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Foundation Review of Science Fiction 124 Foundation the International Review of Science Fiction The InternationalFoundation Review of Science Fiction 124 Foundation The International Review of Science Fiction In this issue: Our special section on utopia and science fiction including: Paul Kincaid on the 500th anniversary of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia Anindita Banerjee on the post-utopian imagination in Dmitri Glukhovsky’s Metro 2033 Foundation Essay prize-winner Selena Middleton on Greg Bear’s Queen of Angels Foundation David Seed debates colonization in Austin Tappen Wright’s Islandia Nika Šetek on the role of leisure in Huxley, Orwell and Zamyatin Ivaylo R. Shmilev on the ethics of warfare in Iain M. Banks Zoran Živković’s previously untranslated essay on Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End 45.2 No. 124 2016 Rhys Williams surveys the current state of Miéville studies Conference reports from Thomas Knowles and Charlotte Newman, Krzysztof M. Maj and Paul March-Russell Paul March-Russell also surveys the work of Maria Lassnig at Tate Liverpool In addition, there are reviews by: Jeremy Brett, Maia Clery, Emma Filtness, Rose Harris-Birtill, Carlos Hernandez, Nick Hubble, Joe Norman, Salvatore Proietti, Andy Sawyer and Allen Stroud Of books by: Aliette de Bodard, John Connolly and Jennifer Ridyard, Gary Gibson, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Dave Hutchinson, Gwyneth Jones, David Mitchell, Laurence A.Rickels, Augustin de Rojas, Francesco Verso and Yoss Cover image/credit: Ambrosio Holbein, ‘Utopiæ insulæ tabula’, woodcut map, 17.9cm ×11.9cm. From Sir Thomas More, De optimo reip. statv, deqve noua insula Vtopia… (Basel edition 1518). Historic Maps Collection, Princeton University Library. 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, The Foundation Essay Prize 2017 Suffolk, CO10 9RD. We are pleased to announce our next essay-writing competition. The award is open to Foundation is a peer-reviewed journal. all post-graduate research students and to all early career researchers (up to five years after the completion of your PhD) who have yet to find a full-time or tenured position. The prize is guaranteed publication in the next summer issue of Foundation (August 2017). To be considered for the competition, please submit a 6000 word article on any topic, Subscription rates for 2016 period, theme, author, film or other media within the field of science fiction and its Individuals (three numbers) academic study. All submitted articles should comply with the guidelines to contributors as set out on the SF Foundation website. Only one article per contributor is allowed to United Kingdom £20.00 be submitted. Europe (inc. Eire) £22.00 Rest of the world £25.00 / $42.00 (U.S.A.) The deadline for submission is 7th November 2016. All competition entries, Student discount £14.00 / $23.00 (U.S.A.) with a short (50 word) biography, should be sent to the regular email address: [email protected] The entries will be judged by the editorial team and the Institutions (three numbers) winner will be announced in the spring 2017 issue of Foundation. Anywhere £42.00 / $75.00 (U.S.A.) . Airmail surcharge £7.00 / $12.00 (U.S.A.) Single issues of Foundation can also be bought for £7.00 / $15.00 (U.S.A.). All cheques should be made payable to The Science Fiction Foundation. All subscriptions are for Call for Papers one calendar year; please specify year of commencement. Address for subscriptions: Special Issue on Science Fiction and Theatre 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. Compared to film, TV and the novel, science fiction theatre is not a widely discussed Back issues can be obtained from Andy Sawyer – see contact details below. topic. But, whilst there is only one book from the 1990s that lists the history of sf plays, there is a long legacy of staging the fantastical, including the importance of Karel Čapek’s Editorial address (for submissions, correspondence, advertising): R.U.R. (1920) in coining the term ‘robot’. With contemporary mainstream plays such as Dr Paul March-Russell, [email protected] Constellations, The Nether, Mr Burns and X, sf theatre may be experiencing something of a revival. There are an increasing number of sf theatre companies worldwide as well Articles should be up to 6000 words in length, double-spaced and written in accordance with the style sheet available at the SF Foundation website (www.sf-foundation.org). as a new anthology in sf plays. Books for review: Foundation seeks articles for a special issue on science fiction and theatre, to be Please send to Andy Sawyer, Science Fiction Foundation Collection, Sydney Jones Library, published in winter 2017. Why is sf not analysed as often in theatre than other media? University of Liverpool, PO Box 123, Liverpool, L69 4DA, UK. Please clearly mark ‘For Review’. What is lost and what is gained when a text is adapted for the stage? Are there any genre Reviews (up to 1500 words in length) should be sent to [email protected] tropes that cannot be staged effectively in theatre? What tropes work particularly well for the stage? All topics and methodologies are welcome including (but not limited to) stage depictions of the future, constructions and representations of sf tropes, performing the non- and post-human, space-time on stage, and adaptations of sf films and novels. All contents copyright © 2016 by the Science Fiction Foundation Please send submissions of up to 6000 words by 5th February 2017 to journaleditor@ on behalf of the original contributors sf-foundation.org, attaching the file in either .rtf or .doc format. For questions about ISSN 0306-4964258 formatting, please see the style guide at www.sf-foundation.org; for all other enquiries, please contact Susan Gray at [email protected] Foundation The International Review of Science Fiction 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 45.2, number 124, 2016 Paul March-Russell 3 Editorial Paul Kincaid 5 Utopia in Context Nika Šetek 19 More’s Legacy of Leisure in Dystopian Science Fiction David Seed 31 Debating Colonization in Austin Tappan Wright’s Islandia Selena Middleton 44 Utopia and the Colonized Pastoral: Africa, Myth and Blackness in Greg Bear’s Queen of Angels Ivaylo R. Shmilev 57 From a Galactic War to a Hydrogen Sonata: Warfare and Ethics in the Culture Novels of Iain M. Banks Anindita Banerjee 70 From Fallout Fantasy to Bunker Bildungsroman: Nuclear Imagination after Utopia PB 1 Features Zoran Živković 85 The Fourfold Library (3): Arthur C. Clarke Rhys Williams 92 Weird Counsels: The Critic & the Critics Paul March-Russell 99 Maria Lassnig Conference Reports Krzysztof M. Maj 102 Fictional Maps Thomas Knowles and Charlotte Newman 104 Philip K. Dick Day 2016 Paul March-Russell 107 CRSF / SFRA 2016 Book Reviews Jeremy Brett 112 Aliette de Bodard, The House of Shattered Wings Maia Clery 114 Carolyn Ives Gilman, Dark Orbit Emma Filtness 116 John Connolly and Jennifer Ridyard, Conquest Rose Harris-Birtill 119 David Mitchell, Slade House Carlos Hernandez 121 Augustín de Rojas, A Legend of the Future and Yoss, A Planet for Rent Nick Hubble 124 Gwyneth Jones, The Grasshopper’s Child Joe Norman 127 Gary Gibson, The Extinction Game Salvatore Proietti 129 Francesco Verso, Livid Andy Sawyer 131 Laurence A. Rickels, Germany: A Science Fiction Allen Stroud 134 Dave Hutchinson, Europe in Autumn 2 3 Editorial Paul March-Russell Just as this issue was being put to bed, along came the EU Referendum, and I was reminded of Harold Macmillan’s alleged comment regarding ‘Events, my dear boy, events’. Brexit dominated the conversations and several of the papers at this year’s SFRA conference in Liverpool – as many of the delegates remarked, sf writers and critics are probably best placed to consider the dystopian and apocalyptic effects of the result. Joan Haran prefaced her keynote with the following response from the Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas: It’s difficult to be hopeful this morning but it is our responsibility. Because giving in and giving up is not an option when we still have a climate to protect, workers’ rights to uphold and our broken politics, as well as our broken communities to mend. […] We must recognise that in our love and our anger, we affirm, rather than deny our fellowship with one another. The utopian sentiments of this reaction, coming amidst political, economic and social turmoil, chime perfectly with this issue’s special section. For, as Paul Kincaid emphasises in his opening article, Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) was borne from the intellectual and political crises of his day. Utopia carries extra resonance for me since, down the hill from where I work in Canterbury, More’s head is contained in the family vault housed beneath St Dunstan’s Church. There is something appropriately utopian for More’s head to be present yet hidden from prying eyes. ‘A ghost city’, as Paul Ricoeur once described the idea, utopia exists just beyond the seeker’s gaze. As Oscar Wilde once observed, ‘a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at’, it is the siren’s call constantly beckoning the traveller. (And like the siren, the dream of utopia may also dash us on its rocks.) Despite the contentious genealogical relationship between sf and utopian fiction, that same impulse of constantly looking beyond underwrites much of the attraction of sf.
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