Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research 2/2023
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Elizabeth Oakes, Merve Tabur, Essi Varis & Jari Käkelä
Editorial 2/2023
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Prefatory
Paweł Frelik
(Largely) Invisible Science Fictions
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Articles
Jyrki Korpua
Hautaamistavat J.R.R. Tolkienin fantasiafiktiossa
Abstrakti: Hautajaiset ovat keskeinen osa normaalia elämän kiertokulkua niin reaalimaailmassa kuin usein fantasiafiktiossakin. Elämä päättyy kuolemaan ja tällöin pidetään yleensä hautajaiset. Kuolemaan liittyy tapoja, jotka voivat olla uskonnollisia eli uskomusjärjestelmään pohjautuvaan elämäntapaan viittaavia. Nykyfantasian keskeisen kirjailijan J.R.R. Tolkienin teoksissa uskonnollisuus on läsnä, vaikkakin useimmin vain ohimennen vihjattuina ilmiöinä. Tolkienin maailmanrakennuksessa ja fantasian suurissa kertomuksissa uskonnot ovat sivuroolissa, esimerkiksi pieninä rukouksina tai toiveina ylemmille voimille sekä arkiseen elämään kuuluvina rituaaleina, kuten häinä ja hautajaisina.
Tässä artikkelissa tutkin Tolkienin fantasiassa kuvattuja hautaamistapoja. Vertailen niitä ja pohdin niiden yhteyksiä reaalimaailmaamme. Elämän loppumisen huomioivana ja, etenkin kristillisessä kontekstissa, myös maallisen elämän päätöstä juhlistavana tapahtumana hautajaiset ovat tunteellisia ja merkittäviä. Artikkelini lähestyy kirjallisuustieteellisen lähiluvun kautta hautajaisia Tolkienin fantasiassa, erityisesti hänen tunnetuimmissa teoksissaan, Hobitti eli sinne ja takaisin ja Taru sormusten herrasta. Lisäksi hyödynnän yleisen teologian ja uskontotieteen näkökulmia hautaamisesta.
Avainsanat: J.R.R. Tolkien, fantasia, hautaaminen, Hobitti, Taru sormusten herrasta
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Ian McLaughlin
Giving Wands Their Due: Harry Potter, Speculative Realism, and the Power of Objects
Abstract: Magical objects are legion in Harry Potter. Among them, wands are the most magical and the most taken for granted. Wands are usually seen as tools, but no tool is only a tool. Speculative Realisms provide the means to look past the mere usefulness of wands and explore their nature via a flattened ontology. Recognizing that wands are not passive screens but ontologically equal to all other objects, including humans, bypasses the problems of Kantian epistemology and gives wands room to be what they are qua themselves. Focusing on ontology rather than epistemology enables wands to reveal their power, supplies a framework for studying the natures of nonfictional objects, and – ironically – allows for a more categorical application of Kant’s ethical imperative.
Keywords: Harry Potter, Wands, Speculative Realism (SR), Flat Ontology, Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), Vital Materialism
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Eero Suoranta
“I hope they really evolve into a different species from us”: Human-Nature Disconnection, Eeriness, and Social Class in Han Song’s “Submarines”
Abstract: Human-nature disconnection is commonly seen as one of the major problems caused by modernization with many in the industrialized world advocating for people, and especially children, to spend more time in contact with nature. In this paper, I argue that the 2014 short story “Submarines” by the Chinese SF writer Han Song (b. 1965) challenges this widespread idea of a “return to nature” while calling attention to the links between environmental problems and class politics. I further argue that the story accomplishes this via the “eeriness” that Li Guangyi sees as the most apparent feature of Han Song’s literary style as well as by invoking the critical realism of Lu Xun (1881–1936), making the story an example of the “generic hybridity” of SF that Cara Healey has previously examined. As such, I contend that “Submarines” does not present the reader with ready-made answers, but instead offers a way to think about how ecological crises intersect with inequality.
Keywords: Chinese science fiction, eeriness, Han Song, Lu Xun, nature-deficit disorder, social class
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Grace Borland Sinclair
Grafting Symbiosis: Care, Empathy, and Scientific Reform in Naomi Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman
Abstract: This article examines the presence and potential applications of care, empathy, and anti-binary approaches in relation to scientific thought and practice in Naomi Mitchison’s first science fiction novel, Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962). I argue that Mitchison’s portrayal of alien mothering and interspecies communication both interrogates the social consequences of reproductive technology and gestures towards a model of scientific study where empathy and care are valued, where the unstable boundaries between “Self” and “Other” can be interrogated, and where structures of sameness and difference might be revised. Mitchison’s emphasis on relationality, emotion, contextual particularity, and empathy shed light on the radical possibilities of engaging with care in the scientific field. By first engaging with the relevant historical and contemporary discourse surrounding care, feminist science and technology studies, and feminist speculative fiction criticism, this article investigates the ways in which Mitchison’s alien encounters can disrupt the gendered binaries of both social and scientific thought.
Keywords: Science fiction, otherness, care, empathy, feminist science, Scottish
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Jani Ylönen
A Created Adult and the Ideal Childhood: Genetic Technology, Childhood, and Class in Anne Charnock’s A Calculated Life
Abstract: Science fiction has discussed questions of ethics and reproduction since its birth. This article demonstrates how Anne Charnock’s A Calculated Life (2013) contributes to these discussions by connecting questions of genetic technology and reproduction to discourses on class and childhood. The analysis of the novel demonstrates how childhood as a social construct is connected to social class and to ethical questions that carry over to the discussion on the possibilities of reproductive technology. The interaction between the protagonist, Jayna, a programmed lower-class human, and Alice, a child of middle-class privilege, shows how discourses of the past are always included in speculations about the future. The article shows how science fiction can serve as an important site for examining the prospects of new technologies by producing speculative yet concrete scenarios about imminent yet abstract technologies.
Keywords: class, genetics, technology, reproduction, science fiction
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Conversation
Essi Varis, Elise Kraatila, Hanna-Riikka Roine, & Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Conversation: What, How, Where, and Why is Speculation?
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Book Reviews
Alicja Jakha
Book Review: Science Fiction and Psychology
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José Manuel Ferrández Bru
Book Review: Nólë Hyarmenillo. An Anthology of Iberian Scholarship on Tolkien
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B. L. King
Book Review: The Rise and Fall of American Science Fiction, from the 1920s to the 1960s
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Soni Wadhwa
Book Review: Sideways in Time: Critical Essays on Alternate History Fiction
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Daniel A. Rabuzzi
Book Review: The Norse Myths That Shape the Way We Think
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Elise Kraatila
Book Review: Steel as the Answer? Viking Bodies, Power, and Masculinity in Anglophone Fantasy Literature 2006–2016
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Anna Bark Persson
Book Review: The Crisis of Representation and Speculative Mimesis: Rethinking Relations Between Fiction and Reality in 21st-century Fantasy Storytelling
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Call for Papers: Fafnir 2/2024
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