Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research 1/2019
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Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Esko Suoranta, Laura E. Goodin, & Dennis Wise
Editorial 1/2019
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Prefatory
Adam Roberts
How I Define Science Fiction
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Articles
Christopher Bundrick
“All we know is here we are”: Gothic Aspects of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles
Abstract: The article discusses implications of the way Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950) blends elements of the gothic with more traditional Golden Age science-fiction traditions. I argue that Bradbury’s use of the gothic highlights the fundamental conflicts between approaches to the genre that are, on the one hand, more formulaic, optimistic, extrapolatory, or fantasy-oriented SF, and, on the other, those that which addresses fundamental questions of the human experience. I conclude that his work’s ability to meaningfully juxtapose elements of SF and the gothic allowed it to transcend simplistic genre conventions and become a meaningful addition to the body of important American literature.
Keywords: Science fiction, Gothic, Ray Bradbury, Mars
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Kristin Bidoshi
“The Mindworm”: C. M. Kornbluth’s Post-War American Vampire Tale at the Dawn of the Atomic Age
Abstract: Through a close reading of C. M. Kornbluth’s “The Mindworm” (1950), this paper focuses on the socioeconomic and political anxieties of post-war America including: fears of uncontrolled technological development (nuclear weapons), pathologies of consumerism (material affluence), and the McCarthyite suppression of dissent (the second Red Scare and government surveillance) to reveal the author’s significantly veiled anti-authoritarian message. Published during the height of revived anti-Communist hysteria, Kornbluth’s story challenges the legitimacy of American values of the 1950s, including consumerism, patriotism and conformity. A reworking of the traditional science-fiction narrative where the enemy represents the fear of the Other (i.e. Communists), Kornbluth’s story exposes the real threat to American democracy: the American government’s suppression of its citizens’ rights.
Keywords: science fiction, supernatural, post-war America
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Petra Visnyei
Japanese Apocalyptic Dystopia and the Role of Steampunk in Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle
Abstract: Japanese film director, screenwriter, and animator Hayao Miyazaki created an intricate adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones’s fantasy novel Howl’s Moving Castle (1986). Both the 2004 eponymous Japanese anime film and the novel seem to be set in the Edwardian era. The novel operates more as a fable, carrying traditional tropes of European folklore, while the film is closer to a dystopian alternate history. My paper examines how the adaptation, even though Japanese, manages to rework the story as a steampunk fantasy. The examination of the visual aspect of the anime illustrates how a Japanese adaptation of a British novel represents a steampunk story whilst bearing traces of the Japanese sense of apocalypse. The comparison of the source material and the film reveals a cross-cultural phenomenon: an engagement of typically Japanese animation components and an essentially British setting. This paper examines the film as an adaptation that operates with vastly differing plot elements: war and the exploitation of magical powers obtain much more important, sinister roles as subsidiary themes, especially in light of the fact that the Iraq war had started a year before the film’s release. This study, focusing on the thematic and visual components, identifies how a Japanese adaptation of a British novel gives a translation of a steampunk story whilst conveying a critique of modern wars.
Keywords: steampunk, adaptation, cross-culture, anime, apocalyptic, war, Japanese, British
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Roger Andre Søraa
Post-Gendered Bodies and Relational Gender in Knights of Sidonia
Abstract: This paper analyses representations of non-binary bodies in the animated television series Knights of Sidonia. For some time, posthumanist and gender studies have used the gendered body of the future in television series and other media as a framework to reflect on contemporary human bodies. How are bodies imagined and experienced in this animated TV series, and how is our understanding formed by these representations? I argue that the bodies in Knights of Sidonia can be understood as “post-gendered”, which I analyse in relation to understandings of future gender representations drawn from science fiction.
The main case study is the character Izana who, in the first episode, proclaims an agender identity that is biologically sexed as neither male or female. Izana’s biological gender is presented throughout the series as relational: it changes in response to the character they are in love with. A close viewing and analysis of the two seasons released so far shows that, although Izana is initially presented as a character with an alternative third gender, their transition to female reinforces a heteronormative view of sexuality, as their attraction to a male character, Nagate, pushes them to develop female genitalia. This biological sex change prompts Izana to also develop a female gender identity, which I conceptualise as “relational gender”. Although it initially represents gender in a novel manner, the anime partly reinforces traditional gender norms.
Keywords: Post-gendered body; Cyborg anthropology; anime; relational gender; posthuman sexualities
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Matt Reingold
Golems in the New World
Abstract: This essay considers the ways that the legend of the Jewish Golem has been used in two recent graphic novels. The original legends of the Golem presented him as a creature that would protect the Jews of Prague against anti-Semitism and persecution in the 16thcentury, while leaving open the possibility that he could return again in the future. Both James Sturm’s The Golem’s Mighty Swing and Jorge Zentner and Rubén Pellejero’s The Silence of Malka make use of many of the original tropes of the Golem narrative, but by making significant changes to the story including location, time period, and even what a Golem is, the texts offer new ways of understanding the Golem legend. These narratives suggest that despite immense progress for global Jewry since the 16thcentury, a Golem – albeit a new one – is still needed to protect Jews, sometimes even from themselves.
Keywords: Golems, James Sturm, Golem’s Mighty Swing, The Silence of Malka, Jorge Zentner and Rubén Pellejero, graphic novels
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Josué Morales Domínguez
A Tale of Two Red Hooks: LaValle’s Rewriting of Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook” in The Ballad of Black Tom
Abstract: This article analyses and compares the representations of the monster in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook” (1927) and Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom (2016), the latter being a rewriting of the former, both rooted in the Weird tale. The aim of this article is to illuminate the process through which LaValle turns Lovecraft’s narrative into one where racism becomes evident. The framework for this analysis is Cohen’s “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” (1996), which argues that monsters are bodies of text that have an iterative nature; each iteration adds new layers of meaning to the monstrous body. Whereas Lovecraft’s text arouses racist fears, LaValle’s analyses how these fears turn the racial other into a monster.
Keywords: H. P. Lovecraft, Victor LaValle, Monster, The Horror at Red Hook, The Ballad of Black Tom
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Katariina Kärkelä
Enlightening the Cave: Gollum’s Cave as a Threshold between Worlds in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Riddles in the Dark”
Abstract: This article presents a parallel reading of the chapter “Riddles in the Dark” from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave that appears in The Republic. Plato’s metaphysical and epistemological views, known as the theory of forms, provide the theoretical foundation for the analysis in which the literal and figurative meanings of the cave motif are of primary interest. The Allegory of the Cave will be examined alongside the Analogy of the Sun in a manner that takes into account both their literal and analogous aspects, and The Republic will be seen not only as a theoretical work of philosophy but as an eloquent literary dialogue as well. The analysis focuses on the characters of Gollum and Bilbo and considers the moments of entering and leaving the subterranean cave as a transition between different metaphysical and epistemic positions. This article is centred around the cave-thematic, but also takes into account the motifs of light, seeing, and blindness that are very common in Tolkien’s fiction: the preliminary assumption is that light and darkness have great epistemic value in Tolkien’s fiction not only symbolically but literally, and Plato’s Analogy of the Sun will be used to illustrate and justify this reading. The questions pondered in this article rise from the overall problems of the metaphysical structure of Tolkien’s fantasy universe as well as its epistemic laws as represented by the symbol of the cave.
Keywords: Literature and philosophy; theory of forms; knowledge in fiction; Plato; J.R.R. Tolkien
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Reflection
Michael Godhe
The Right Kind of Curiosity
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Essay
Stefan Ekman
Vitruvius, Critics, and the Architecture of Worlds: Extra-Narratival Material and Critical World-Building
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Conference Reports
Dennis Wilson Wise
The Legacies of Ursula K. Le Guin
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Paul Williams
40th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
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Book Reviews
Paul Williams
Book Review: Patricia A. McKillip and the Art of Fantasy World-Building
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T. S. Miller
Book Review: Lingua Cosmica: Science Fiction from Around the World
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Samantha Kirby
Book Review: Animating the Science Fiction Imagination
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Laura E. Goodin
Book Review: Economic Science Fictions
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Call for Papers: Fafnir 1/2020
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