Postcolonial Science Fiction
2013; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 54; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2047-7708
Autores Tópico(s)Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction
ResumoScience Fiction. Masood Ashraf Raja, Jason W. Ellis, and Swaralipi Nandi, eds. Postnational Fantasy: Essays on Postcolonialism, Cosmopolitics and Science Fiction. Critical Explorations in Science Fiction 31. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. 215 pp. ISBN 9780786461417. $40.00 pbk.Reviewed by Amy J. RansomIn his foreword to Postnational Fantasy, esteemed sf scholar Donald M. Hassler aptly remarks that collection of essays seems both alien and massively important at the same (1). This comment reveals the marginal territory to which examinations of sf through the lens of have been relegated while acknowledging a significant wind change. Over a decade ago, Nancy Batty and Robert Markley edited a special issue of Ariel dedicated to Speculative Fiction and the Politics of Posteolonialism, but it has taken a long time for our field to acknowledge that there is such a thing as postcolonial science fiction. In the last decade, however, a handful of books have foregrounded the urgent need for such examinations, among them Ralph Pordzik's Quest for Utopia: A Comparative Introduction to the Utopian Novel in the New English Literatures (2001), John Rieder's Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction (2008), and Jessica Langer's Science Fiction and Postcolonialism (2012). Hassler graciously admits to the alien-ness of this sf subgenre for veteran and newer sf while attesting to the collection's significance.Editors Masood Ashraf Raja, Jason W. Ellis, and Swaralipi Nandi have assembled twelve previously unpublished essays, mostly by emerging scholars (10), but with contributions by established names like Marken Barr and past-SFRA president Adam Frisch. primary corpus of texts examined ranges broadly to include award-winning Anglo-American writers like Mike Resnick and Ken MacLeod, mainstream writers like Salman Rushdie, and well-known minority writers like Octavia Butler. At the same time, this corpus includes names that will be unfamiliar to many readers, such as Asian American Ruth Ozeki and India's Ruchir Joshi. Chapters on sf's presence in Bollywood films and on the game World of Warcraft add an interdisciplinary depth to the volume. All of the essays draw upon key principles of in their studies of sf literature and media. editors organize the volume into three sections: Part I covers Postcolonial Issues in Science Fiction, Part II addresses The Nation and Ethnicity in Science Fiction, and Part III works Towards a Postnational Discourse.In a brief introduction, Raja and Nandi explain their title, which suggests perhaps the identification of a new sub-genre or a renaming of what a number of have been referring to as postcolonial sf. title, they assert, plays with the of fantasy as a postnational genre but also overloads the postnational with an element of the fantastical, for after all, what we call postnationalism is in itself quite a fantastical concept (9). Like sf and the postcolonial, the postnational also appears to escape easy definition; the editors and their contributors variously invoke the postnational in a critical manner, as when it is commonly coupled with capitalism. Yet there also appears to be an occasionally positive connotation to the term. Postnational capitalism is largely criticized as seeking to conflate all nations into one homogeneous (read, Western) global nation all the more easily to be exploited by market forces. At the same time, these authors agree that nationalism is far from dead, and indeed, at times, a positive force for communities seeking to assert difference in the face of imperialistic centrifugal forces. editors articulate their project much more clearly, however, when they simply label it as postcolonial: The whole idea in this book is to bring to bear upon some classical and some contemporary works of science fiction, the full resources and innovative vigor of theory (9). …
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