcome. Information about the submissions#authorGuidelines. journalfiction and in any the special form, includingissue is available written here: texts, http:// film www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/ . Title: So Say We All: Religion and Society in Science Fiction (Special Issue of Religions journal) Submission:sciencefiction Manuscripts should be submitted Completed Chapter Deadline: 1st August 2018 online at www.mdpi.com by registering (https:// Contact: James Thrall ([email protected]) susy.mdpi.com/user/register) and logging in (https://susy.mdpi.com/user/login). Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will traditionally considered the purview of religion, be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published askingScience questions fiction about wanders the ordering perennially of the in universe, realms continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and the nature of existence, and the proper basis for will be listed together on the special issue website. human (and non-human) relations. When the The “article processing charge” for this issue will be waived or covered by a grant. toward imagining societies shaped by distinct sets speculative force of science fiction is directed

28 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 29 Science Fiction Research Association www.sfra.org The Science Fiction Research Association is the oldest professional organization for the study of science fiction and fantasy literature and film. Founded in 1970, the SFRA was organized to improve classroom teaching; to encourage and assist scholarship; and to evalu- ate and publicize new books and magazines dealing with fantastic literature and film, teaching methods and materials, and allied media performances. Among the membership are people from many countries—students, teachers, professors, librarians, futurologists, readers, authors, booksellers, editors, publishers, archivists, and scholars in many disciplines. Academic affiliation is not a requirement for mem- bership. Visit the SFRA Website at www.sfra.org. For a membership application, contact the SFRA Treasurer or see the Website. SFRA EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE President Immediate Past President Vice President Keren Omry Paweł Frelik Gerry Canavan Dept. of English Language & Literature Dept. of American Literature and Culture English Dept. Room 1607, Eshkol Tower Maria Curie-Sklodowska University Marquette Hall 244 University of Haifa, Pl. Marii Curie-Sklodowskiej 4 Marquette University Mount Carmel, Haifa 3190501 Lublin 20-031, Poland Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881 [email protected] Paweł[email protected] [email protected] Secretary Treasurer Jenni G. Halpin David Higgins Savannah State University, Depart- Inver Hills Community College ment of English, Languages, and 2500 80th Street East Cultures (20029), 3219 College Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076 Street, Savannah, Ga 31404 [email protected] [email protected] SFRA Standard Membership Benefits SFRA Optional Membership Benefits SFRA Review Foundation Four issues per year. This newsletter/journal surveys the field (Discounted subscription rates for members) of science fiction scholarship, including extensive reviews Three issues per year. British scholarly journal, with critical, of fiction and nonfiction books and media, review articles, historical, and bibliographical articles, reviews, and letters. and listings of new and forthcoming books. The Review also Add to dues: $36 (seamail); $43 (airmail). posts news about SFRA internal affairs, calls for papers, and updates on works in progress. Science Fiction Film and Television Three issues per year. Critial works and reviews. Add to dues: SFRA Annual Directory $59 (e-issue only); $73 (airmail). One issue per year. Members’ names, contact information, and areas of interest. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts Four issues per year. Scholarly journal, with critical and bibli- SFRA Listserv ographical articles and reviews. Add to dues: $40/1 year (US); Ongoing. The SFRA listserv allows members to discuss $50/1 year (international); $100/3 years. topics and news of interest to the SF community, and to query the collective knowledge of the membership. Femspec To join the listserv or obtain further information, visit Critical and creative works. Add to dues: $50 (US); $95 (US wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sfra-l. institutional); $60 (international); $105 (international insti- tutional). Extrapolation Three issues per year. The oldest scholarly journal in the field, with critical, historical, and bibliographical articles, book re- views, letters, occasional special topic issues, and annual in- dex.

Science Fiction Studies Three issues per year. This scholarly journal includes criti- cal, historical, and bibliographical articles, review articles, reviews, notes, letters, international coverage, and annual index.

28 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 SFRA Review 324 Spring 2018 29