Foundation Review of Science Fiction 126 Foundation the International Review of Science Fiction
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The InternationalFoundation Review of Science Fiction 126 Foundation The International Review of Science Fiction In this issue: Chris Gavaler and Nathaniel Goldberg get sceptical with Marvel Comics Jason Eberl, Elizabeth Grech and Victor Grech consider medical ethics in Star Trek David Ketterer re-compiles The Midwich Cuckoos Nicholas Laudadio harmonises with Kim Stanley Robinson Brian Matzke reclaims early space opera by women Simon O’Sullivan takes a reality check from sf to science-fictioning Foundation Gabrielle Bunn explores the natural world with J.G. Ballard Paul March-Russell has electric dreams at the Science Museum and the Whitechapel Gallery 46.1 No. 126 2017 Vol. Andy Sawyer reports on Keith Piper at the Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool In addition, there are reviews by: Jeremy Brett, Molly Cobb, Iain Emsley, Beata Gubacsi, Kate Macdonald, Paul March- Russell, Asami Nakamura and Sue Smith Of books by: Mike Ashley, Carlos Gutiérrez-Jones, Edward James, Victor Pelevin, Tara Prescott, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Michael Swanwick, McKenzie Wark and Simone Zelitch Cover image/credit: Frank R. Paul, cover to Amazing Stories (December 1926). Wikimedia Commons. Foundation is published three times a year by the Science Fiction Foundation (Registered Charity no. 1041052). It is typeset and printed by The Lavenham Press Ltd., 47 Water Street, Lavenham, Suffolk, CO10 9RD. Foundation is a peer-reviewed journal. Subscription rates for 2017 Individuals (three numbers) United Kingdom £22.00 Europe (inc. Eire) £24.00 Rest of the world £27.50 / $42.00 (U.S.A.) Student discount £15.00 / $23.00 (U.S.A.) Institutions (three numbers) Anywhere £45.00 / $70.00 (U.S.A.) Airmail surcharge £7.50 / $12.00 (U.S.A.) Single issues of Foundation can also be bought for £7.50 / $12.00 (U.S.A.). All cheques should be made payable to The Science Fiction Foundation. All subscriptions are for one calendar year; please specify year of commencement. Address for subscriptions: The Science Fiction Foundation, c/o 75 Rosslyn Avenue, Harold Wood, Essex, RM3 0RG, U.K. Email: Roger Robinson, [email protected] – all messages should include ‘SFF’ in the subject line. Back issues can be obtained from Andy Sawyer – see contact details below. Editorial address (for submissions, correspondence, advertising): Dr Paul March-Russell, [email protected] Articles should be approx. 6000 words in length, double-spaced and written in accordance with the style sheet available at the SF Foundation website (www.sf-foundation.org). Books for review: Please send to Andy Sawyer, Science Fiction Foundation Collection, Sydney Jones Library, University of Liverpool, PO Box 123, Liverpool, L69 4DA, UK. Please clearly mark ‘For Review’. Reviews (up to 1500 words in length) should be sent to [email protected] All contents copyright © 2017 by the Science Fiction Foundation on behalf of the original contributors ISSN 0306-4964258 Foundation The International Review of Science Fiction Editor: Paul March-Russell Book Reviews Editor: Andy Sawyer Editorial Team: Cait Coker, Dean Conrad, Andrew Ferguson, Heather Osborne, Maureen Speller Contents Volume 46.1, number 126, 2017 Paul March-Russell 3 Editorial Brian S. Matzke 6 ‘The Weaker (?) Sex’: Women and the Space Opera in Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories Chris Gavaler and 21 Marvels of Scepticism: René Nathaniel Goldberg Descartes and Superhero Comics Victor Grech, Elizabeth 35 Doctors in Star Trek: Compassionate Grech and Jason T. Eberl Kantians David Ketterer 47 The Complete Midwich Cuckoos Nicholas C. Laudadio 61 ‘Harmony endowed with gifts of the stars’: Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Memory of Whiteness and the Orchestrionic Instrument Simon O’Sullivan 74 From Science Fiction to Science Fictioning: SF’s Traction on the Real PB 1 Reports Gabrielle Bunn 85 J.G. Ballard and the Natural World Andy Sawyer 87 Keith Piper Paul March-Russell 89 Robot Dreams: Robots and Eduardo Paolozzi Book Reviews Iain Emsley 94 Tara Prescott, ed. Neil Gaiman in the 21st Century Paul March-Russell 96 McKenzie Wark, Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene Asami Nakamura 99 Carlos Gutiérrez-Jones, Suicide and Contemporary Science Fiction Sue Smith 103 Edward James, Lois McMaster Bujold Jeremy Brett 105 Simone Zelitch, Judenstaat Molly Cobb 107 Michael Swanwick, ‘Not So Much’, Said the Cat Beata Gubacsi 109 Victor Pelevin, Empire V: The Prince of Hamlet Kate Macdonald 111 Mike Ashley, ed. The Feminine Future and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, ed. Women of Futures Past 2 3 Editorial Paul March-Russell Four days (as I write this) into a Trump presidency and the fallout from his inaugural speech continues to reverberate. Did he lift chunks of dialogue from The Dark Knight Rises, or Avatar, or whatever? I honestly don’t care. I do care, though, that he offered a thoroughly dystopian image of the USA for his own political purposes. Dystopia, like its more optimistic counterpart, is fundamentally satirical in orientation – it exaggerates in order to caution. Trump, though, was not presenting a satire but seeking to consolidate the beliefs of his constituency that ‘carnage’ is the American reality. The untruth of this claim has already been debated, but what I am interested in here is the science-fictionality of this discourse, a discourse that has given rise to such Orwellian-isms as ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’, and what sf can say in response. The most self-harming thing critics can do is to duplicate Trump’s dystopian / apocalyptic rhetoric. Portraying him in social media memes as Cthulhu, Jabba the Hutt or Sauron, and his presidency as the beginning of the End of Days, does nothing to combat what he believes in. Like Spitting Image’s depiction of Margaret Thatcher as a cruel, hard-hearted dictator, such representations can feed their self-image as men and women of iron will, or in Trump’s mind, as the anointed leader of a mass movement striving against a decadent political Establishment. Instead, it is the rhetoric itself that needs to be unpicked. As the late Mark Fisher once observed, the recent spate of dystopian films such as The Hunger Games, In Time and Never Let Me Go not only fictionalize the emergence of the precariat but also indicate the extent to which that articulation is constrained by the forces of capitalist realism. Such films however, and here I am thinking for example of the polarization between rich and poor in a film such as Elysium, also dramatize the sense of crisis that precipitates the state of exception which these works otherwise appear to critique. In other words, the dystopian narratives that compose so much contemporary sf cinema are their own self-fulfilling prophecy. Trump, in this sense, is not the antithesis of Hollywood values; rather he is confirmation of their worst nightmares, as screened in multiplexes the world round. The thing is, though, these films are just stories. Not only are they not real, they are satirical exaggerations not necessarily of what is but what might be – if we so choose. Equally, the febrile atmosphere to which these films contribute, and upon which Trump based his campaign, only gives way to the state of exception if we let it. (And, as the worldwide women’s marches against Trump indicated, many of the world’s 51% will not.) It is in this context, then, that ‘post- 2 3 truth’ is such an insidious concept since it embodies the feeling of crisis upon which Trump draws, that a tipping-point has been reached and the tectonic plates of culture have shifted. Of course, no such thing has happened since the presupposition that there was a time – indeed, a very recent time – when Truth objectively existed is plainly foolish. ‘Truth’ is not a matter of fact, as the Trump team would have us believe (it is this elision that underwrites Kellyanne Conway’s preposterous notion of ‘alternative facts’); rather, Truth can comprise of phenomena not seen in the material world – spiritual or religious truths, for example. This is not to suggest that there is no such thing as Truth; instead, it is an ineffable quality to which we have always striven through the kinds of debate and interpretation that Trump and the Alt-Right seek to close down. It is in this capacious understanding of Truth that fiction (an artistic falsehood) finds its place as a means of truth-telling. The logic of capitalist realism has sought to restrict the range of imaginative possibilities afforded to fiction. Yet, mimesis – caricatured as meaning ‘lifelikeness’ – is not a monolithic concept and, as Erich Auerbach famously argued, it has repeatedly changed over the centuries. Amongst the possibilities seemingly lost to contemporary literary fiction are that of the epical and the mythic. Yet, these are qualities that should, in theory, abound within science fiction due to the latter’s generic association with archetypal romance narratives such as the quest. To give an instance of what I mean. One of the biggest challenges for climate change scientists is that, no matter how many detailed facts they produce, the production of data only hardens the position of climate change deniers. (As Homer Simpson once observed, ‘You can do anything with facts.’) The same problem also plagues such well-researched climate change novels as Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital trilogy. Instead, for the debate to become less polarized, it is not more facts that we need – this, too, only plays into the hands of the climate change-denying Trump administration – but greater and better myths. Here I define ‘myth’ not as a lie, nor even as a synonym for ideology, but as an affective narrative: a story with revolutionary potential to move and inspire. This is what Golden Age and children’s sf abounded in – from Asimov and Heinlein to Andre Norton (although we might now question many of their values).