Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, Volume 2, Issue 1, pages 5-6.

Jyrki Korpua & Päivi Väätänen

Editorial 1/2015

After the first successful year of Fafnir the journal, the time for the publication of the second year’s first issue has now come! The first year was quite interesting and inspiring, as Hanna-Riikka Roine recounts in her overview “And So it Begun. The First Year of Fafnir” in this issue.

We hope that you have enjoyed the wide variety of texts in Fafnir as much as we have enjoyed the editorial work. It has been invigorating to get to know the broad spectrum of speculative fiction globally and to see the different points of view that the researchers are focusing on. Hopefully, this second year and all the years to come will bring this forward over and over again.

This first issue of Fafnir’s second year is multilingual and focuses mainly on the works of science fiction. As we welcome articles written in either English or in any of the Nordic languages, we are proud to publish our first peer reviewed article in Finnish. Aleksi Nikula’s “Katoava utopia, postmoderni utopia Hannu Rajaniemen teoksessa The Quantum Thief” (Vanishing Utopia, Postmodern Utopia in The Quantum Thief) discusses the concepts of postmodern utopia and capitalistic utopia in the The Quantum Thief, the debut science fiction novel by Finnish writer Hannu Rajaniemi.

The other article in this issue is in English. In his article “’Your… your dog is talking?’ Human/Animal Dichotomy in Geoff Ryman’s Air”, Jani Ylönen uses the tools of posthumanism and posthumanist studies to discuss the changes in the world influenced by technology. The article focuses on the character of Ling as a literary presentation of a dog, or as a kind of a “postdog” or “postcanine” entity.

The articles in this issue are fruits of the annual Finfar seminar, which was held in Jyväskylä, Finland, in July 2014. This issue also contains Emilia Uusitalo’s report from the seminar. The report is written in Finnish, but includes a brief summary in English.

Hanna-Riikka Roine’s yearly report recounts the events of Fafnir’s first year. Publishing ten peer-reviewed articles as well as reports, reviews, and essays, year 2014 was quite a full one for Fafnir. As Roine mentions, the hard but extremely interesting and rewarding task of starting a new journal required an input from many others than just the authors, referees, and the editors. We are thankful for the help and support from Fafnir’s advisory board, for Mika Loponen for his help with PR-related issues, and for the Media Fellows -grant from the Finnish Association of Science Editors and Journalists (Suomen tiedetoimittajain liitto ry). Thank you to everyone who has helped to make Fafnir’s first year possible!

In addition to the articles and the overview and report, Fafnir presents a literary review of Basic Categories of Fantastic Literature Revisited (Andrzej Wicher, Piotr Spyra, and Joanna Matyjaszczyk, eds., 2014), which is a recent Polish-British collection discussing the classic fantasy theory of Tzvetan Todorov.

Our next issue, 2/2015, is scheduled for June 2015. The issue 3/2015 will be the first Fafnir with a specific theme and it is going to focus on the history of science fiction and fantasy research in the Nordic countries. In the end of the journal, you can find the call for papers for the Nordic themed issue.