Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research 1/2023
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Elizabeth Oakes, Merve Tabur, Essi Varis & Jari Käkelä
Editorial 1/2023
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Prefatory
Joy Sanchez-Taylor
What Can Double Estrangement Reveal about Speculative Fiction?
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Article
Peter Melville
The Critique of Colonial Cartography in N. K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Abstract: Epic fantasy is well-known for supplying readers with maps of fantastic secondary-world settings. N. K. Jemisin’s The Inheritance Trilogy is an example of an epic fantasy series that might have benefited from a map, but its author specifically chose not to include one. Jemisin has publicly acknowledged her aversion to the fantasy map as little more than a cliché that oftentimes spoils the role that places on the map will have in a fantasy text. Critical descriptions of cartographic images in The Inheritance Trilogy, particularly in its first novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, suggest there is more to the story: that the omission of a reader map adds emphasis to the series’ postcolonial critique of what map theorists call “the cartographic gaze.”
Associating the very idea of a world map with the arrogance of empire, The Inheritance Trilogy characterizes the god’s eye view of colonial cartography as harmfully misguided, even blasphemous, in its attempt to capture the world from a single totalizing perspective. Jemisin counters the objectifying vantage point of the god’s eye view with the subjective narrative perspective of the colonized other. She is by no means the only fantasy author to use first-person narration to promote postcolonial perspectives, but doing so enables her to recapture a depth of experience that is lost when worlds (both imaginary and real) are framed by the colonial cartographic gaze.
Keywords: fantasy, maps, cartography, colonial empire, postcolonialism
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Book Reviews
C. Palmer-Patel
Book Review: Reverse Colonization: Science Fiction, Imperial Fantasy, and Alt-Victimhood
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Hogan D. Schaak
Book Review: Encountering The Sovereign Other: Indigenous Science Fiction
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Eero Suoranta
Book Review: Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw
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Noah Slowik
Book Review: Shakespeare and Science Fiction
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Gemma Field
Book Review: Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene: Imagining Futures and Dreaming Hope in Literature and Media
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Interview
Elizabeth Oakes & Essi Varis
Hail and Farewell: An Interview with Fafnir’s Departing and Arriving Editors-In-Chief
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Lectio Praecursoria
Leena Vuolteenaho
Loputtomuuden hinta: Doctor Who, etiikka ja ihmisyyden rajat
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Call for Papers: Fafnir 1/2024
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