Category: Nonfiction Reviews

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One of the philosophical cornerstones of the Star Trek universe is the Vulcan concept of “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.” Drawn from Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s belief in a human future marked by joy in difference, IDIC embraces the joys and possibilities signified by the vast array of variables inherent to existence. That concept has been personified multiple times in the various televised iterations of Trek through a number of ‘hybrid’ characters that are either products of Human/Alien reproduction, meldings of machine and organic, or sites for the merging or irreconcilability of two vastly different cultures. These attempts at living expressions of IDIC, designed not only to demonstrate the difficulties of finding one’s identity and place in the universe but to provide captivating foci for character development, though, have been imperfect at best. They achieve to some degree Roddenberry’s double goal of asking audiences to consider and reconsider the state of racial conflict in America and to imagine a future where racial differences are ignored and diversity embraced as a core value; however, as Burlingame-Goff’s thoughtful study shows, hybrid characters in Trek are problematically rooted in the hoary old literary stereotype of the 19^th century “tragic mulatto.” She also describes how many of the hybrids—characters designed specifically to showcase the limitless potential of creation—are governed by a simplistic essentialism (for non-Human species) that cuts against that potential. (All Klingons are violent and prone to anger, all Vulcans are pitilessly logical, all Ferengi are greedy capitalists, all Romulans are sneaky and duplicitous, all Orions are pirates, and so on. This is an aspect of Trek that has always bothered me as well as Burlingame-Goff, that Humans are allowed to be all sorts of things, but aliens in this franchise bend towards cultural and behavioral uniformity even as Humanness is always presented as the norm towards which aliens and hybrids should strive.) However, even in her criticism of aspects of hybridity in Trek, Burlingame-Goff is also careful to delineate the ways in which hybrids have shone light on the positive aspects of the Trek universe and been successful in expressing Roddenberry’s original intent to encourage an optimistic future in which we can all be what we choose to be.

Burlingame-Goff opens her study with a comprehensive look at the “tragic mulatto” figure from which Trek’s hybrids draw much of their inspiration. The “tragic mulatto” (a term coined by Black writer Sterling A. Brown in 1933) is a classic victim of dualistic, binary thinking where a person is one thing or the other: in this case, a mixed-race person with both White and Black ancestry (“blood”). “Tragic mulattos” were originally introduced in 19^th-century American abolitionist literature as living examples of the tragedies of African-American enslavement and the ways in which slavery pits Black against White. The objective of the writers who created these characters was to inspire empathy among primarily White, primarily female reading audiences, an empathy that hopefully would result in a greater popular agitation against slavery. Well-meaning, the “tragic mulatto” quickly evolved into a stock character delineated by certain common features, which Burlingame-Goff distinguishes as fourteen particular ‘core identifiers’. These include, among others, “Otherness and passing,” “tragic love,” “split nature,” “collective representation,” and “mediation.” It is indeed striking how many of these identifiers Burlingame-Goff defines code themselves to the various hybrids appearing on Star Trek, suggesting the ongoing attraction for audiences of the kinds of dramatic dilemmas these sorts of characters have presented for almost two centuries. Usage of this sort of stereotypical image can result in simplistic narrative shorthand that makes for easy, predictable storytelling, but it also has the potential for expanding our understanding of human (or alien) nature via a combination of familiarity and distance. Burlingame-Goff notes that one of Roddenberry’s stated goals for Star Trek was “to create a liminal space where he could examine racial issues” (13), but he also wanted to use race—as expressed through ‘mixed-blood’ Human/Alien hybridity —as a comforting and distancing shield to explore issues of human identity. To do this, she argues, he and his writers (as well as writers and producers of subsequent Trek series) relied heavily on the familiar “tragic mulatto” image, though incorporating into it evolving real-world attitudes towards difference and the struggles of multiracial people. 

Though Star Trek is rife with hybrid characters, this study focuses primarily on eight, above all the franchise’s arguably most well-known figure, Vulcan-Human hybrid Mr. Spock. Also considered are Data and Worf (both introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation), B’Elanna Torres and Seven of Nine (both introduced in Voyager), Odo (Deep Space Nine), Soji Asha (Picard), and Michael Burnham (Discovery). Burlingame-Goff divides these into three categories of hybridity (while noting that some characters exist across multiple categories): Biological, Technological, and Cultural. The chapter on Biological Hybrids (characters who are half-Human, half-Alien) opens by noting how Roddenberry “circumvented the need to rely on hackneyed derivatives of the outdated and socially problematic “tragic mulatto.” Repositioning the “tragic mulatto” in a science fiction universe populated by Aliens as well as Humans was a bit of sleight of hand that distracted audiences from the racist ideology connected to the original stereotype” (55). Trek hybridities rely heavily on racial essentialism to set the problems of interspecies existence in sharp relief. Burlingame-Goff looks at two characters in particular here. One is Spock, the child of a Vulcan father and Human mother. Spock’s internal war between his two heritages is a basic part of his character throughout Trek, as is his determination to identify purely as Vulcan, the dominant caste (allegorically, Spock’s Vulcan half, with its intelligence, self-control and reason, is equated with the “White blood” possessed by 19^th-century “tragic mulattos”, while his Human half, defined by emotion and instinct, equates to “Black blood”). Spock is forever unable to harmonize the two halves of his nature into a new, singular identity, but remains constant that his Vulcan nature (which is essentially unchanging) is superior. We do see Spock’s tragic hybridity given more expansion in later versions of the character, including his Kelvin Universe counterpart and his younger self as shown on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, but he remains a figure trapped by duality and his mapping to Burlingame-Goff’s core identifiers. The chapter also looks at B’Elanna Torres and her own struggles between her Human and Klingon biological heritages. Though Torres and Spock are both at war within themselves, Torres works over the course of Voyager to overcome her traumatic childhood (and ongoing Federation prejudice against Klingons) and reconcile her early rejection of her Klingon mother’s attempts to acculturate Torres to a new identity that incorporates both sides.

Burlingame-Goff turns her attention next to Trek’s Technological hybrids. She notes J.P. Telotte’s observation that “robots, androids, and cyborgs can serve as compelling images for ‘our’ current notions of self, as well as an effective metaphor for that sense of ‘otherness’ which underlies all our recent discussions about gender, race, and sexual orientations” (92). The closeness of machine to Human represented by this class of hybrids makes us question what it really means to be Human. When considering the android Data (admittedly entirely synthetic, but  still a key example of hybridity because of his paramount desire to experience humanity), note must be made of several Next Generation episodes that specifically examined Data’s ability to exist as an independent sentient being connected to a Human nature, particularly Melinda M. Snodgrass’ 1989 courtroom drama “The Measure of a Man.” Data’s struggles to embrace Humanness instill him with the same core identifiers that mark other tragic hybrids. His “daughter” Soji (as seen in Picard)—an organic being infused with fragments of Data’s positronic neurons—also carries many of these identifiers, including a “doomed love” and the possession of a “dark secret”: in this case, her synthetic nature (which is feared and hated by Romulans seeking synths out for destruction). However, Soji successfully combines her Human and machine natures into a being that can mediate between synthetic and biological beings and create a third way of living. Burlingame-Goff notes that “Soji’s narrative may come closest to Lydia Maria Child’s and Gene Roddenberry’s dream of mixed-heritage individuals bringing together the best of Humankind and ushering in a new era of harmony among the races” (128). Although she is prey to the same “tragic mulatto” stereotypes that mark her fellow hybrids, Soji demonstrates the hopeful possibilities inherent to the harmonizing of dual identities. This chapter also looks at the Human-Borg hybrid Seven of Nine and her own particular condition, as a former member of the Borg Collective forced by Captain Janeway and the crew of U.S.S. Voyager to embrace her humanity, collapsing her multitudinous identity into a simple binary and separating her Human nature from her previous collective Borg identity. Seven, certainly in her early stages as a character, is particularly tragic in her ongoing disconnection from her Human side that produces fear, mistrust, and disrespect by her crewmates, as well as in her distaste for her Human side as corrupt and inefficient and finding advantages to Borg existence. Although over time she comes to embrace more of her humanity, she is a constant example of Donna Haraway’s observation about cyborgs representing particular kinds of ‘breached boundaries,’ (121) calling into question established dichotomies in the Federation about organic life vs mechanical.

Finally, Burlingame-Goff looks at Michael Burnham, a Human fostered by Vulcans (specifically Spock’s parents). The young Burnham enthusiastically embraces Vulcan culture but is continually discounted by the society she wishes to join; her joining Starfleet inspires her to create a new, more integrated identity that brings together Vulcan logic with Human emotion. Burnham is a particularly visible example of the potentials of hybridity: Discovery is the first iteration of Trek to achieve visible racial and gender inclusivity, and Burnham herself, as a Black woman, is “a perfect representation of how race, class, gender, and cultural heritage intersect and overlap with one another” (166). Even as she, like her fellow hybrids, draws on the 19^th century “tragic mulatto” and its racially fraught implications for much of her character and her internal and external conflicts, Burnham is an embodiment of the Trek franchise’s evolving and strengthening commitment to IDIC and the truth of a diverse universe. Even imperfectly, all the tragic hybrids under investigation here take viewers forever forward towards thought-provoking examinations of our own humanity, and in them we see much of what makes Star Trek continually relevant to our changing times.

Jeremy Brett is an archivist and librarian at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University. There he serves as Curator of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection, one of the largest of its kind in the world. Both his M.A. (History) and his M.L.S. (Library Science) were obtained at the University of Maryland, College Park. His professional interests include science fiction, fan studies, and the intersection of libraries and social justice.

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Baz Greenland is a podcaster and long-time fan of the television series Babylon 5, whose deep understanding of the show and its aborted spin-offs comes from the standpoint of a British viewer who heard of the show in his youth after its initial broadcast in the United States and who has watched and rewatched it ever since for over thirty years. He comments in his book, “The show’s inception, the struggles during production, and the attempts to continue the Babylon 5 story are almost as epic a tale as the fight against the Shadows and the battle to save Earth” (4). He has written widely and on-line about the series, https://www.threads.net/@greenlandbaz, interviewed surviving cast members, and has a podcast about it: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-dream-given-form-a-babylon-5-podcast/id1611981020. Now he has produced a book aimed at exploring the parallel stories of the show’s narrative plot, and the attempts to revive and extend it.

He notes his early enthusiasm for the show:

Babylon 5 stayed with me. I caught late night reruns on Channel 4, finally seeing what life was like under Commander Sinclair in season one. I bought all the seasons on VHS. On my A-Levels results day, I treated myself  by popping into the video store and spending a whole $100.00 on the complete season three box set. . . . I introduced new friends to Babylon 5. I got the TV movies. I stuck through Crusade. (2)

His reaction was much like my son’s, who bought an extra DVD set of the first season when it came out to share with friends at school, something I have seen duplicated since only with the single season of Firefly! (2002-2003)

The book has 26 chapters, starting with a discussion of “The Legacy of Babylon 5” in Chapter 1, followed by an overview of SF “Story Arcs” in Chapter 2. Greenland notes:

The Oxford English Dictionary defines legacy as ‘a situation that exists now because of events, actions, etc. that took place in the past.’ The story of Babylon 5 as a TV show can certainly be viewed through the prism of that definition. The narrative structure of the show is built on the events of the past. The horrors of the last great Shadow War left scars on the Minbari and the Narn. The rise of Valen a thousand years ago shaped Minbari culture, most significantly the character of Delenn. The Vorlon manipulation of other races and the creation of telepaths saw the show revisiting the trauma of the past, most fundamentally in the show’s final season. (6)

He argues that J. Michael Straczynski’s creation of Babylon 5 opened the door and set the standard for long-form story telling and multi-season story arcs that enabled subsequent television shows, from the reboot of Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009), to more recent iterations of Star Trek, such as Discovery (2017-2024) and Picard (2020-2023) (7-18).

Chapter 3 focuses on how Straczynski came to develop Babylon 5, making use of his comments on the rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated message board back in 1995, when he emphasized the need to have a reasonable budget, treat SF seriously in story-telling, and make use of the kind of sagas he admired in the genre. “As a lifelong fan of grand science fiction sagas like Foundation, Childhood’s End, The Lord of the Rings and Dune, he kept wondering: why hadn’t someone done this for TV?” (19-20). Chapter 4 explores how cast changes and the collapse of the Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN) lead to revisions of the original five year story plan and his proposed follow-up series Babylon Prime. (26) See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Time_Entertainment_Network and https://www.themoviedb.org/network/211. The original combined ten year story arc would have been very different from the show as it was produced, perhaps more dark and less exciting: “The final version of the TV show certainly appears to be the more thrilling option of the two” (29).

Further chapters discuss the development of the series, the back and forth debate about the relationship between Star Trek Deep Space Nine (1993-1999) and Babylon 5 (Chapter 6), and interesting interviews with cast members Peter Jurasik, Marshall Teague, and Patricia Tallman. Chapter 7, “Making ‘The Lord of the Rings in Space’ a Reality,” discusses the financial and technological obstacles to making grand SF films, and the literary influences on Straczynski’s story arc, including the poem “Ulysses” (1833; 1842) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as well as Childhood’s End (1953), Dune (1965), and The Lord of the Rings (1954) (50-53).  Chapter 9, “JMS’s Character Trapdoors,” shows how Straczynski planned character switches and exits to allow continuity despite unexpected challenges, while Chapter 10 explores his efforts at introducing diversity in race, religion, gender, and sexual relationships that were not always fully realized but significant for the era (74-76). Chapters 12 through 16 deal with each of the five seasons of Babylon 5, including comparisons of alternate viewing orders of Season 1 (97-98), Season 2 (109-110), and in subsequent seasons, as they relate to building the mythos of the show. Subsequent chapters explore the TNT Movies, the single season of Crusade (1999), and other attempts to extend the detailed universe created by JMS.

The book includes Chapter Notes, a Bibliography, and an Index. It makes extensive use of The Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5, available at http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/. Anyone familiar with (or new to) the series will value the detailed discussion of the making (and unmaking) of the original five-year story arc, Greenland’s commentary on each of the five seasons, and discussion of the innovations made by Straczynski that set the template for much of 21^st century SF production. Greenland explores attempts to extend or reboot the series, and his enthusiasm, commentary, and interviews with the cast make this a valuable resource for conducting further research on the series, which remains one of my favorites.

Bruce Lindsley Rockwood, Emeritus Professor of Legal Studies at Bloomsburg University, Pennsylvania, is a long-time member of SFRA, having served as Vice President (2005-2006), and regularly writes reviews for SFRA Review from his retirement home in Midcoast Maine. He has taught and published on law, literature, climate change and science fiction, and attends SFRA and WorldCon with his wife Susan when possible (most recently in Montreal, Spokane, and recent virtual sessions of the SFRA.

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The Kaiju Connection is a short work focusing on the questions: what makes a kaiju a kaiju, and why are we, as humans, so intrigued by them? This isn’t Barr’s first foray into kaiju discourse, but this volume focuses more on recent kaiju films and the existential questions associated with the genre. With a refreshingly conversational (and sometimes humorous) tone, Barr isn’t afraid to pull metaphorical punches, curse, or paraphrase Homer Simpson in his evaluation of kaiju films, ranging from the serious and philosophical to the campy. Barr even states that this book isn’t an academic text in the strictest sense, but perhaps “more of an apologia for the continued study of the kaiju film” (3).

Barr suggests that society continues to be intrigued by kaiju films because the fascination with kaiju is an (at least tacitly) acceptable extension of a childhood fascination with dinosaurs. While not being particularly female-forward (few kaiju films, with the exception of Colossal [2016], have strong female protagonists—or, even, side characters), kaiju films do have strong masculine vibes and odd tie-ins with professional wrestling—which, admittedly, goes a long way to explaining the suspension of disbelief afforded some of the more comical and unconvincing rubber suits found in lower-budget kaiju films. Beyond gender dynamics, Barr argues that kaiju films can be legitimately studied in terms of political commentary (from the original 1954 Godzilla’s clear connections to post-war nuclear trauma to the 2016 Shin Godzilla, which can be read as a critique of the Japanese government’s response to the Daichii Fukushima disaster) and social commentary (evidenced in the evolving sense of “the Other” found across kaiju film franchises). Barr also argues that the more recent trend for American film makers to downplay Godzilla’s original nuclear origins has strong implications, arguing that they manipulate the story to give Americans a “pass” for the nuclear bombs dropped on Japanese soil during WW2 in order to make the story more palatable to their targeted American audience, thereby co-opting a character originally about a collective national trauma by the nation who caused the trauma. Recasting Godzilla as a ‘force of nature’ rather than a product of human violence and cruelty certainly reframes the narrative. However, Japanese filmmakers are not immune to the concept of spinning the popularity of Godzilla in order simply to make a quick buck; Barr also delves into the trend of some Japanese film companies to turn Godzilla from a serious message about humanity’s hubris into a kid-friendly “big monsters fighting” type of Saturday morning entertainment—the type of low-budget films that Barr bemoans as having watered down the reputability of the genre as a whole in the eyes of the general public.

Beyond Barr’s arguments for why kaiju and the genre of kaiju films are worthy of study, one of the most interesting parts of this book is its continual probing of the boundaries of the kaiju film genre. Barr convincingly argues that determining what ISN’T a kaiju film can be just as enlightening as determining what IS. Can a giant ape be a kaiju? What about a giant human? When does a creature change from being merely an oversized animal, to being a monster, to being a full-blown kaiju? Where those lines are drawn can arguably say a great deal about our perceptions of what constitutes humanity, and what we can sympathize with and relate to. Barr argues that the most solidly-kaiju kaiju are ultimately giant monsters (usually with Japanese origins, or at least nods toward a Japanese origin) who hold up a mirror to humanity and teach us something about ourselves. Barr proposes four “types” of kaiju or kaiju-adjacent films (authentic kaiju films; knockoff kaiju films; big, familiar creature films; and human kaiju), but perhaps the use of “fuzzy logic” is best applied when determining whether a film is a “kaiju film” or not, allowing the judger to decide how close the film in question approaches the beating heart of the kaiju film exemplars.

As Barr readily admits, it would be difficult to call The Kaiju Connection an academic tome, but it arguably has merit for scholarly research, particularly for those interested in the more philosophical, ethical (the costs of human life are often skimmed over in favor of watching two kaiju battle it out on the streets of major cities), and existential questions raised by the more ‘serious’  kaiju films. Casual fans of the kaiju film genre will find enlightening topics and much to enjoy (as well as much to skim over), but hardcore kaiju film junkies will delight in the depth into which Barr delves regarding specific recent films, characters, and even associated merchandise. Overall, The Kaiju Connection is a valuable addition to the kaiju film discourse.

Dr. Amber A. Logan is a university professor, freelance editor, and author of speculative fiction. In addition to her degrees in Psychology, Liberal Arts, and International Relations, Amber holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England. Her thesis “Men Who Lose Their Shadows: from Hans Christian Andersen to Haruki Murakami” examined the intersection of fairy tales and near-future speculative fiction, and her debut novel The Secret Garden of Yanagi Inn was published in November 2022

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Stephen C. Tobin’s Vision, Technology, and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature is a valuable chronicle of Cyberpunk in Mexico, a country not generally associated with the subgenre. Indeed, U.S. readers familiar with the foundational Japanese-indebted gambits of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson will likely be unfamiliar with most of the work here–primarily due to the cultural hegemony of the English Language. This book provides a fascinating media history of recent visual technologies in Mexico, reminding us how media and genres spill over from one place to another. Tobin orchestrates a nuanced reflection on the complicated, pervading dispersal of globalized media. In an age where boundaries between science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, and other subcategories are contested, Tobin’s new book proposes “specular fiction” (2). This designation points us in the right direction if we want to begin progressing our understanding of speculative cultural production. Tobin suggests a slight turn away from such hegemonic labels to root his definition at the nexus of literary and visual media–two spaces that, he contends, have grown increasingly intimate. Cyberpunk provides a useful nexus because, though realist texts feature ocular themes, a subgenre that can draw connections between older technologies and newer variations of “the e-image component” (12) is necessary. Tobin analyzes works from 1993 to 2014 to highlight just how turbulent the media landscape has been in recent decades.

Tobin is a scholar of Mexican culture on a larger scale, and his intervention into genre studies is doubly justified by his analytical roots in Mexico. It is a country where genre labels are more fluid, contrasting the market-driven genre labels of U.S. cultural production. While Tobin’s case studies can mostly be identified as science fiction, his theorization opens up specular fictions–narrative forms that entwine language and screens–as works present across disciplines. Such theorization allows Tobin to dodge some prickly generic disputes about “science fiction” and the sweep of “speculative fiction.” Rather, he contextualizes his intervention for literary and media studies more broadly by following the well-known work of Walter Ong and W.J.T. Mitchell, who have “argued that all media are mixed media, meaning that no media [sic] is purely visual” (4). With this mixed approach, Tobin performs literary analysis that utilizes literature as case studies to theorize media. Tobin’s key interventions contribute to SF scholarship, Mexico Studies scholarship, and scholarship that explores the growing camaraderie between literary and visual media studies. His focus on “specular fictions” does well to offer useful critiques for theorists of science fiction and cyberpunk. By building his definitions on the importance of a given visual technology for a literary work, though, he also theorizes something that can be identified and analyzed across disciplinary and generic boundaries.

In Chapter 1, his introduction, Tobin provides a useful comparative reading of Mauricio-Jose Schwarz’s “La pequeña guerra” [“The Little War”] (1984) and Francisco Amparán’s “Ex machina” (1994). The former, an earlier text, figures television secondarily. The latter, a later text, is a narrative primarily driven by the presence of television. The latter is a specular fiction, while the former is not. Here we see a way in which specular fiction remains compatible with Science Fiction theory–Amparán’s story uses television as the “novum,” or the technological mechanism that shapes the narrative world (In his landmark essay “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre,” Darko Suvin adapted “novum” from Frankfurt School theorist Ernst Bloch). Tobin adapts the term “scopic regime” from Media Studies, but the scopic regimes in focus are usually generated by a novum. This categorization of specular fiction serves most usefully as a temporal map that places geographical pressure on Mexico and the landscape in which it is situated. The fiction that Tobin highlights contains myriad visual technologies, from the television to the more speculative reality-distorting glasses. While some are more rooted in fiction than others, Tobin can move from foundational observations on cinema and television to the numerous screens that have exploded in popularity in the public life of the 2020s. With this progression through time, it becomes increasingly clear that this book about Mexico is more broadly about how Mexico is connected to, and increasingly resembles other global scopic cultures.

Chapter 2 grounds the book on a safe but sharp analysis of gender in the work of Gerardo Porcayo. It is safe because Tobin leans on Laura Mulvey’s now-classic analysis of the male gaze in cinema, which argues that the history of cinema has been dominantly constructed through a male-centric gaze. It is also safe in that readers who come to this book will be familiar with the prevalence of masculinist SF and Cyberpunk. The analysis allows Tobin to perform two key moves. First, he roots Porcayo as a foundational figure for Mexican Cyberpunk, a figure representative of the indelible influences of the US and the dominant masculinist foundations of the subgenre. Second, he establishes that Porcayo’s book is not limited to how specific visual technologies represent/influence perception and subjectivity, but how the gaze, on a broader scale, is a visually encoded social phenomenon.

Chapter 3 transitions into work that zeroes in on specific scopic regimes. Its focus on television makes it generally the heart of the book. Despite the range of visual media at play here, television is the most longstanding form-giving technology. Porcayo writes towards the beginning of the growth of television as a scopic regime, while the book ends with reflections on the proliferation of smartphones and computers which in the 2010s “still had not eclipsed television presence” (27). Television history also helps Tobin bring to light the “restructuring of the media industries within Mexico,” a “higher proliferation of images,” and the growth of the television market itself (27). These three areas open up analyses of “political legislation and privatization,” the “expansion of foreign oligarchic media companies” and the evolutions of the Mexican economy (27). In one striking detail about the shift from public to private media, Tobin reflects on the “media imperialism” that took place as US-based programming took hold of the Mexican television-watching public (27). Focusing on Pepe Rojo’s work, Tobin centralizes a theoretically informed writer through his story “Ruido gris” [Gray Noise] (1996) and the novel Punto cero [Zero Point] (2000). Two key strains arise here as Tobin further expands the net of globalism by juxtaposing an analysis of NAFTA and an analysis of the influence of European postmodernists Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard, and Slavoj Žižek on Rojo’s work. Tobin suggests that Jacques Lacan’s influence may be the most important to Rojo’s work. He offers a Lacanian analysis to tie the television to the home. Here, the spectacular violence that becomes regular viewing numbs individual viewers to bodily destruction. The critique illustrates how screens become a part of Rojo’s speculative literary form, as well as the political forms that emerge with the immediacy and pervasiveness of television news cycles.

Chapter 4, finally, is perhaps the most striking, at least insofar as the content of the case studies goes. It offers a comparative analysis of Eve Gil’s novel Virtus (2008), and Guillermo Lavín’s short story, “Él piensa que algo no encaja” [He thinks something doesn’t fit] (2014), using Debord’s Society as a Spectacle as a theoretical springboard. Debord’s theory leads to a theorization of the twentieth century as “one which involves a hypermediated realm of megaspectacles and interactive spectacle” (40). The analysis centers on Gil’s depiction of President Wagner, the center of a virtualized Mexican future. Wagner is a young, handsome politician who is carefully shaped and curated to appeal to the power of celebrity culture and telenovelas. Wagner is likened to the real-life President Enrique Peña Nieto, elected in 2012. Wagner’s fictional, highly publicized celebrity marriage mirrors that of Peña Nieto, whose marriage may have been a ruse to appeal to public cravings to blur the lines between the telenovela and reality. Wagner dies and becomes a hologram controlled by a mysterious group of powerful people. While Gil’s text relies on curated mass culture, Lavín’s uses VR glasses that render the world better than it is, suggesting that not only are individuals prone to ideological conditioning, but often they actively desire it. The analysis builds out Debord’s neo-Marxian critique to a critique of ideological conditioning as a spectrum. Subject formation proceeds under the pressure of dark media conglomerates, and through intimate individual engagement with the technology. This comparative analysis reflects on the relationships between mass culture and individual subjectivity. Perhaps most hauntingly, it meditates on Wizard of Oz-esque figures who work behind the veil to advertise, condition, and enforce power. Though the technologies of these stories are more speculative than those of the works discussed in the preceding chapters, they resonate with the familiarly fragmented and persuasive cultural dispersals of today’s smartphones, social media apparatuses, and corrupt powers that often work across national boundaries to maintain docile populations.

These works are predominantly dystopian, and Tobin carefully relies on theorizations of dystopias as critically reflecting on the times in which they are imagined. His engagements with these dystopias generate compelling arguments for the magnitude of power that visual technologies have to shape national cultures and individual subjects. Tobin’s scope is limited to a corpus that reflects on recent decades but leaves open the question of how specular fictions might be further explored. Following Nicholas Mirzoeff, he writes that specular fictions engage with visual technologies “defined as any form of apparatus designed either to be looked at or to enhance natural vision, from oil painting to television and the Internet” (6). Questions that might follow then: what happens when we stretch definitions of visual technology? Perhaps an apt question for cyberpunk specifically might be, can we identify specular fictions by the clothing worn in the texts? Can we identify specular fictions by how they represent plant and animal life? How do our formulations of specular fictions change when we bring more specifically semiotic theoretical lenses to them? If we are to bring specular fictions full circle by examining questions of genre, might we interrogate deeper history? Tobin carefully keeps the presents of the texts close to the chest to avoid vague proclamations about the future, which leaves these questions for other thinkers. Hopefully, they will be taken up by scholars working on SF, Mexico, and wider discourses of literary and media studies, all of whom should find useful insights in this book.

Josh Beckelhimer is a PhD Candidate in the English Department at the University of Southern California. He is a Visual Studies Images Out of Time Fellow and holds an MA from the University of Cincinnati. His work focuses on ecological cosmologies within speculative literary works by Zora Neale Hurston, Octavia Butler, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Rita Indiana. He focuses on the cosmological forms that literary writers use and interact with to reconceptualize colonial histories of the Americas, human relationships to the environment, and varying sciences and systems of ecological knowledge. He is particularly interested in writers who tap into expansive imaginative generic frames to go beyond basic understandings of material ecology.

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This book is part of Palgrave’s Science Fiction and Fantasy ‘New Canon’ series, which attempts to “destabilise” the literary canon, scrutinizing the privileges and power dynamics which intertwine such institutions (iv). So, what better author to cover than Ursula K. Le Guin? She is herself part of the canon, but an author who scrutinised privilege and power from the beginning of her career. T.S. Miller, in this instalment of the series, focuses on A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), Le Guin’s opening book of the much read and celebrated Earthsea series.

Miller, over six chapters, analyses the contribution to and impact of Le Guin’s novel on fantasy literature and its role within the canon, exploring the ways in which Le Guin challenged and changed the genre. Chapter one contextualises Le Guin’s original publication of Wizard, examining her contemporaries, the budding state of secondary world fantasy, and the influence her parents’ anthropological background had on her work. Miller marks the various aspects of fantasy heritage which are laced throughout Wizard’s construction, touching upon Tolkien, Arthurian legend and ‘the Magician’s apprentice’ motif. Alongside this, Miller emphasises how Le Guin’s pioneering of the now commonplace subgenre of magical pedagogy and the inspiration she took from indigenous folktales help form the unique novel she created.

Chapters three and five explore race and gender respectively, marking Le Guin’s progressive use of representation and characterisation. Miller paints a compelling picture of the—for the time—groundbreaking portrayal of race in her secondary world and how it “decenters whiteness” (34). Le Guin’s subtle yet deliberate racialisation of her characters is well detailed. The argument for the presentation of women is perhaps less convincing: Wizard celebrates women “in spite of the novel’s limitations” (65), yet this celebration largely consists of small scenes which “exalt domesticity” (96). 

The fourth chapter covers the parallels with and influences of Daoism and Jungian psychology on the novel, examining both their relationships with Le Guin’s writings and the subsequent critical responses to her work. Le Guin’s engagement with Daoist concepts is illustrated,  specifically the presence of “Doing not-doing” in Ged’s journey, a demonstration of the Daoist principle of inaction (56). Conversely, Miller makes clear that while Le Guin was not influenced by Jung when she wrote the novel, Jungian interpretation lends itself well to Ged’s conflict with his shadow-self.

Miller ties together these ranging subjects with the theme of Le Guin’s critical approach to fantasy. Her deliberate divergence from the tropes and (often problematic) trends of fantasy literature can be seen to be grounded in a fiercely critical eye which was applied as rigorously in the 2000s as it was in the 1960s. Le Guin’s awareness of fantasy literature’s lacks and prejudices is essential to her contributions and can clearly be seen in Wizard. Miller further highlights the extent of the genre’s failings as he details Le Guin’s ongoing battle with publishers and production companies to whitewash and tame Wizard, even forty years after its original publication.

Le Guin is a much-covered author, her methods and motives having been thoroughly explored over the last fifty years. Miller does a good job of evaluating much of the existing work, and Le Guin’s response to it, and highlighting the core ways in which Wizard made an original contribution and impact on the fantasy genre. Chapter six concludes by demonstrating the distinct ways in which Wizard’s influence can be seen, specifically in the rise of the wizarding school as a motif.

Miller finally argues that Le Guin scholarship’s “major weakness” lies in its reliance on Le Guin’s own “interpretive protocols” (82). It is an intriguing provocation for future Le Guin scholarship, and can also be understood as, in part, a self-reflection: Le Guin’s voice certainly contributes to Miller’s presentation. There is a clear and consistent attempt to include Le Guin in these chapters, as her voice is present throughout. We are regularly treated to Le Guin’s own thoughts on her works and those of her contemporaries, as well as her reception of the approaches to and interpretations of her works.

If one was to look for any downside to this text it would not be the presence of Le Guin’s voice, but rather its tight scope. This is appropriate for this Palgrave series focused on individual canonical texts; nonetheless, at times Wizard feels slightly isolated, especially as Miller raises key points which change drastically across the Earthsea series. Miller is aware of this and highlights the change in gender representation in later works, yet this is seemingly done to lighten the criticism of the absence of gender critique in Wizard. Le Guin appears well-aware of this absence and clearly acknowledges and challenges the patriarchal world of Wizard in the later instalments of Earthsea. However, Le Guin has also recontextualised several other aspects of the world laid out in Wizard which Miller does not address.

The philosophy of Daoist inaction is heavily scrutinized by Le Guin as the series progresses, becoming a symbol of stagnation and maintenance of the status quo. Instead, we see an arguably much stronger theme of a call to action, as our protagonists must change the world of Earthsea and topple the inactive School on Roke. This does not undermine the role of Daoism in Earthsea, yet, as with gender representation, these aspects of Le Guin’s work would benefit considerably from contextualisation within the wider series, especially for aspects which Le Guin herself clearly became critical of. Racial representation also shifts considerably in the later novels. Although it is clear how Wizard subverts the whiteness of traditional fantasy, racial hierarchy still very much exists in Earthsea, with polarities of good and evil, civilised and savage, being clearly reinforced, merely flipped. Le Guin’s later alteration to her presentation of the different races in the second trilogy of the Earthsea series, in which such senses of racial hierarchy are thoroughly dismantled, also indicates the limitations of Wizard. The exclusion of such details would be more forgivable if the later texts were not used to qualify the limitations of Wizard on the topic of women.

Regardless, Miller’s text effectively explores much of Wizard and the scholarship surrounding it in a very concise and clarifying way. It functions very well as a summative text and should be valuable addition to Palgrave’s series.

Joseph Ironside is a PhD candidate at the University of Sussex in the field of English Literature, researching and writing on fantasy literature and its relationship to the fascistic. He has BA in History and English from Oxford Brookes University, an MA in Literary Theory from the University of Stockholm and over four years’ experience working as a proofreader and editor.

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Anyone familiar with Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars, 1992, 1993, 1996 respectively), or the Expanse SF series of novels attributed to two authors writing under the pen name James S.A. Corey (for information about the series, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)), or much of all the golden age “space opera” SF, knows one of the fundamental premises of SF is that exploration, settlement, and colonization of the Moon (see, Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966)  and Mars are inevitable and likely to occur in our own lifetime, or at least that of our children. And that they will occur not without risks and tragedy but will at least ensure that humanity in some form will survive in and beyond our own planet and solar system.

Authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith gently question these assumptions, debunk some of the major arguments for near-term permanent settlements in space, and by combining a thoughtful analysis of the challenges and choices facing such settlements with wry humor and illustrations, lay out what amounts to a game plan both for our own space policy makers (both private and public), and for any plausible future SF set in the coming decades or next century. It will simply not be possible to write anything about settlement on the Moon or Mars and beyond that is not viewed as pure fantasy if it does not deal with and respond to the evidence and arguments raised in this book. (Another skeptical assessment of humans’ potential for living in space is: Sarah Scoles, “Why We’ll Never Live in Space.” Scientific American 329.3, October, 2023, pp. 22-29).

The Weinersmiths’ book has 20 chapters divided into an introduction, “A Homesteader’s Guide to the Red Planet” and Chapter 1, a “Preamble on Space Myths,” followed by six parts. Part I is ”Caring for the Space Faring” (physiology, space sex, psychology). Part II, “Spome, Spome on the Range,” investigates where and how humans might practically survive and thrive on (or under) the Moon or Mars, or in orbiting space habitats that might provide some gravity, protection from radiation, and/or a place for human births to safely occur off-earth. An historic interlude on “Rocketry” discusses the sad tale of the efforts of Hermann Oberth to build a rocket to help Fritz Lang make a film, The Woman in the Moon, in 1928. They wryly comment: “If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you take liquid oxygen and pour gasoline on top, we can tell you that in at least this one case, you get exploded across a room, burst an eardrum, and have your left eye damaged. Then, if you are enthusiastic enough about rockets, you get right back to work” (114). An example of the risks of space science on Earth, and implicitly how they would be magnified in space.

Part III, “Pocket Edens,” explores ecosystem design for initial space habitats, from space toilets (173-176) to food (176-182), including the difficulty of using Martian soil to grow anything (181), and to the likelihood that the only space “ranching” will be for insects (182).  One expert they consulted suggested “plants might be grown for spices, but that otherwise we should create our meals from fundamental food building blocks, like fats and amino acids” (182). There is an interesting and not altogether dismissive discussion of experiments with closed ecosystems on earth, such as Biosphere 2, which they see as not entirely a failure and which, if properly scaled up in multiple experimental efforts, could provide a foundation for any real, long term space colonization (183-191). But not in the short or even medium term, is their bottom line. Chapter 10 goes into detail on how to build space habitats, addressing energy sources, shielding, size, and optimal locations on the Moon or Mars (192-210).

Optimal location raises the many issues of who (and how they) could obtain title, if not sovereignty, to settlements in space, and thus the importance of space law, from the benefits and limitations of the Outer Space Treaty (OTS)  and its several amendments dating from the 1970s, the failure to ratify the Moon Treaty, and its possible value as a source for or evidence of what might become “customary international space law,” much as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has become “customary law of the sea” even for nations (like the United States) that have yet to ratify it.  This is all explored in Part IV: “Space Law for Space Settlements, Weird, Vague, and Hard to Change” (217-275). The authors are concerned that the safety of space settlements in the future will depend on first reaching agreements on all of this on Earth—that peace in space will depend on our first establishing peace on Earth, a tall order but one that should be a worthy goal of anyone truly interested in humanity’s ultimate survival on, and beyond, Earth.

In Part V, the Weinersmiths explore the case for treating space as a commons. They think this can be made to work with buy-in from the nations and the various private interests currently vying for private space ventures, from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos or their future competitors (277-308). Chapter 16 does a good job of exploring the definition of a state in the Montevideo Convention of 1933 (310-311), analogizing how new states are created from old on Earth, to how they might emerge on Mars or elsewhere in the future, and the risks of these emerging through less than peaceful means:

[I]f you want an independent space nation, you’ve got to have something like a harmonious Earth. Given how long it is likely to be until large Mars settlements are possible, pursuing a regime that avoids conflict is probably better than trying to cram through space nations as fast as possible. (327)

Part VI: “To Plan B or Not to Plan B: Space Society, Expansion, and Existential Risk” (333-377) revisits and explores in some detail the pros and cons of labor and population issues, whether space settlements would protect human rights, and the risks of war on Earth being enhanced by rogue players in space—reminding me of one of the story lines in the Expanse novels. Chapter 20 discusses the proposal of Dr. Daniel Deudney, unpopular with “space geeks” they have interviewed, that the best option is not to “create a major human presence in space,” just do research, “science, environmental monitoring and communication” (376-377). If you can’t accept that, or if one day space settlement becomes at least more plausible than it is now, the Weinersmiths’ bottom line is that we should wait until we’ve done the necessary research to keep real humans really alive in space or on Mars, and then “go big” to ensure we have a realistically large enough population and genetic pool to make it survivable if indeed contact with Earth is lost or too remote (380-388).

The book concludes with detailed chapter notes (391-399), a partial bibliography (401-420), and an index (421-436). It is well written, clear to the layperson yet detailed and informative to people interested in the subject and in particular in its excellent explication of the relevant domestic and international legal issues that will underlie any realistic efforts to move humankind into space. Policy makers and science fiction authors should take note, and this belongs in any university library as well as SF writers’ workshops.

Bruce Lindsley Rockwood, Emeritus Professor of Legal Studies at Bloomsburg University, Pennsylvania, is a long-time member of SFRA, having served as Vice President (2005-2006), and regularly writes reviews for SFRA Review from his retirement home in Midcoast Maine. A member of the American Society of International Law (ASIL), he has taught and published on law, literature, climate change and science fiction, and attends SFRA and WorldCon with his wife Susan when possible (most recently in Montreal, Spokane, and recent virtual sessions of the SFRA.

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Michael Walton begins this book with two personal inspirations: first, his experiences in emergency preparedness, fostered in his rural upbringing and later in volunteering with a Community Emergency Response team; and second his love of zombie films. In this, he follows the established pattern of academic and fan authors setting up the personal stakes in their argument, framed by the understanding that as horror fans we all are happy to share our own “what-if” survival scenarios.

Prepare for Zombies, Survive a Flood: Natural Disaster Lessons from Undead Cinema follows this fan predilection for imagining scenarios by establishing a pattern of chapters following limited ‘zombie’ (read natural disaster) events that occur over defined time periods—up to 72 hours, 2 weeks and 4 weeks. These are matched from specific zombie films such as Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968) and 28 Days Later (Boyle, 2002) and later the popular television series The Walking Dead (Darabont, Mazzara, Gimple, Kang, 2010-2022). These film and television texts are summarised in relation to their scenarios of zombie disaster at the start of the main chapters, to establish Walton’s key concern: preparation for self-reliance during emergency situations. These are framed by an initial chapter overall on preparedness, with an emphasis on access to communication and official emergency warnings, planning ahead as a family/group unit, and storage of important documentation. The final chapter discusses decision-making about travelling or leaving shelter during or after an emergency. A useful checklist at the end of the book also supports the overall key themes of planning and preparation. This is not a scholarly or fictional book: it is a practical guide.

The book is concerned only with a North American context, which makes sense given the author’s own experiences. Interestingly, he is not the first to use the framework of a fictional zombie apocalypse to alert people to the need for preparation. The American federal agencies the CDC (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) created media releases and documents to help inform the general public on planning and preparation needs. The CDC’s 2011 “Preparedness 101: zombie pandemic” used a comic book format to highlight preparation, while reassuring readers of the CDC’s responsiveness, while FEMA’s 2019 public awareness campaign tied into the release of Zombieland: Double Tap (Fleischer, 2019), using footage created by Sony, on the need for emergency planning. Therefore, Prepare for Zombies is part of an ongoing preoccupation with using popular fictional templates to attract interest to more practical, real-world concerns.

This is the strongest aspect of Walton’s book: offering a coherent building-up of plans and needs for scenarios that may be faced. In each main chapter, he repeats core information from the preceding one and then offers more detail so that aspects which would not perhaps be a core concern in a 72-hour period are then developed for a 4-week period—for  example, considerations of hygiene, maintaining shelter integrity, and community. Overall the chapters show that the scale of consideration is mostly limited to immediate areas and social concerns: the neighbourhood, the core family or social group. Prepare for Zombies is an inherently domestic, ground-level consideration of factors, with only brief mentions of national or federal agencies. As Walton clearly states, this book is not intended as a ‘preppers’ guide, for those anticipating the overall collapse of society. Indeed, he makes sure that he reiterates how unlikely zombie apocalyptic scenarios are.

As an analysis of zombie texts, then, the book is quite limited. Apart from the scenarios developed from Walton’s summaries of plots, there is little here for the zombie fan or reader interested in a focus on how fictional narratives depict or construct these scenarios and debates over survival. For those interested in speculative fiction dealing with survival and preparedness in a zombie context, the works by Max Brooks such as The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), which includes some practical preparedness tips along with its imaginative zombie scenario, are worth investigating. For more scholarly discussions of how and why zombie media offer certain interpretations of disaster, and how to survive (and the moral and ethical issues inherent in this), there is a wide variety of academic sources on this – more than can be covered in this review. As a guide to basic preparation and planning however, Prepare for Zombies, Survive a Flood offers reassurance and skills which are adaptable to many different situations, well beyond the symbolic threat of the zombie masses.

Dr Emma Austin is the Course Leader for Film Studies at the University of Portsmouth, teaching across a variety of subject areas but with particular interests in global popular media and film, particularly horror texts. Her PhD thesis was on zombies in cinematic culture, and her current research projects are on horror texts that move across different media platforms notably in comics, video games and film.

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At first glance, the concept of “utopia” and the Graeco-Roman world may not seem to hold any obvious connections to J.R.R. Tolkien or his Middle-earth narratives beyond Tolkien’s education in the Classics. However, in his monograph J.R.R. Tolkien’s Utopianism and The Classics, Hamish Williams showcases how potentiating a conversation between Classical antiquity and Tolkien’s literary production can lead to insightful and exciting scholarly avenues in Tolkien studies. Indeed, Williams had already driven this point home in his edited collection Tolkien and the Classical World (2021). As for this study, Williams declares that Tolkien’s “utopianism” lies in his defamiliarization of “physical space for the sake of exploring and evaluating an ideal” (6). The author’s purpose is therefore to examine “forms of ‘utopias’ in Tolkien’s writing” by placing the focus “on a diverse range of idealised topoi: sociopolitical communities, the individual, mundane home and vistas of the natural world” (Williams 5-6).

Williams’s monograph is divided into an introduction, three chapters, and an epilogue. In the first chapter, “Lapsarian Narratives: the Decline and Fall of Utopian Communities in Middle-earth,” not only does Williams argue that “two important, interconnected human communities in Tolkien’s world—Númenor and Gondor—closely receive and rewrite ancient lapsarian narratives” such as Atlantis and Rome, respectively, but he also explores how narrative traditions about utopian communities contribute to the restoration of ideals (21). The monograph’s second chapter, “Hospitality Narratives: The Ideal of Home in an Odyssean Hobbit,” analyses different forms of hospitality put forth by Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937) via the Odyssey, in order to reflect on the roles of host and guest, reciprocity, and what Williams calls ethical dimension that makes a home “good” or “bad” (61). His final chapter, “Sublime Narratives: Classical Transcendence in Nature and beyond in The Fellowship of the Ring,” studies episodes in which experiences of the “transformative, transcendental sublime … are afforded when entering into and existing within certain natural places” depicted in in the first volume of The Lord of the Rings (Williams 103).

The scope of William’s monograph is highly ambitious—so much so that the ideas he either covers or gestures to could easily provide material for further monographs, therefore constituting an approach that will continue to be innovative in the field. The strongest sections of this work are three: first, the conclusions Williams draws from his analysis in the first chapter, in which the author establishes a conversation between Tolkien’s literary production and modern lapsarian narratives, both in literature and in film; second, the network of connections Williams sketches between the Graeco-Roman worldview, Jacques Derrida’s philosophy on hospitality, and Tolkien’s literary production in the second chapter, which provide a very welcome addition to increasing scholarship on the relationship between the self and the Other in Tolkien studies, as exemplified by Jane Chance’s Tolkien, Self, and Other: This Queer Creature (2016) and the edited collection Tolkien and Alterity (2017); and third, the intricate examination the author achieves on the concept of the sublime in the monograph’s final chapter. Furthermore, Williams’s extensive knowledge of Classical texts, of previous work undertaken to address Classical influences in Tolkien’s literary production, and of comparative exercises that bridge the gap between Middle-earth and Classical antiquity, shines forth as unparalleled.

Where the monograph stumbles is in its occasional, unbalanced focus between the reading of Tolkien’s texts through a Classical lens and a clear acknowledgement of the nuances of Tolkien’s worldbuilding project. A detailed examination of how Williams applies this perspective reveals missed opportunities on a further elaboration for how Tolkien’s literary production either departs or reinvents the “classical ideals and values” signalled by Williams, how specific characters actively embody and transform them, and the contextualisation of specific events in the wider history of Middle-earth (xi). Several examples can be provided to this effect: from not fully elaborating on the implications of the intradiegetic criticism Tolkien places on the idealisation of places like Númenor and the Shire; to the manifestation of evil not only as destruction, but as the pursuit to dominate the Other; or the complex ethical conflicts and aporias characters face individually and collectively—like the hobbits, dwarves, and even Old Man Willow, especially when placed into context with the help of the wider legendarium and which thus make them multidimensional figures. Perhaps adding to this impression is the absence in a comparative study of this magnitude of a much more direct engagement with primary and secondary sources on the level of the study’s main corpus, as opposed to hundreds of references placed at the end of his analysis. At the same time, Williams’s reiterated emphasis on well-known religious and Christian interpretations of Tolkien’s Middle-earth narratives wrests attention away from his own original contributions rather than supporting his own findings. Williams’s considerations of how the divine, magical, otherworldly, paradisiac, pious, religious, and supernatural are distinctly presented and perceived in Middle-earth, in Tolkien’s life, and how Tolkien considered them to manifest in his own work require much more precise detailing, as these concepts hold individual, crucial implications for the reading and reception of Tolkien’s fictional construct. Finally, the use of the concept of “orientalism” throughout this monograph could have greatly benefited from a much more profound consideration of other instances in which orientalism is potentially observed in Tolkien’s Middle-earth narratives—especially in The Lord of the Rings, which Williams only mentions in passing—as well as scholarship dealing with the implications of orientalism and the representation of race in Tolkien’s literary production, such as Roger Echo-Hawk’s Tolkien in Pawneeland (2013).

There is no doubt that Williams’s study successfully expands the breadth and depth of what Tolkien Studies is today and what it can look forward to in the future, as this work continues to pave to way for coming studies that connect the Classical world with Tolkien{s Middle-earth narratives. Despite its occasional weaknesses, this monograph is a worthy reinterpretation of Tolkien’s oeuvre.

Mariana Rios Maldonado holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on philosophy and Otherness in Tolkien’s literary production as well as Germanophonic fantastic literature between the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Her most recent chapter was published in the edited collection The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien (2024). Mariana is the Officer for Equality and Diversity at Glasgow University’s Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic and part of the editorial team for Mallorn, the Tolkien Society’s academic journal. She is the Research Impact Adviser for Glasgow’s Research and Innovation Services.

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Paradoxa number 32 focuseson Comics and/or Graphic Novels as the issue title announces. Editor Vittorio Frigerio brings together an eclectic collection of essays with an international focus. Indeed a key strength of this collection is that it continues the encouraging trend of bringing scholarly attention to regions and traditions that have hitherto been largely ignored (most notably here in Zak Waipara’s consideration of Indigenous comics from New Zealand). The pieces are consistently interesting and often provide valuable connection across national lines. For instance, Carlo Gubitosa considers comics journalism in American, Italian and French contexts, and Justin Wadlow provides insight into the unlikely connections between American artist Craig Thompson and French artist Edmund Baudoin. Spanish-language comics, however, receive special attention, in often enlightening ways. For instance, I was completely unaware that R. F. Outcault’s Buster Brown had been appropriated/pastiched as the basis of a Brazilian strip, Aventuras de Chiquinho. Marcia Esteves Agostinho discusses this strip, probably not widely-known outside of Brazil, in terms of its depiction of racial relations in Brazil.

Like this one, the articles here are consistently fascinating. However, they are for the most part of little interest to scholars of literature of the fantastic. Only one article, Felipe Gómez ‘s “Will it be possible? Apocalypse and Resistance in Latin American Graphic Novels,” focuses on a science fictional topic. Frigerio also interviews Guiseppe Palumbo, who has worked on genre strips such as Diabolik.  In addition, he reviews Gébés’ post-apocalyptic Letter to Survivors. There is, therefore, some content that pertains to the interests of SFRA Review subscribers, but not enough, I think, to justify purchase of this whole collection. The Paradoxa website does allow purchase of individual chapters for $10.00 (https://paradoxa.com/no-32-comics/), so those interested might economically check out the relevant material. Comics scholars, however, will very likely find this a worthwhile book to possess.

Dominick Grace is the Nonfiction Reviews Editor for SFRA Review.

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Paul Matthews’ Transparent Minds in Science Fiction, as its title aptly suggests,delves into nonhuman consciousness representation in science fiction (sf), addressing its potential to explore what cognitive science shows us about consciousness through models of cognition particular to subjectivities which vastly differ from that of humans.

In a clear nod to Dorrit Cohn’s narratological work on fictional consciousness representation, Transparent Minds (1978), Matthews cleverly engages with previous literature pertaining to the area of research known as cognitive literary studies. While there are discrepancies regarding the official name for the field, as there is no unification among scholars, cognitive literary studies seems to be the broadest term which encompasses the research done by Matthews and the authors he mentions, i.e., that of the integration of cognitive science with literary disciplines, Matthews also engages other fields of expertise such as neuroscience and cognitive science,. to illustrate a fully-fledged and interdisciplinary image of what constitutes a consciousness, both in our empirical reality and in its fictional counterpart. In doing so, this monograph attempts to fill a research gap in a field which has predominantly limited itself to analysing non-speculative literature of the Anglocentric and Eurocentric canon. Thus, Matthews takes on the task of compiling examples of depictions of nonhuman consciousness spanning more than a hundred years of sf literary production. From foundational texts by Shelley, Lem, and McCaffrey to the more recent and likewise acclaimed additions of Jemisin, Ishiguro, and Leckie, to name but a few, Matthews thoroughly illustrates how extremely unfamiliar modes of perceiving and experiencing the world have been conceptualised.

From the beginning, Matthews endeavours to defend the potential of literature as a whole, and sf in particular, as a tool to engage in a rich imaginative exercise: firstly, as a means through which to conceive scientifically accurate and innovative cognitive models which subvert preestablished anthropocentric sf tropes regarding the nonhuman; and, secondly, through the formation and interpretation of metaphorical networks and systems of meaning brought about by our own cognitive system when interacting with fiction. As a result, Matthews emphasises the collaborative nature of meaning-creation, claiming that it consists of “author intention, reader understanding and mediation through the norms of the genre” (105). Hence, while stressing the role of authorial intent, this monograph deeply resonates with Reception Theory principles, as stated by Iser’s phenomenological account, whereby a literary work is created through the reader’s participation of filling in “gaps” or “blanks” in the text (6).

Chapter 2 is devoted to authors’ motivations for choosing nonhuman characters as the focus of their fiction, as well as the specific symbology and narrative techniques used to guarantee an adequate text-reader interaction, i.e., to avoid alienating the reader, such as merging alienness with animal iconography. Here, Matthews seems to greatly value authors’ scientific knowledge in fields such as neuroscience and biology, as he deems the plausibility of the nonhuman to be vital to merge the familiar and unfamiliar, particularly in the cases of potential future sentience, such as human-made A.I. and extended or enhanced consciousness.

In chapter 3, Matthews thoroughly explains the process of consciousness emergence, that is, the starting point of sentience, as posited by several neuroscientific, biological, philosophical, and psychological approaches. In perhaps the most theoretical chapter of the monograph, Matthews conscientiously takes the reader through an exhaustive yet accessible explanation of the different hypotheses delineating the so-called ‘awakening’ of sentience, from the development of senses and perception of oneself as different from the rest, to the identification of a goal and, with it, the motivation to accomplish it and obtain agency.

He then moves on to provide literary examples of non-human sentience which depict (parts of) these processes, dividing the next three chapters according to specific consciousness features: the individual mind, including terrestrial and alien non-human sentience, human-made A.I. and the extended human; the collective hive and distributed minds; and, lastly, the posthuman. In these chapters, Matthews presents a wide array of case studies to illustrate how the umwelt of a consciousness is shaped by sensory, cognitive, and emotional-motivational aspects of the self’s embodiment, and how there is an interplay of familiar and unfamiliar narrative elements to balance the psychological distance between reader and character. Matthews also pays close attention to the power dynamics involved in self-definition when the consciousness is collective, seen mostly as unequal manipulation or, sometimes, as an egalitarian gestalt relationship.

In his explanation of posthuman consciousness, however, one finds a slight inconsistency, as the definition of extended humans and the enhanced posthumans, in chapters 4 and 6 respectively, seem to overlap, making their classification as separate contradictory. One of the greatest achievements of the text is arguably the non-anthropocentric undertone of the research which aligns itself with posthumanist sensibilities. This can be seen in Matthews’ understanding of both experience and the act of reading as embodied and embedded, his conception of the possible and valid nonhuman umwelt(s), and the absence of anthropocentric and imperialist interpretations of nonhumans mainly found before ‘new wave’ sf, in favour of what he, perhaps rather vaguely, names “fine examples” of other-than-human consciousness representation (11). Therefore, the definition of enhanced posthumans only as transcended consciousness seems at odds with Matthews’ knowledge of posthumanism, as it indicates an inclination towards the ‘posthuman’ definition endorsed by transhumanists, that of a further step in humanity’s evolutionary history. This is even implied by the title of chapter 6, “Supercedure,”—the act of replacing the old and inferior with the new and superior, in other words, embracing transcendence, whereas critical posthumanism holds that posthuman consciousness can exist without transcendence.

Although the monograph does, in earnest, accomplish its goal, providing an extensive account of non-human consciousness representation in sf, certain in-depth linguistic and literary analyses seem to be lacking, which would have added to its mostly descriptive and expository nature. Additionally, the phenomenological approaches mentioned before could have benefitted from Caracciolo’s concept of “consciousness-enactment,” which shares Matthews’ reader-response tenets but to a different, non-materialist degree, understanding fictional consciousness not as an object to be represented, but rather experienced and enacted by the reader when engaging with literature (43).

Transparent Minds in Science Fiction delivers a highly accessible introduction to non-human sentience in the genre, with particular interest for literary scholars willing to embark on an interdisciplinary study of fictional consciousness and seeking a succinct overview of empirical studies on human and animal consciousness. Similarly, the opposite is likewise valid, as scholars in cognitive science may find the exposition of nonhuman characters here useful for a literary application of their research. All in all, I’d conclude that its case study of the unfamiliar nonhuman provides valuable insight into how our cognitive system works, particularly when engaging in acts of imagination.

WORKS CITED

Caracciolo, Marco. “Fictional Consciousnesses: A Reader’s Manual.” Style, vol. 46, no. 1, 2012, pp. 42-65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.46.1.42.

Ane B. Ruiz-Lejarcegui is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and Literary Studies from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain, and a member of the research group REWEST: Research in Western American Literature and Culture. In 2022, she was awarded a competitive grant by the Basque Government to carry out her thesis on hybrid identity-construction and power asymmetries in contemporary American space opera. Her research interests also include critical posthumanism, cognitive narratology, critical discourse analysis and, as the focus of her previous research, H.G. Wells and Victorian science fiction.