From the Editor

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Winter 2021

Ian Campbell
Editor, SFRA Review

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I’d like to thank you for reading SFRA Review. This is my first issue as senior editor, and while I cannot hope to surpass the standards Sean Guynes instituted during his tenure, I can try to maintain these standards. In fact, this issue is really his, as Sean directed the content, while I merely arranged it. We have him to thank for everything that’s been done to professionalize the Review and raise its visibility.

I live in Atlanta, in the lovely and newly-blue state of Georgia, where I work at Georgia State University. I primarily write about Arabic-language SF, though I also publish on postcolonial Moroccan literature in Arabic and French, and sometimes on Anglophone SF. I grew up on old-school Anglo-American SF, but have gradually learned not to reread the sort of things my teenage self thought magnificent.

It is in the spirit of looking back upon things we once thought magnificent, now with a more mature and critical eye, that we present to you the only part of this issue that is my contribution rather than Sean’s. The Review has been publishing for fifty years, now: half a century of discourse on SF as serious literature. We invite creators, critics, scholars and fans of all generations to take a look at what we’re calling Interrogating Our History, and to consider the call for papers, through which you can consider submitting a reflection upon works the critics, scholars and fans of the year 1971 considered influential. Please consider submitting: the papers will be published in the year’s remaining issues.

My role here is to boost the signals of other people: writers and artists, reviewers, graduate students, emerging scholars, established scholars, independent scholars and scholars from outside the Anglophone world. The Review provides a platform for anyone to make observations or draw conclusions about the vast, increasing diversity of SF and related genres. As an international publication, we have the reach to enable scholars from all over the world to discuss speculative fiction and how it manifests in corners of the world that my teenage self only knew about through stereotypes and Orientalism. Do you have a point to make, or an axe to grind? Contact us.

For now, little will change, especially structurally. Sean did a great job raising the level of professionalism, and I hope to build upon that. In this issue, in addition to reviews and feature articles, our editorial team brings to you papers from Us in Flux and Beyond Borders; future issues will maintain these symposia and special sections. Are you organizing a conference or part of a group of scholars who wish to present multiple perspectives on the same topic? Again, contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.