Category: Nonfiction Reviews

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Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction is noteworthy for the sheer variety of the novels that are under scrutiny, as well as for its large geographical scope. Though slightly imbalanced when it comes to the representation of Latinx and Asian communities, the volume’s inclusive intent is truly something to be acclaimed: the chapters take us from Nigeria to Australia, from Ireland to the US, while also exploring both Western writers’ and First Nations authors’ works. The genres of the novels examined are as varied as the definitions of ‘race’ they suggest since genres such as dystopian fiction, fairy tale, detective fiction, steampunk, Neo-Victorian fiction, Indigenous Futurism, and even BL (Boys Love) manga overlap and intersect.

Drawing from a strong body of theoretical works focusing on science fiction and YA fiction, as well as other topics such as the representation of women in such literature, the book also leaves ample room for the inclusion of the work of racialized theorists and academics, such as W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of ‘double consciousness,’ Grace Dillon’s seminal work on defining Indigenous Futurism, or Kwaymullina’s take on decolonizing literature not only as a writer but also as a teacher. The wide range of the contributors’ status is also appreciable; authors range from established professors to PhD candidates, sometimes even current YA fiction writers. This range enhances a feeling of dynamism that matches the contemporary surge of attention concerning matters of race in both literature and scholarship and cannot but be telling regarding the growing contemporary interest in and demand for YA literature.

This collection is easy to navigate, with four clear and well-devised sections that emphasize the book’s obvious didacticism: I. Defining Diversity, II. Erasing Race, III. Lineages of Whiteness, IV. Racialized Identities. Those general topics are addressed, according to the different novels that are studied, without essentializing YA literature from one specific country, continent, or point of view (western, Indigenous, or racialized). For example, while focusing on representations of whiteness and their legacy when it comes to power relations, the third section contains three chapters that each adopt a different standpoint: one focuses on Cassandra Clare’s The Infernal Devices series’ intricate relations of domination and the depiction of Asian masculinity inspired by Chinese worldviews and culture, another explores disease-induced dis/ability in an American adventure that takes its origin in Chicago (the Divergent series by Veronica Roth), and the last chapter studies the rewriting of colonisation and its oppression of First Nations Peoples through stereotyping and appropriation (Chaos Walking, Patrick Ness).

Starting from racial representation and the question of the definition of the Other, the collection does not simply debunk racial stereotypes nor does it take for granted postracial worlds that could too easily be equated with utopias. By first questioning the treatment of whiteness and how it is reified in stories which mostly rely on white protagonists (even though they may debunk patriarchal hierarchies), it then moves to a reflection on what it really entails to set a story in a postracialized society; while warning against adopting a colorblind approach to racial issues, it emphasizes the erasure of race as dubious and even counter-productive as it more often than not re-establishes racist ideology and reproduces domination. In fact, erasing race appears to be complicit in neoliberalism’s systemic racism and reproduces structures of western colonialism and racism.

Talking about race is not as easy as advocating for a more diverse cast of characters, whether they be of different skin colors, backgrounds, ethnicities, species or classes. The chapters do not abide by a mere Manichean way of looking at the question of race in YA dystopian fiction, questioning and qualifying rather than asserting; they rather perfectly delineate it and do not shy away from tackling the shortcomings of the novels, informing their study with a critical reflection. A few examples would be the rewriting of white heteronormative and patriarchal power relations and hierarchy in Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series, the lack of LGBTQ diversity (ch.3&5), or of historical contextualization regarding imperial oppression. The use of English as universal language is also criticized as going against the wish for diversity, while picturing the Asian Other as one homogeneous whole recalls the 19^th century’s anthropological considerations (ch.8).

Overall, Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction makes a good effort at drawing attention to intersectionality: not only are racial hierarchies considered, so too are gender and sexual dynamics, strongly drawing from feminist and queer studies, as well as disability studies. Even though there is a noticeable intent to approach intersectionality, one mild reproach could be that rather than really grounding their study in intersectionality, some articles seem to use those topics as metaphors for racial concerns. A running dialogism between concepts—rather than a mere juxtaposition, considering them as if they were similar—could have helped the readers not to feel sometimes confused because the topic shifted from race to the representation of disability, for example. The threads weaving together those themes felt sometimes loose and could have been tightened a little more if the metaphors were pedagogically repeated and rearticulated throughout the chapters.

To conclude, this book’s targeted audience encompasses academics and students interested in YA fiction but also focusing on science fiction and speculative fiction, ranging from subgenres such as Neo-Victorian steampunk to Indigenous futurism. It could also be used to broaden the research fields of academics not particularly versed in YA fiction but showing interest in postcolonial and decolonial approaches, whose concerns would converge with the general theme of the book, that is to say the depiction of race and the struggles for self-representation and epistemological justice. Having said that, readers should be warned that there will surely be novels that will be added to their TBR list after closing Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction.

Laura Singeot is an associate professor in Cultural and Visual studies at Reims University, France. She is interested in the representations of Indigeneity in contemporary Indigenous literatures from Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand, from novels and poetry to dystopic Young Adult fiction and Sci-fi. She is also researching new museology and Indigenous visual art, especially digital and new media art, focusing on its integration into global networks of creation, curation and reception. Her methodology rests on a comparative transdisciplinary approach, drawing from concepts theorized in decolonial thought.

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Sarah Annes Brown is a scholar both of Shakespeare and of Science Fiction, among other literary subjects. She is especially interested in “patterns of influence and allusion,” according to her Anglia Ruskin University bio page. While no doubt many scholars are interested in Shakespeare, SF, and literary influence—and indeed, much has been written about Shakespeare’s presence in and influence on SF—Brown has provided an important addition to the study of Shakespeare in/and SF by giving us, as the book’s back cover blurb reports, “the first extended study of Shakespeare’s influence on the genre.” This book is essential reading for anyone interested in how Shakespeare has informed (and in some cases, how his works have been informed by) SF, both because of her own insights and because of the expertise with which she weaves together earlier scholarship on the subject.

This compact book (I would have been happy to have had an additional hundred pages to read) consists of an introduction that speaks to the reason Shakespeare may be of abiding interest to SF authors (beyond his general cultural capital and ubiquitous influence), followed by seven chapters exploring the interpenetration of Shakespeare and the following SF subcategories and conventions: time travel, alternate history, dystopian fiction, contact with aliens/travels to space, science and magic (a chapter focusing primarily on The Tempest [1610/11] and its SFnal elements/presence), posthumanism (including constructed beings such as robots—one section and illustration notes echoes of Hamlet holding Yorick’s skull with Chewbacca holding C-3PO’s head), and post-apocalyptic fiction. Throughout the book, Brown provides extensive references to prior work on Shakespeare and SF—indeed, she perhaps directs readers more to earlier texts than she builds her own analyses, which I will address further below—and cites a remarkable range of (mostly) SF texts. She identifies SF, and specifically written SF, as her primary interest, but does provide occasional discussion of non-SF and, more extensively and insightfully, the Shakespearean presence in filmic form, especially Dr. Who and Star Trek, with other notable examples (e.g. Forbidden Planet [1956]) thrown in. The main thematic through line is the tension between Shakespeare being depicted as a transcendent figure (perhaps most notably in works in which even aliens idolize Shakespeare, but in other contexts as well, such as Shakespeare’s frequent presence as a cultural touchstone in post-apocalyptic SF, or in alternate history stories in which his presence or absence changes the course of history), and a more skeptical/revisionist view of Shakespeare as having a reputation that exceeds his actual worth. She refers recurringly to Borges’s paradoxical construction of Shakespeare in “Everything and Nothing” (1964) as exactly that.

Brown tackles many of the obvious candidates for consideration, from books with Shakespeare actually in the title, such as Clifford D. Simak’s Shakespeare’s Planet (1976; I was a bit disappointed that she did not pick up on the fact that the figure of Oop is an evident echo of V. T. Hamlin’s famous time-travelling caveman, who encountered Shakespeare’s Macbeth in a story in 1953) to such obscure texts as John E. Muller’s (Lionel Fanthorpe) 1965 novel, Beyond the Void, a book I had never heard of. Even readers familiar with Shakespearean appearances and echoes in SF will probably find references here to texts about which they know little. That said, and as noted above, Brown also limits herself, generally, to SF, so one might quibble with which exceptions she chooses to address. I doubt anyone would argue against considering Neil Gaimin’s use of Shakespeare in his Sandman (original series 1989-1996, with several ancillary projects published since), as Brown does, though Shakespeare appears in only a handful of stories (albeit key ones), if for no other reason that the fact that in 1991, issue 19, which offers a take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595/96), won the World Fantasy award for short fiction. However, one might argue that the comics series Kill Shakespeare (2010-2014, with several subsequent tie-in series), by Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery, would have merited consideration, given its premise, and despite its aesthetic limitations. For entirely personal reasons, I would also have liked to see Brown say a bit more about Phyllis Gotlieb’s use of The Tempest in her 1976 novel O Master Caliban!.

The nature of the book, though, as well as its length, make comprehensiveness and deep dives, if not impossible, certainly difficult. Even within her defined limits, Brown has a lot of territory to cover, so she frequently offers only brief commentary on many works (few texts are given more than a handful of pages) and frequently directs readers to more detailed studies of the texts she references. Brown primarily hits the high points of how the works she considers reflect her thesis, with a fair bit of plot summary (often necessary, given the number of texts touched on; no reader is likely to be familiar with all of them) and relatively little detailed analysis or close reading. The book provides a very useful overview of significant texts that have invoked Shakespeare, often providing valuable insights, and Brown provides readers with the tools to track down studies of individual works.

Despite Brown’s scholarly rigor, this book is written in a clear and accessible style, and with no small degree of wit. While noting the difficulty SF authors face in trying to create a plausible voice for Shakespeare when they try to depict him, Brown herself demonstrates an admirable facility with language. While the book’s primary audience is academic, this book would be accessible to undergraduate students and probably advanced high school students, so it could serve as a useful recommended reading text for such audiences. Consequently, it would be a worthy acquisition for university, college, and even high school libraries, though its price point will probably dissuade potential readers from purchasing a copy.

Dominick Grace is the non-fiction reviews editor for SFRA Review. Occasionally, he takes advantage of that role to claim a book for himself. He also belongs to the group of those with a scholarly interest in both SF and Shakespeare.

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Science fiction (often abbreviated throughout this volume as SF), as a genre, has far more potential than just to provide scaffolding for media franchises that have dominated Anglophone ‘fandom’ spheres, such as Doctor Who or Star Wars. Modern translation studies and its dissemination into other fields, such as SF, carries the tools to decenter and destabilize the Anglocentrism of these media ventures. And it is precisely at these intersections that Georgia State University’s Ian Campbell makes a powerful case for inclusivity in SF. A scholar of Arabic science fiction and its translation into English, he binds together articles incredibly diverse not only in language and/or place of origin, but in genre and across  time. Campbell dispenses this attitude readily to the intersection of SF and translations studies—a mission statement from the volume’s beginning:

SF as a genre evolved largely—though by no means exclusively—in English and in Anglophone cultures. In these cultures, even readers who don’t care for SF will likely have a clear understanding of the characteristics of the genre; they will be accustomed to the tropes and discourse of SF to an extent that readers in other cultures may not. There are many languages and cultures where SF has a firm presence: Russian and French at first, then Japanese, Spanish and Korean, and Chinese and some of the languages of the Indian subcontinent. There are still other cultures (notably, in sub-Saharan Africa) where literature is often written and read in English but where SF is a comparatively new phenomenon. This is in no way to say that people from such cultures cannot or do not understand SF: of course they can, and among other things, the expansion and distribution of SF film and television have gone a long way toward bridging that gap. (Campbell 7)

This volume does not show up empty handed or without evidence for Campbell’s vision for international science fiction. It does, though, fight for inclusion in a field dominated by ‘angloisms’ and by extension, one that has historically been white, misogynist, and queerphobic. Painfully so. An antidote is to bring attention to other canons, authors, ideas, and corpuses, moreso by introducing the Anglo world to non-Anglo SF instead of the other way around. Walt Disney Studios and its affiliates have that market cornered.

So in conducting a review for an essay anthology on translation, naturally I find myself trying to bring my own parable to the rather long and oblong table of discourse Campbell puts together neatly in Science Fiction in Translation: Perspectives on the Global Theory and Practice of Translation. To start, looking from my primary field of English medieval literature(s), I see the work of science fiction and translation both together and separately in this anthology as a reckoning of an irresistible force and immovable object, not unlike the most memorable section of Venerable Bede’s (c. 673-735) Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Therein, he sought to translate “Caedmon’s Hymn” (aka, the first ‘poem’ in English) from the Old English to Latin and subjects the reader to the force and object which complicate translation (signaled in bold, emphasis and translation mine):

Hic est sensus, non autem ordo ipse verborum quae dormiens ille canebat; neque enim possunt carmina, quamvis optime composita, ex alia in aliam linguam ad verbum sine detrimento sui decoris ac dignitatis transferri.

(This here is the sense, though not the order of the words themselves, of which he was singing while sleeping. Although they are not able to be “sung”, however excellently composed, out of one language to another, it is not possible to translate without hurting the charm and merit of them.)

In translation studies, then, from Bede to Campbell, there is the teleological battle between conveying the sensus verborum (sense of the words) and the methods transferri (to carry over, to translate). The tension between this ‘force(s)’ and ‘object(s)’, and the subsequent consequences of prioritizing one over the other, is the joy and angst inherent in works of translation. Now, applying the metaphor to science fiction and its speculative relatives, we, the initiates of this field, see a similar tension between the conventions of what is ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ SF, hard SF being speculative literature whose diegesis explicates the fiction in terms of mathematics, physics, engineering, or otherwise what may be construed as ‘STEM,’ while ‘soft SF’ may focus instead on the framings of psychology, sociology, history, or the legacy of literary lineages that converge onto the text.

On the whole, the wide array of science fiction materials may necessarily use both hard and soft SF in the development of worldbuilding, narrative scaffolding, and aesthetics, just as the translator carefully balances the sense of the words against how to translatus them—that is: “trans” (across) and “latus” (been carried). So then, the exegesistic direction across the essays—crafting theses on corpuses ranging from Swedish sci-fi epics to Cuban enslavement narratives in verse, feminist utopias found from Spain to Quebec, international translations of subversive Anglo SF tomes from Phillip K. Dick to A Clockwork Orange—runs along and around the political ramifications, consequences, and contexts surrounding the works of translation and precisely how they came to be.

Science fiction, famous for encompassing rich and original (and English-language-based) worlds such as those found inButler’s Dawn Trilogy and even the ill-fated Cyberpunk 2077, is shown in Campbell’s anthology to be more composite and diverse than the dichotomy of hard and soft SF. The breadth of geography and genres themselves expand in SF, together and separately, when ‘anglophonics’—that is the collocation of both Anglo and Americans literatures, media and mores – is no longer the dominant corpus that is expanded upon and invested into. Touching on the Swedish sci fi epic Aniara and its subsequent translations, Dr. Daniel Helsing, Linnaeus University, writes that:

[t]raditional poetic metaphors evoke images that are unspeakably insufficient to capture the universe, yet they may lead to a sense of comprehension. They are thus not only ineffective when trying to grasp the universe; they may also be misleading. In this sense, traditional metaphors can be said to use domesticizing strategies when translating the findings of science into any natural human language. (Helsing 86)

Traditional literary devices, systems, and ambitions, no less traditional audiences, is where SF and its international author base meets the hard work to convey the majestic sublime of space and all the hopes it can contain for the reader and author alike. However, staples of ‘the classics’ definitely do contain speculative and SF imaginings. I would, though, as a premodern scholar, further emphasize that speculative and science fiction has its origins long before Jules Verne. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale (c. 1390s)  or Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516)are both powerful exempla of premodern speculative fiction—one in verse and one in prose. An understated job of translation is not only carrying over the sense of the words, but also being able to translate time: looking to the past and looking for the future within it. That is, traditional devices of literature do not have to exclude science fiction or international visions of it. In fact, they can help and historically have shaped speculation in literature. However, we are as critics also able to separate and diminish the mores of exclusion that movements of literature historically have. Science fiction has us looking to the stars—and they should be shining as brightly as possible.

Campbell’s volume is an indispensable collection of new voices and media spanning from at least the 1830s to the close of the 2010s, which not only makes the case for inclusion within the field but provides a tangible, though far reaching, web from which to choose a new vision for SF. This involves, for the casual reader or the adherent, letting go of certain attachments to what SF can and cannot be. It may involve breaking through at least two well-established binaries: the dichotomy of hard and soft SF, and from translation studies down from Bede’s time: the angst between sensus verborum (the sense of the words) and transferri (what is actually carried across from translations). In a world where the lenses of SF and conscious reality seem to blur more and more, Campbell’s volume and the authors included are a beacon of hope.

Alice Fulmer (she/her) is an MA/PhD student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, ESL teacher, and poet. She is pursuing a Medieval Studies emphasis, and planning a prospectus on digital cultures and late medieval British manuscript culture. Her debut collection Faunalia (2023), on Gods and Radicals/Ritona Press, is a love letter to the great god Pan.

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When H. P. Lovecraft died in 1937, not a single book of his stories had been published. This is a fact we are frequently reminded of in S. T. Joshi’s The Recognition of H. P. Lovecraft: His Rise from Obscurity to World Renown. This thorough study attempts to explain at least part of Lovecraft’s meteoric rise to worldwide fame by charting public discussions of his life and work. I use the slightly vague term “discussions” to describe the materials Joshi draws upon in this study because they are incredibly wide-ranging. He assesses all kinds of engagement with the Lovecraftian paper trail, from critical notices, scholarly tomes, and translations to rock music and pulp films. Despite some diffidence in the preface about whether he is the correct choice to author a book such as this, perhaps because of his own considerable stake in the recognition of Lovecraft, it soon becomes clear that nobody is better placed than Joshi to track and evaluate these developments. The reader gains useful insight into the circumstances that led to Lovecraft gaining popularity in a society that is arguably even weirder than the early twentieth-century one he inhabited. Joshi does not confine his study to Lovecraft’s fictional works, but also examines the legacy of his essays, poems, and philosophical thought.

One imagines that this body of research could have been rendered as a vast bibliographic list of items that make mention of Lovecraft. This might have proved useful for academics searching for a database comprising every important piece of public recognition. Indeed, Joshi acknowledges such previous projects, particularly where they do manage a significant act of textual excavation, but this book could appeal to an audience of casual Lovecraft enthusiasts as well as academics. It acknowledges that the story of his ascent is a fascinating one in itself. Yet, Joshi is careful to prioritise the impact of the fiction and not let the substance of his discussion become trapped in tangents about the author’s personal life.

The Recognition of H. P. Lovecraft begins with a newspaper column on the meteorological station Lovecraft built and ran as a teenager. His fascination with astronomy was what first encouraged him to write a letter to Scientific American. Lovecraft’s membership in the United Amateur Press Association opened up a new world of colleagues, friends, and rivals. Joshi briefly covers this amateur press career, but the book is primarily invested in responses to Lovecraft’s imaginative work. Indeed, members of the UAPA were generally not receptive to the fiction, but by the time Joshi moves on to examine Lovecraft’s pulp career, the engine of approbation is beginning to get started. Fictional outings in Weird Tales and Amazing Stories were met with acclaim, although Joshi is careful to point out that the editor of Weird Tales did not choose to publish letters critical of Lovecraft’s work.

Despite the famous caricature of Lovecraft as a reclusive genius, Joshi makes it clear that his friends and associates were the ones who kept his memory alive long enough for the popular paperbacks and movie adaptations of the 1960s to filter into serious scholarship in the late 1970s. The remarkable aspect of this trajectory is just how many setbacks Lovecraft’s reputation suffered and overcame. An interesting case study is that of 1945, a watershed year which soured into an annus horribilis. During this year there were many publications concerning Lovecraft, including an Armed Services Edition of The Dunwich Horror, illustrating the traction Lovecraft was gaining in the English-speaking imagination. In Joshi’s opinion, the tide was turned by an extremely negative review by Edmund Wilson, an eminent American critic. In him, Joshi appears to have located the quintessential case of the literary snobbery that would dog anyone who wanted to take Lovecraft seriously as an artist for years to come. In particular, Joshi highlights Wilson’s comment about Lovecraft being more “interesting” than his work (113). It becomes clear in the last part of the book as to why Joshi thinks that these probings into the author’s personal life are something to be regarded with suspicion.

The latter chapters are nothing short of gold dust for any scholar seeking a comprehensive and informative history of monographs and articles on Lovecraft. The canonisation of Lovecraft as a literary titan, in addition to the seismic effect of his work in science fiction internationally, makes the general recognition of his talent seem a foregone conclusion by the time we reach the ninth chapter of the book. Joshi admits that a total audit of Lovecraft-related media by this point in time is basically impossible. Nevertheless, readers of SFRA Review will no doubt already be familiar with much of what Joshi covers in terms of the growth of Lovecraft in popular culture.

The most polarising aspect of this book is undoubtedly how it approaches the recent controversies surrounding Lovecraft’s prejudices. Joshi makes no bones about his negative opinion of “virtue signalling” (305). His main objection to the attacks on Lovecraft is essentially what many of Lovecraft’s defenders have said in the past, namely, that his views were conceived in a historical context that deserves to be considered. He also argues that the criticism of Lovecraft’s worst lines often devolves into slander and has achieved little more than the defacement of every other facet of the man’s personality. The end result has been the condemnation of the entire person rather than his views, many of which Lovecraft regretted later in life. Joshi does not hesitate in calling out cynical personalities who profited from Lovecraft’s legacy only to trample on his reputation later.

Joshi ends by reminding us of the most important point. Whatever we may think of Lovecraft the man, this controversy has had little effect on the sales of his fiction around the world. The Recognition of H. P. Lovecraft is ultimately a testament to the power of the stories, which have proved resistant to many different crises, and will certainly survive many more.

Beatrice Steele is a PhD researcher and freelance writer from Guildford, England. She gained a Master’s in eighteenth-century literature from the University of Oxford in 2022 and is now undertaking an AHRC-funded PhD based at the University of Exeter. Her research interests include Victorian science, visual culture, and astronomy. She is also a regular contributor to the Dotun Adebayo Show on BBC Radio 5 Live. In her spare time, she likes to read and write poetry. She recently won second place in the Jane Martin Poetry Prize, a national competition run by Girton College, Cambridge.

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The underlying idea of Olivier’s study, namely that objects in horror films are more than they seem, is probably intuitively evident to anyone who has ever watched a horror movie. But rather than focus on the props that come to mind—the haunted houses and cursed objects—Olivier attends to objects that sit on the margins of the plot and seem to be benign, familiar, and even mundane.

Olivier’s object-oriented readings of horror films offer detailed analyses which illuminate the ‘secret lives’ of these domestic objects on screen. This object-led approach is also reflected in the book’s structure and its visualization: Household Horror takes the reader on a tour of an apartment and guides them through four sections titled “Kitchen/Dining Room,” “Living Room,” “Bedroom,” and “Bathroom,” each containing chapters on objects which we would expect to find in these rooms (for example, the “Bathroom” contains chapters on the “Radiator,” discussing Lynch’s Eraserhead [1977], on “Pills” which probes the medicated female body in The Bad Seed [1956], Rosemary’s Baby [1968], and The Exorcism of Emily Rose [2005], and lastly the famous “Shower Curtain” from Psycho [1960]). The floor plan of a one-bedroom apartment preceding the first chapter functions as an additional flat, visual table of contents mapping all of the objects discussed in the book. This structure already illustrates Olivier’s approach. Rather than ordering his analyses according to “traditional strategies of coherence such as chronology, country, director, and subgenre,” readers are free to “roam” among the object-themed chapters (2), which can be read in any order.

In the short introductory chapter, Olivier establishes the theoretical orientation of the following analyses. Setting out to follow objects’ ‘secret lives,’ the book announces its inspiration by reference to work within the material turn that seeks to decenter the hierarchical organization of humans and objects. Olivier cites Ian Bogost and his elaboration of object-oriented ontology (OOO) as the basis for “treat[ing] objects as beings that surpass the roles given to them as props or decor” (3). This re-perspectivization recovers the various pieces of furniture, tools, and devices that form the unremarkable tapestry of everyday life from the background and grants them center stage. Viewed through the lens of OOO, horror films, Olivier argues, turn this domestic landscape inside out and foreground humble objects as central participants on a par with humans.

Methodologically, Olivier combines a range of approaches, two of which seem to be particularly characteristic of his project: He takes the reader on contextual excursions into the histories, inner workings, and material make-up of objects, detailing their usually obscured or forgotten ‘lives’ on their own terms and then tying them back into the films. For example, one of the objects in the first section, “Kitchen/Dining Room,” is the microwave which Olivier reads as a pivotal element in Gremlins (1984): “The microwave is a gremlin-sized chamber of atmospheric terror rooted in wartime research, embroiled in spy scandals and health scares—it is an inspirer of tabloid stories and urban legends and possibly the least understood device in the kitchen” (30). It is, Olivier suggests, much more than a convenient appliance as its public and imaginary lives complicate its status as a mundane domestic appliance, not the least, because microwave ovens are a relatively recent addition to kitchens. Their new owners in the 1980s were particularly fascinated by rumors and sensationalized stories about the dangers of microwaves, because the technology evokes the threat of nuclear radiation (35). This residual uncanniness of objects seems to emerge from their incomplete domestication due to their relatively recent adoption in homes. Mining the history of the refrigerator, sewing machine, and typewriter, Olivier provides compelling interpretations of their roles in Possession (1981), Silence of the Lambs (1991), Carrie (1976), and The Shining (1980) and includes readings that draw out the complicated processes of domestication that these technologies underwent. Their horror, Olivier’s readings also suggest, lies in their continued, but obscured, connections with histories and networks outside the home. Other object-led excursions consist in attending to the inner workings of devices, offering physical routes into black-boxed objects, as Olivier demonstrates with regard to call tracing in Black Christmas (1974), where “The call is taking place not only at two ends of a phone line but also at a police station and in a switching station” (60). Olivier then dwells on the latter as much as on the former two locations and opens up a constitutive but hidden space within the network. In this way, histories and technologies that lead outside the films (and outside the home) are reinserted into the analyses in a movement reminiscent of Elaine Freedgood’s ‘old’ materialist “strong metonymic reading” (see her The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel of 2006) which recovers the cultural and historical meanings of objects outside the literary text and then weaves them back into the narratives.

Olivier further centers objects through the straightforward but effective strategy of translating plots into lists (4). This re-segmentation based on the object rather than subject, assisted by phrases that highlight the non-human agent, as in “table events” (80, Noriko’s Dinner Table [2005]), “remote-control phenomena” (123, Poltergeist [1982]), “bed scenes” (184, The Exorcist [1973]), or “typographic events” (212, The Shining), subtracts human agents and provides inventories instead (also the diagram of phone calls in Black Christmas, 56). The ‘inventory’ is a key figure and programmatic device in Olivier’s study to which he returns in the brief conclusion: “Household Horror takes a simple inventory of household objects, explores the deformations caused by their presence in cinematic horror, and produces new objects as readings” (312), relying on the “gentle knot of the comma” (312, quoting Bogost).

Household Horror is a readable and jargon-free study that demonstrates the benefits of object-led analyses through the sheer range of illuminating case studies rather than abstract theory. Reading it from cover to cover, as I have done following the protocols for reviewing academic monographs, is probably less effective than picking and choosing chapters that are of interest either because of the films they analyze or the objects featuring in them. The book, or rather its individual chapters, would thus be of interest not only to students and researchers of horror but also to anyone wondering how film (and, indeed, literary studies) can put OOO into interpretative practice.

Sabina Fazli is a postdoc in the collaborative research center ‘Studies in Human Categorization’ at Mainz University, Germany. Her PhD thesis was in English literature and has been published as Sensational Things: Souvenirs, Keepsakes, and Mementoes in Wilkie Collins’s Fiction (2019). The book explores the significance of sentimental objects in sensation fiction. Her research interests are now in magazine studies, and the material and affective side of periodical reading, independent, experimental, and zine publishing, as well as Neo-Victorian and steampunk fiction.

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We live in dystopian times, at this early stage of the twenty-first century. Against a backdrop of environmental disaster and increasingly violent geopolitical manoeuvrings, a raging viral pandemic continues to exacerbate long-developing global inequalities. Meanwhile, dystopian fiction has also become inescapable. Novels such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) are once again topping global bestseller charts, television series including 오징어 게임 (Squid Game) (2021-) have come to dominate on-demand streaming services, and film adaptations like The Hunger Games franchise (2012-2023) continue to break various box-office attendance records. Annika Gonnermann’s Absent Rebels: Criticism and Network Power in 21^st Century Dystopian Fiction (henceforth Absent Rebels) responds directly to this booming popular cultural embrace of dystopia, but makes a further seemingly provocative claim: such “classical” (12) fictional dystopias are effectively meaningless for the current age. Gonnermann argues that this type of dystopian fiction (which she identifies as material containing a “focus on political entities” [17], primarily totalitarian regimes) – particularly as such works increasingly infiltrate mainstream channels – cannot act as a subversive critique of its cultural status quo, but can exist only as a commodity that offers light, somewhat anachronistic, entertainment. While Big Brother is certainly still watching, Big Brother is also being watched, in record numbers.

Absent Rebels posits that the commodification of dystopia is a direct result of the economic milieu that engulfs contemporary Western culture: neoliberalism—that most highly aggressive and unchecked form of capitalism—functions by flattening, incorporating, and ultimately commodifying everything, even its own potential critique. According to Gonnermann, this leaves classical dystopias neither adequate nor appropriate for representing—much less challenging—contemporary forms of political organisation, because “the state’s monopoly of power” (18) is now subsidiary to the logistical and financial networks that underpin globalized capital. Gonnermann proceeds to claim that a “new relentless bleakness” (304) is evident in certain exemplary contemporary dystopian texts – her selection consists of David Eggers’s The Circle (2013), Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last (2015), M.T. Anderson’s Feed (2002), David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004), and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005)—and is beginning to “rejuvenate” ( 19) the genre in order to “spell out the inevitability of free-market capitalism” (304) and its attendant violent social impacts. Presented by Gonnermann as “especially progressive and subversive” (18), she argues that her chosen texts are identifiable by their lack of “rebels and dissidents,” (19) which means that they “urge readers to explore the possible alternatives to the dystopian world presented to them on their own” (19, emphasis in original). For Gonnermann, the lack of protagonists who can challenge the economic system that they are depicted as existing within reflects the truncated possibility of meaningful resistance in a more broadly networked society that features no clearly identifiable antagonists. The texts thus act as “phenotypes of a neoliberal economic system” (241), and function to “map out the contradictions of contemporary neoliberal capitalism” (19). Absent Rebels, then, is a timely and sometimes innovative contribution to the field of dystopian studies and is impressive for its ambition, even if it is rather frustrating to witness this ambition only inconsistently realised across the text.

The limitations are unfortunately apparent from the opening of Absent Rebels, which does read rather like a postgraduate dissertation, desperate to prove its bona fides in an overdetermined manner: the early definitional sections are laboured, and the literature review of canonical dystopian literature and literary history that comprises the first major chapter of the book is rather cumbersome, as are the frequent and extended footnotes that addend the text.[1] More problematically, however, Absent Rebels is underlain by a number of somewhat problematic assumptions that remain completely unchallenged. Take Gonnermann’s starting point, for instance:

What makes dystopia so fascinating is its ability to capture cultural anxieties and voice them in literary terms, so that it acts as a mouthpiece and tool of diagnosis and critique for social, political and economic developments… dystopian fiction is always meant as a normative criticism of the socio-historical and historical characteristics of its own origins. (38; 40 emphasis in original)

Claiming an invariable one-to-one correspondence between textual representation and societal critique is a basic misjudgement, because it presumes, amongst other things, that critique is in fact the raison d’etre of all dystopian texts: a highly dubious presumption given the cynically populist manner in which many such texts are written, produced and marketed.[2] But there is an even more fundamental supposition that informs Gonnermann’s claim: in positioning dystopia as a literary expression of extratextual criticism, and claiming that “the aim of any criticism is a transformation of the status quo” (45), she explicitly aligns dystopian texts with their authors’ attempts to engage in real-world revolutionary change. At its most fundamental, then, the premise about the essential function of dystopian literature is naïve in Absent Rebels: there is simply no necessary relationship between any specific piece of cultural production and extraliterary political effect or social reform. In this and other areas, and to its detriment, Absent Rebels repeatedly fails to distinguish between the fictional representations found within the pages of its selected texts and the external reality in which readers and writers live.

Relatedly, much of Absent Rebels understands its primary texts as predominantly, and oftentimes solely, didactic and veers, sometimes headfirst, into intentional fallacy. Take, for example, Gonnermann’s following rumination:

The challenge authors are faced with is to develop an appropriate imagery or language to capture neoliberal thought in its essence while avoiding the fallacies of methodological individualism, i.e. blaming individuals for systemic problems. (175)

What remains unclear is why—or even if—such innovations in form, theme or style are intended in the first instance, and, more crucially, why authorial intention matters in any case. The above quotation is indicative of a general trend by which Absent Rebels simply presumes the accuracy of each of its theoretical speculations, and frequently does not bother offering simple things like evidential substantiation. Indeed, the repeated blind profession of opinions on behalf of a hypothetical reader and the constant moralising throughout Absent Rebels can become fairly overbearing, even to a reader that is already sympathetic to its ideological starting point.

Credibility is further strained in Absent Rebels by the indiscriminate application of its central thesis to its primary texts. By reducing each of its focal texts simply to their relationship with “globalised predatory neoliberal mechanisms” (206), Gonnerman leaves any other themes that arise in the respective novels almost entirely adrift.

For all these problems, however, Absent Rebels does make some insightful observations on both a large and small scale. The foregrounding of theory – particularly in positioning capitalism as a kind of “hyperobject” (Morton 2013, 1) that is “almost impossible to criticise directly” (Gonnermann 66) – is highly productive, and some of the close readings of the primary texts are relatively compelling, particularly in the later chapters.[3] Indeed, Absent Rebels should be applauded for its serious exploration of contemporary texts and social systems. All in all, Absent Rebels is a book that demonstrates a lot of promise, but is heavily flawed on both a theoretical and a formal level. The fairly frequent errors with grammar and spelling are frustrating, and combine to undermine the text’s clarity and coherence in their own right, but also cause further issues with phrasing and stridency (for example, a claim that a text “obviously references” a specific event shifts to merely “hinting at” that event later in the same paragraph [152]). The latter issue is also likely responsible for some arguments being at odds with the evidence provided, instances of further dubious foundational bases provided for the claims being made, and occasional outright misrepresentation of some secondary source content.

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NOTES

[1] The copyright page reads “Zugleich Dissertation an der Universität Mannheim,” (translation: “At the same time dissertation at the University of Mannheim”) so this may be an unrevised thesis. I do hasten to note that this is a good, interesting and somewhat innovative dissertation, but that fact alone does not necessarily translate directly into a wholly convincing academic publication.

[2] Gonnermann herself makes precisely this point, in fact: “novels in general, and dystopias, struggle to maintain their integrity as channels of criticism [because t]hey are always products of a neoliberal market policy and are produced as commodities by publishing houses and marketing departments to satisfy consumer demand for the highly popular dystopian genre” (2021, 67). Accordingly, it is one of the constant frustrations of Absent Rebels that Gonnermann seems unable to consistently maintain her own argumentative line(s).

[3] Morton describes hyperobjects as “things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans” (2013, 1).

WORKS CITED

Morton, Timothy. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

Petrozza, Mille (Kreator). “Terrible Certainty.” Terrible Certainty. Berlin: Noise Records N 0342-2, compact disc. 1987.

Ben Eldridge an early career researcher of Literatures in Englishes & the current Vice-President of the Association for Canadian Studies in Australia and New Zealand (ACSANZ), who lives and works primarily on unceded Darug and Gadigal land. If not performing the exploitative, unpaid labour that is intrinsic to the functioning of the modern neoliberal ‘academic’ sector, Eldridge can be found either denouncing technocratic management or—like his personal avatar, the Canada goose (Branta canadensis)—honking eternally into the void of existential despair. This, he realises, may be a tautological claim.

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Łukasz Neubauer’s edited collection Middle-earth, or There and Back Again covers an eclectic array of works from J. R. R. Tolkien’s oeuvre. Four of the six essays focus on Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium while the other two discuss The Fall of Arthur and The Story of Kullervo. Each essay focuses on the texts that influenced Tolkien’s world-building, examining the ways in which Tolkien took themes, characters, and even worldviews from earlier mythologies and changed, elaborated, or otherwise recapitulated them in order to create his own mythopoeic texts. In all, this collection leaves the reader with a deeper understanding of just how fertile Tolkien’s familiarity with ancient and medieval literature was for his writing.

Neubauer’s own contribution to the volume, “‘You cannot pass’: Tolkien’s Christian Reinterpretation of the Traditional Germanic Ideals of Heroism and Loyalty in The Lord of the Rings”, is the most notable essay in the collection. Neubauer argues that the scene in The Lord of the Rings in which Gandalf battles the Balrog in the depths of Moria was inspired by Beorhtnoth’s actions in The Battle of Maldon. Both texts envision a battle against formidable foes where a leader’s followers come to his aid, as well as a setting where the enemies must cross a bridge in order to engage in battle. The major difference between the two texts, Neubauer argues, is that while Beorhtnoth allows the Vikings to cross in a hubristic desire to increase the glory of a supposed victory, thus allowing his followers to die needlessly, Gandalf positions himself on the bridge to prevent the Balrog’s passing and refuses help from his company, thus sacrificing himself for the greater good. As Neubauer comments, Tolkien’s “understanding of what truly defines heroism goes well beyond the somewhat narrow and oversimplified framework of the oft-examined Germanic ‘heroic ideal’” (34). In this way, Tolkien takes an older story and reimagines it to adhere to his Catholic worldview, transforming what had been a story of warrior heroism into a parable of heroic sacrifice.

In the same vein, Michał Leśniewski in “Tolkien and the Myth of Atlantis, or the Usefulness of Dreams and the Methodology of Mythmaking” examines the influence of Plato’s tale of Atlantis on Tolkien’s creation of Númenor. While scholars elsewhere have made this connection between these two doomed societies before, Leśniewski emphasizes how the fallen nature of the Edain constitutes a significant theme throughout the Middle-earth mythos. As Leśniewski observes, “the Edain are … inclined to make the same mistakes, over and over again” (17). This, Leśniewski argues, also falls in line with Plato’s thinking, as “Tolkien appears to share Plato’s pessimistic view concerning the fallible character of human nature” (17). Plato’s influence on Tolkien’s legendarium therefore extends beyond just the tale of a civilization doomed by punishment for its wickedness, it also inspires a paradigm for all human actions on Middle-earth and the way in which its history unfolds.

Barbara Kowalik’s essay, “Tolkien’s Use of the Motif of Goldsmith-craft and the Middle English Pearl: Ring or Hand?,” offers a fascinating look at how one of Tolkien’s favorite medieval poems influenced his creation of the Ring of Power. While previous scholarship has largely focused on how Tolkien was inspired by the rings from Niebelungenlied and Plato’s “Ring of Gyges,” Kowalik instead convincingly argues that Pearl provides the model for the One Ring. Yet, as in the essays discussed above, it was not inspiration merely for one object; rather, it offered an entire framework of beliefs around rings that Tolkien used throughout his Middle-earth Legendarium. Kowalik notes how the symbolism of precious metals and gems found in Pearl are recapitulated in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. Kowalki points out that both works contain “a story of attachment and loss, and of regret, pain, and quest for a jewel” (48). In addition to similarities in plot, Kowalki demonstrates that these works both contain similar themes, such as how the jewels “must not be isolated to please a single individual” (53) because “isolation is shown to be at the root of … evil-doing” (54), that “personal dignity and goodness is preserved through acknowledging authority” (53), and that the circular shape of the rings “suggest both perfection and entrapment” (59), amongst others. Tolkien scholars have long noted how Tolkien’s interest in medieval literature affected his creation of Middle-earth, and Kowalki’s essay should bring more critical attention to Pearl as source material for Tolkien’s mythos.

The final essay that focuses on Middle-earth, “The Wisdom of Galadriel: A Study in the Theology of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings” by Andrzej Wicher, looks at the many influences that Tolkien drew upon to construct Galadriel, from Saint Paul’s Epistles to John Ruskin’s ideals of womanhood.Wicher’s interpretation of Galadriel focuses on how she is “an unlikely heroine of the struggle with Sauron” (128) because she herself took part in Fëanor’s rebellion against the Valar. This, however, gives her wisdom and helps her understand humanity’s sinful nature, making her, as Wicher says, into a character “through whom many Biblical echoes reverberate” (128).

The two essays that focus on Tolkien’s works outside of his Middle-earth legendarium, “The Mythical Model of the World in The Story of Kullervo” by Andrzej Szyjewski and “J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur in the Context of the Medieval Tradition of Romance” by Bartłomiej Błaszkiewicz, both look at Tolkien’s direct adaptations of older mythic cycles. Szyjewski’s assessment of The Story of Kullervo is that while composing this work Tolkien honed his skills in creating new languages and pantheons, thus teaching him the principles of mythopoeic creation that would ultimately result in his tales of Middle-earth (110). Błaszkiewicz explicates Tolkien’s adaptation of the Arthurian language and likewise argues that Tolkien’s experiences in writing this poem contributed to his creation of Middle-earth (81).

This volume provides a valuable overview of some of the sources Tolkien was familiar with as a medievalist and that he used to create his own literary works. While readers of the Cormarë series may expect a more focused theme for an edited collection, these essays are connected (even if somewhat loosely) by their explorations of how Tolkien reworked medieval and ancient literature into his own writings. These essays provide important studies of Tolkien’s sources and, as with all the other volumes put forth in the Cormarë series, this collection makes a valuable contribution to Tolkienian scholarship.

James Hamby is the Associate Director of the Writing Center at Middle Tennessee State University, where he also teaches courses in composition and literature. He currently serves as the editor for The Incredible Nineteenth Century: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Fairy Tale, and he previously held the position of Associate Book Reviews Editor for Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. He has written book reviews for many different journals, and recently published an article on Dickens’s Holiday Romance with Dickens Studies Annual.

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Michael Hill’s title here—the subtitle especially—tells you much of what you need to know about this book. This self-published study is evidently a labor of love by a self-identified Kirby fan, and it wears its admiration of Kirby on its sleeve. Hill’s contention is straightforward and clear: the history of Marvel Comics, certainly the official Marvel history, exaggerates Stan Lee’s role and criminally downplays Kirby’s in the creative explosion of the early 1960s from which most of Marvel’s major characters emerged. I think it is fair to say that Hill’s is an uncontroversial position; certainly, I have believed Kirby was the primary architect of Marvel’s early superhero line for decades—and indeed, Hill relies on interviews that are decades old as the basis of much of his argument. Two features make this book stand out. First, it takes a fairly absolutist view of the question, essentially accepting both Kirby’s claims to have created almost everything and Kirby’s dismissals of Stan Lee. Second, it offers a comprehensive tour through an enormous number of interviews with Kirby and others to make its case. One key point Hill makes, and demonstrates, is that Kirby’s story remained consistent across decades, whereas Stan Lee’s did not, which one can easily see as damaging Lee’s credibility. Hill also lands hard on two financial arguments. First, he argues, persuasively, that the so-called “Marvel Method,” whereby artists produced pages from plot summaries rather than from full scripts, really meant that the artists actually did most of the heavy lifting on the books. Hill cites artists other than Kirby who assert that Lee often provided no actual plot at all, leaving the artist to create the story; Lee then took the writing credit, leaving the art credit only for the artist. Hill’s argument is that this practice allowed Lee to exploit the artists by claiming not only the writing credit but also the payment for writing. Second, he argues, perhaps somewhat less persuasively, that Lee’s shift to asserting that he was the creator of all the early Marvel superheroes coincided with the takeover of the company so was part of a scheme to confirm company ownership of all of its lucrative characters. These are arguably the book’s core points, and they are good and important ones. They are not, however, news to those already well-versed in this long-standing controversy. Many other commentators have largely accepted Kirby’s claims, though not as thoroughly as Hill does, as is evident from Hill’s critiques of earlier researchers in this area.

Furthermore, the book suffers from limitations. First of all, Hill’s criticisms of the hagiographic way Lee has been viewed may sound valid given that Kirby has been so overlooked, but they also seem ironic, as Hill is engaged in his own hagiographic depiction of Kirby. This is not an academic study, so its fannish style is to be expected, but Hill’s strongly anti-Lee perspective, understandable (and valid, in my opinion) as it may be, means that he is unlikely to win over anyone not already on his side of the debate. His decision to give Kirby the same benefit of the doubt that he argues has always been given to Lee’s claims leads him not to question Kirby’s own claims, thereby correcting (from his point of view) the different standards of credibility Lee and Kirby have received in the past, but also thereby letting all of Kirby’s claims go essentially unchallenged. The critical consensus is that Kirby did indeed play a far greater role than the partisan official history grants him, but it also and legitimately recognizes that Kirby’s own claims need to be evaluated rather than simply accepted. Interestingly, Abraham Josephine Reisman’s biography of Stan Lee, True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, also published in 2021, essentially supports Kirby’s claims over Lee’s, without Hill’s propensity for partisanship in Kirby’s favor.

Second, and more problematically, the book’s structure is confused and repetitive. The book consists of two sections. Part one is derived from Hill’s chronological examination of the Lee-Kirby controversy for the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center’s web page in 2015, produced because a promised treatment of the same subject in the magazine The Jack Kirby Collector had been cancelled. As Hill reports, that special issue “was quietly added back to the schedule” (x) for the magazine after his piece appeared. Part two of this book comprises Hill’s point by point and exhaustive response to that special issue. Consequently, part one and part two cover much of the same territory, and in a great many instances say essentially the same thing, even using the same quotations. Multiple quotations appear twice (or more) in the book, and many repeat the same information. While documenting different occasions on which Kirby said essentially the same thing does support Hill’s argument that Kirby’s story stayed consistent, the extensive repetition of information, whether verbatim or in multiple similar quotations, unnecessarily pads the book and weakens its coherence. Hill could have combined his two separate accounts into one linear narrative, though doing so would have required considerably more reshaping of the material than has evidently been done.

Those unfamiliar with the Kirby side of the story, and even Kirby enthusiasts, might find value here, the uninitiated simply because the book provides a corrective to the Marvel version, and enthusiasts because Hill’s thoroughness means that many difficult-to-find interviews are referenced and cited, and because other rare documents are also reproduced. However, this book does need to be read with a critical lens, and those interested in the long history of the Lee vs Kirby argument would do well to consult other sources, perhaps especially those Hill cites and criticizes. Unfortunately, though, Hill does not provide a bibliography of works consulted, only an index of the interviews referenced. Comprehensive comics libraries might want to add this book, but more selective collections can pass it by.

Dominick Grace is the author of The Science Fiction of Phyllis Gotlieb: A Critical Reading and of numerous articles. He has co-edited several books covering topics such as comics, television, and Canadian speculative fiction.

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When the English translation of Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem won the Hugo Award in 2015, the moment was widely hailed in the Western news media as the global emergence of ‘Chinese science fiction.’ To what extent was that coverage merely a convenient marketing label? In this book-length inquiry into the eclectic influences of Western and Chinese literature on the Three Body Trilogy, Liu Cixin-scholar Will Peyton suggests the writer’s interest in what the literary critic C. T. Hsia has called writing tinged by culturally distinctive ‘Chinese characteristics’ has been overstated; likewise, Peyton contends that in general the Sino-affiliated work typically grouped as Chinese SF (kehuan xiaoshuo) developed not simply independently from Western influence but in an extensive and dynamic dialogue with a wide variety of non-Chinese SF. Hence in this way Peyton advocates for understanding the Three Body Trilogy as a fascinating entry into the broad, cross-pollinating phenomenon popularly known as global SF: “Liu Cixin, like many contemporary Chinese authors, consciously views himself in a lineal relationship with translated Western writers, often making marginal reference to native Chinese fiction” (18).

Another controversial and complicated issue this book weighs in on is the precise political valences of Liu Cixin’s work and specifically that of the Three Body Trilogy. As now plastered on his Wikipedia page, in June 2019, Liu Cixin, in a profile-interview for the New Yorker, parroted the standpoint discredited by Western observers and promoted as the official position of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that the mass detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang is justified to preempt future terrorist attacks. Peyton does not merely condemn the Chinese writer from the cosmopolitan distance of the Western intelligentsia, as so many glib commentators have done; oppositely, and more subtly, Peyton also specifically refuses to argue that Liu Cixin critiques the political unconscious of ‘soft power’ implicit in endorsing a distinctive brand of politically flexible Chinese science fiction against the dubiously universalized stipulations of human-rights rhetoric (thus eluding a well-flogged whipping post typified by the anti-China sentiment of certain U.S. Republican senators opposed to Netflix’s in-development adaptation of The Three Body Problem). Instead, Peyton more productively historicizes Liu Cixin’s dystopian political “fatalism” as evincing a shrewd “ambivalence towards defining or engaging with discussion of political progress” (139) very much in strategic consonance with the ideological messages emanating from the PRC.

The argument of the book flows from such concretely historicizing moves. The second chapter delineates Liu Cixin’s critical assays against the anthropocentric narcissism of modern literature. The chapter performs a close reading of the virtual-reality simulations depicted in the Three Body Problem as vividly representing a putatively neutral scientism indicative of Western-influenced, post-Mao Chinese literature. The third chapter explicates the impact of the Early Modern writings of Thomas More and Tommaso Campanella as well as Darwinian thought on Liu Cixin, Chinese SF, and the Three Body Trilogy. Its specific argument is that the cosmic sociology of the trilogy fuses these utopian traditions with a contemporary scientism influenced by Western thinkers such as Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins.  The fourth chapter analyzes specifically The Dark Forest (2008) and Death’s End (2010) for their evocation of a broad Shakespearean humanism. The fifth chapter frames Liu Cixin in terms of the discrepant flavors of historical realism rendered by Arthur C. Clarke and Herman Wouk. The fifth chapter discusses the classic dystopias by George Orwell, Yevgeny Zamyatin, and Aldous Huxley to limn the ethical relativity of Liu Cixin’s dystopian space opera and its glimmers of utopian scientism. The seventh chapter contextualizes Liu Cixin’s fiction as a mature outgrowth of Chinese youth fiction of the Cultural Revolution. The eighth chapter concerns the technologically utopian bent of both Liu Cixin’s trilogy and Chinese science fiction more broadly, and the ninth chapter traces the fatalism toward progress in Liu Cixin’s work to competing strands of Confucian and Daoist political thought. This last chapter includes a cursory conflation, by way of Karl Popper, of the sheer multiplicity of rigorous critical theory that can be swept under the banner of “Marxist historicism” (131) with the doctrinaire propaganda of the Maoist Cultural Revolution and therefore seemed tendentious to this reader.

All in all, though, this book greatly appeals to readers and scholars of science fiction, Chinese literature, translation studies, global studies, as well as those interested in close readings of Liu Cixin’s seminal trilogy in light of its historical and literary context.       

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Jerome Winter, PhD, is a full-time continuing lecturer at the University of California, Riverside. His first book, Science Fiction, New Space Opera, and Neoliberal Globalism, was published by the University of Wales Press as part of their New Dimensions in Science Fiction series. His second book, Citizen Science Fiction, was published in 2021. His scholarship has appeared in The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, Extrapolation, JFA, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Foundation, SFRA Review, and Science Fiction Studies.      

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Looking at critical theory as the body of work that defines our toolset as literary critics, in science fiction (sf) especially, one cannot but notice the dominant position that posthumanism has taken on ever since its rise to prominence in the 1980s. Donna J. Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” (1985) belongs into the category of must-reads for any sf scholar and its ripple effect into our field cannot be overstated. And given its timing, coinciding with the emergence of cyberpunk as a central mode of sf, it is no wonder that posthumanist readings have grown from there, proliferating in contemporary sf studies. But, as Thomas Foster has pointed out so aptly, cyberpunk is not the literary “vanguard of a posthumanism assumed to be revolutionary in itself” (xiii). Instead, it is a multiplier of posthumanism, a prism that changes the theory and allows it to take diverse forms.

But what comes out as a variety of posthumanisms must have gone into this prism at some point. It is this realization that feeds Thomas Connolly’s study After Human, that much sf before the posthumanist turn must address these issues somehow, that “even the most avowedly humanist text raises posthumanist concerns” (20). Connolly argues that in its discussion of human interaction with technology and nature, historical text of sf will reveal their concern for posthumanist issues. He sees the ‘post’ of posthumanism as a feature within humanism itself, an admittance of “the constructed nature of human experiences of the world” (20). His study is, consequently, a critical history of sf texts that foreground human interaction, not with the inhuman (however that may be), but with technology and nature, and with other humans. 

Connolly then proceeds to explore the humanist-posthumanist spectrum and the ontological modes associated with it in the history of sf through four chapters, each detailing a specific period of writing. Starting with 19th century proto-sf in the works of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells, Connolly sets up a comparison of the depiction of primitive pre-humanity in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and Jack London’s The Iron Heel, which contrasts with the humanist view of self-realization and centeredness. In the next chapter, on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and E.E. Smith’s Skylark series, Connolly then moves on to the relation of the human and technology, shifting the mirror from primitive pre-humanity towards a technologized trans-humanity. Here, more clearly than with the humanist-oriented narratives of the turn of the century, two distinct lines emerge: one that sees humanity “rendered powerless by technological systems beyond their control” and one that argues for a “utopic image of human self-actualization, evincing ever-greater technological control over the material world” (109).

In the 1950s, Connolly argues, a similar duality can be found not in a technological trans-humanity but in an evolved supra-humanity, which he explores in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation-series and Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars. Finally, in the 1970s, Connolly shifts from trans- or supra-humanity to a true post-humanity, in discussing the utopian project of J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal World and Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed. All of the chapters analyze works that attempt to engage with new positions of the human, in developing with technological progress, in challenging the idea of individualism, or in decentering the human. But, as Connolly makes clear, many retreat back into their more humanist positions, not following through with fully embracing the posthumanism that they tease out. In his conclusion, Connolly sees these stories as positioned in a framework of how the non-human is approached, either “assimilative” (192) in that the human enfolds the non-human cognitively or culturally, or “transformative” (193) in that human cultural frames are challenged and changed. His analysis places the historical works discussed in this framework, thus allowing scholars of posthumanism to see the theoretical trajectories of the categories.

After Human thus cleverly uses the posthumanist scaffolding to re-read traditional science fiction and excavate positions of the human within it, tracing the development of posthumanist positions up to the 1980s. For those scholars interested to treat posthumanism not as a given of the 21^st century, but as a development of the humanism and anti-humanism that came before, Connolly’s book is a valuable resource explaining the lines of thought in sf that have led up to, for example, the cyberpunk multiplication of posthumanism. After Human will help ground current work in contemporary posthumanist criticism by providing a historical perspective.  

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Lars Schmeink is currently Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Leeds. He has inaugurated the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung and has served as its president from 2010-19. He is the author of Biopunk Dystopias (2016) and the co-editor of Cyberpunk and Visual Culture (2018), The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture (2020), Fifty Key Figures in Cyberpunk (2022) and New Perspectives on Contemporary German Science Fiction (2022).