Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, Volume 5, Issue 2, pages 5–6
Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen,
Laura E. Goodin & Dennis Wise
Editorial 2/2018
We present this issue of Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research with some ambivalence. First, we are very happy indeed to welcome Esko Suoranta, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Helsinki, who will be joining us as our new co-editor-in-chief beginning with our next issue. Esko is working on his PhD, Affordances for the Future: Allegory and Cognition in Technocritical Speculative Fiction. His research on William Gibson’s later novels has been published in Fafnir, and his essay on Malka Older’s Infomocracy appeared in Vector in late 2018. In addition to speculative fiction, his research interests include postmodernism, posthumanism, cognitive literary studies, and narratology. He tweets as @Escogar. He says, “I’m very excited to start working with the editorial team at Fafnir, the journal that offered me the first opportunities to publish my research when I was still an undergraduate. I’m confident that together with Laura and Bodhisattva we can maintain its high quality as a scholarly journal, further improve our editorial processes, and break new ground in finding new readers and contributors. So, onwardto glory!”
However, we also bid farewell to longtime co-editor-in-chief Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, who is moving on to pursue other exciting research projects. We’d like to offer our deep gratitude to Aino-Kaisa for all her contributions to and hard work on this journal, and wish her all the best in her upcoming adventures.
Aino-Kaisa says: “I would heartily like to thank all my fellow editors, past and present, for making Fafnir the quality journal it is today. In my time as an editor-in-chief for Fafnir, the journal has certainly grown from a little dragon to a full-grown beast that has spread its wings beyond Finland and the Nordic area to international skies as well. I have seen not only an increase in the number of articles offered for our journal but also the growing amount of international interest Fafnir is attracting – which can also be seen in the fact that we have moved from three Finnish editors to an international editorial staff. I am confident that after I leave the journal, Fafnir will continue to live long and prosper as the fantastic beast it was always meant to be.”
Our two articles in this issue examine iconic works of speculative fiction inwidely different ways. Gardner Pottorff’s “Misanthropic Messiahs: Timon of Athens and Dune – The Role of Christ-like Leaders” looks at the inversion of familiar religious imagery to generate “anti-messiahs” as heroes (and anti-heroes). David Garfinkle’s “Mimesis: Beyond Opsis in the Star Trek Universe” uses works from the Star Trek canon as examplars for introducing concepts of identity and mimesis in an instructional setting.
Three reviews round out this issue. Two of the reviews deal with books about Tolkien – James Hamby discusses Claudio A. Testi’s argument that Tolkien contains both Christian and pagan symbolism, and T. May Stone covers the mythopoeic worldview attributed to a number of Christian fantasists by Zachary A. Rhone. Lastly, Katherine E. Bishop tackles a collection of essay edited by Isiah Lavender about racial representations of Asia in contemporary science fiction.
We also bring your attention to a call for papers on climate fiction (issue 2/2019). The submission deadline is August 15, 2019, and the issue is scheduled for publication at the end of 2019. The call for papers gives full details and submission guidelines.
As ever, we hope this issue intrigues and informs you, and inspires your own research journeys.
Live long and prosper!
Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, and Laura E. Goodin, Editors-in-chief
Dennis Wilson Wise, Reviews Editor
Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research.