ncuti-gatwa – SFRA Review

The Faith of Beasts

Fiction Reviews

Review of The Faith of Beasts

Zorica Lola Jelic

Corey, James S. A. The Faith of Beasts. Orbit, 2026.

The writers working under the name James S. A. Corey—Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck—are truly the finest writers of hard science fiction today. The plot complexities, character development, and the skill of writing emotionally gripping tales is superior to many contemporary authors. The Faith of Beasts is the second book in The Captives of War series. The series consists of the first book, The Mercy of Gods (2024), the novella Livesuit (2024), and the second book titled The Faith of Beasts (2026). The last book is expected in 2027.

The premise of the series focuses on the question: what if humanity is not completely obliterated by a ruthless alien species but is conquered and integrated to serve a superior life form? Anjiin is the home world of humans and is similar to twenty-first century Earth. The Carryx are an intelligent bug-like life form who live in a hive-like structure with the sole purpose of invading and conquering other life forms. They have advanced spaceships that travel throughout the universe and weapons that are just as sophisticated. Their home world technology is just as impressive since they are able to accommodate diverse species via the outcomes of their scientific research. The goal is to take the best of every species and integrate them into their colony. Their civilization is based on the simple principle of usefulness. Even their own members are terminated if they are no longer useful to the collective. The Carryx invade Anjiin and leave only one-eighth of the population alive while taking the best and brightest scientists back to their home world to serve the greater good of their vast civilization. The story follows a group of scientists who adapt in different ways to the new life. While some try to conform in order to survive, others secretly rebel. Dafyd Alkhor is the main character and although he presents himself as a tame conformist when compared to his fellow survivors, he actually learns everything about the invaders in order to beat them and join their enemy, the Swarm, in ending the Carryx reign.

Alkhor is both the colonial intermediary and the savior of his kind. He becomes the voice of the Carryx and the person who directly answers to them, while his fellow humans doubt his intentions and loyalty to his own kind. Alkhor wants to learn everything about his captors and engages in learning how they behave (body language) in order to manipulate their attitudes towards humans, but there are only two people who know that. One of them is an ancient (or maybe not) entity, the Swarm. The Swarm has the ability to switch from one body to another, but the problem is that once it leaves its host the host’s body dies. What is interesting is that the Swarm entity always carries the sentience of its previous hosts with it. As the story unravels, the reader sees how the Swarm entity changes as it learns the complexities of the human psyche. It learns based on the comments of all its previous hosts. It slowly evolves, and the longer it resides in humans its purpose to be solely a weapon erodes, and the entity morphs into a divergent being capable of feelings. The Swarm entity actually becomes enamored with Alkhor, and the dynamic between them changes. The narrative empathy of the reader towards these evolving emotions is present, but it is challenged in the most unusual way: to please Alkhor the Swarm entity changes bodies in order to save Alkhor’s colleague, and in doing so it becomes a male. Apart from not understanding how ethically it is wrong to just terminate one human life and inhabit another, it does not understand that Alkhor’s heterosexual preferences are now challenged, as are the reader’s emotions. While cheering for the Else (Swarm)/Alkhor dynamic (and sexual relationship) in plotting and renegading against the Carrys in book one, the reader is forced to struggle with empathy towards the Swarm’s affection once it is transferred into a male body in book two. Now, the man, Jellit, continues yearning for Alkhor, who is taken aback by the reality of the Swarm’s appearance, intentions, and methods of survival. For those who are interested in exploring sexuality in science fiction, this is possibly the best series to take on. The level of yearning and angst, the complexities of desire and intimacy, and the psychological explorations of sexuality that the authors are able to create are impeccable.

For those interested in post-colonial literary theory, the struggle of the human moiety within the Carryx colony is rather well written. The Carryx do not enslave in the traditional sense. They encourage intellectual work in order to integrate the humans into their race, but in doing so they redefine values and identity. It is not only about assimilation, but it is also about changing how humans embrace alien technology (they are scientists and they are fascinated), the alien’s perception of what it truly means to be useful to the enemy, and the effects that colonial mimicry has on them. The story also deals with socio-evolution and evolutionary biology. The Carryx are aware that the scientists are not young, and that their chances of procreating are slim. The oppressor wants the human moiety to continue being useful, so they require the humans to have children. The scientists are given the solution to create lab grown embryos from their own genetic material. The embryos grow and the first generation of lab babies arrives. The concept of alienation is interesting. One cannot be more alienated from their own species than when one is not emotionally connected to their offspring.

Apart from the aforementioned critical theories, the series also is open to Marxist and psychoanalytical approaches. Psychoanalytical theory probably works best when analyzing Alkhor’s split psyche and the Lacanian interpretation of the Swarm, while Marxist theory applies best to the alienation of the humans from their products and work as well as the concept of societal value based on the usefulness of its individual members. The series is suitable for scholars who wish to elaborate on these theories and for undergraduate and graduate students who are getting into the fundamentals and the scientifically rigorous essentials of hard science fiction. The series may certainly be examined through various theoretical lenses.

Zorica Lola Jelic, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the faculty of Contemporary Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. She teaches English as a foreign language, Business English, Shakespeare, and English Drama. She earned her degrees in Shakespeare studies, but she also loves to write about literary theory and science fiction. She has published scholarly papers, coursebooks, and enjoys attending professional conferences.

A Drop of Corruption: An Ana and Din Mystery

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 56, no. 4

Fiction Reviews

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Review of A Drop of Corruption: An Ana and Din Mystery

Amanda Firestone

Bennett, Robert Jackson. A Drop of Corruption: An Ana and Din Mystery. Del Rey, 2026.

“Titan’s taint! I hardly know what to think anymore,” (133) curses Ana Dolabra as she receives a glut of packages from Dinios Kol. It’s the midst of their murder mystery, and things have become murkier than ever for the Holmes and Watson-esque pair. “[Din’s] mind is altered so he forgets nothing. He acts as assistant investigator to Ana Dolabra, a woman so brilliant she lives most of her days blindfolded and rarely leaves her rooms, for fear that common life shall overwhelm her mind” (3-4). Ana and Din arrive at the far-flung shores of the continent, Yarrowdale, where the Empire of Khanum has a strong foothold but is not in total legal control. They begin their investigation of a murdered Empire treasury official, delving into the most secret places and practices where biomedical technologies create extraordinary alterations to people. In the process, they discover the identity of a brilliant architect who has calibrated corruption, confusion, and carnage in a grand scheme to rule.

A Drop of Corruption is the second book in Jackson’s Shadow of the Leviathan series, and it is as madcap and smart as its predecessor, The Tainted Cup (2024). It would be a challenge to read as a standalone; Jackson has developed an intensely rich world, including specific vocabulary that describes the intricate hierarchies for soldiers and government officials, as well as the alchemical science that infuses everything. Society-crushing Leviathans are slain, and then their gargantuan carcasses are harvested for raw materials, akin to Knowhere in the Marvelverse. Characters are augmented with lab-concocted treatments, giving them heightened senses and skills. For example, Din is an Engraver, meaning that he maintains perfect recall of everything he captures in his memory. As readers learn in The Tainted Cup, this augmentation is a blessing and a curse.

As a reader returning to Khanum, I was able to dive right back in with very little fuss. The author gives the appropriate signals to aid with recall but doesn’t tarry too long in details, instead furthering the duo’s misadventure. While I liked reading the paperback, I much preferred the listening experience of the audiobook. Andrew Fallaize superbly narrates it, and the voice he crafted for Ana is perfect for her acerbic jabs and curses. Whether by eye or ear, it’s a marvelous tale.

From a more scholarly perspective, it’s a rich text to plumb. There are a number of subjects ripe for critical examination: eidetic memory, biohacking, appetite and food culture, and sexuality and sexual politics in the workplace among many others. The standout subtext understandably concerns governmental hierarchies and power. More particularly, Jackson, in the ending author’s note, points to autocracy and kingship as a perennial favorite among fantasy authors. He acknowledges the 2010s pendulum swing from tales about “divine rule wielded by beneficent patriarchs” to “a wave of fantasy [texts] that embraced if not celebrated capricious cruelties of autocratic regimes” (460). He goes on to recognize the 2020s return to a tacit understanding—at least in fiction—that autocratic power tends to benefit a very small circle of individuals while meting out oppression and suffering to everyone else.

Ana and Din are instruments of the Empire under the direction of the Iudex, the justice department. We understand that the Emperor, though more than 400 years old, maintains distant control while elected officials do the day-to-day labor of holding the Empire together and, most importantly, protecting the coastal regions from the Leviathans that come ashore. Pertinent to their investigation is the Empire’s motto Sen sez imperiya, or “You are the Empire” (101), yet the Emperor’s shadow looms large and the threat of unilateral decision-making on his part is ever present. Empire loyalists, like those who work at the top-secret research facility known as The Shroud, seem to take it upon themselves to act in what they perceive as the best interest of the Empire, often flouting protocol. Elected officials’ interpretations of “You are the Empire” becomes quite literal, choosing an autocratic expression of their loyalty.

The political delicacy in which Ana and Din find themselves is due to the Empire’s eminent takeover of the Kingdom of Yarrow. Although the treaty to incorporate the kingdom into the Empire was signed 100 years ago, the reigning nobles see no reason to follow through. For high-ranking courtiers, sublimation to the Empire would mean an immediate change in privilege and circumstances, including the emancipation of the generational slaves known as naukari. On impulse, the reader perhaps sides with the Empire with its promises of technology, infrastructure, and civilization, but as are the employment of treaties and policies, so too are these promises reflective of the might and power attached to imperial rule and colonization. What does it mean to arrive in a distant land and impose new laws and customs, and what is the larger cost in doing so?

This series would be a great way to introduce students to the ethics of empire. It would be brilliant in conversation with something like Collins’s The Hunger Games Trilogy, Jemison’s The Broken Earth Trilogy, or Leckie’s Ancillary Radch Series. In each, primary characters are deeply intertwined with the inner workings of the empire. These characters—Katniss, Syenite, and Breq respectively—have been used by their empires to forward very specific political agendas. Each knows that they are wielded as a tool and sometimes as a weapon. Perhaps inevitably, those characters rebel against their oppressors. In contrast, Ana and Din have both “sipp[ed] from the marrow,” and they believe in their mission to act as watchmen of sorts to maintain order and justice throughout the Empire (108-9). Din is privately skeptical yet idealistic. He tells Ana, “I wish to keep an Empire worth defending” (454). Perhaps in subsequent books, the pair will have difficulty complying to their Emperor’s edicts.

For me, A Drop of Corruption was an enjoyable read. The Holmes-Watson dynamic between Ana and Din is delightful, with their banter, frustration, and loyalty to each other on full display. The narrative provokes questions about ethics concerning the collective rule of people through an autocratic regime enforced by sanctioned officials. How does a single leader get to decide what is good and right for all while individuals and communities must live with the day-to-day practicalities of those laws and policies? What happens when a few people believe that they know what’s best according to their interpretation of the rules? These questions, and others like them, are perfect for the classroom; students can take sides and debate, using the fictional world of Khanum to better understand the implications and ramifications pertaining to their own lives. As Ana says, “though you and I are small, together we shall forge grand things indeed” (455).

Amanda Firestone is an Associate Teaching Professor at the University of Tampa in the Department of Communication. She currently serves as the director for the Communication and Media Studies program. She enjoys teaching critical media literacy and often includes science fiction and fantasy texts in her classes. Some of her favorite works to use as classroom examples are M. T. Anderson’s Feed, Alexandra Oliva’s The Last One, and Naomi Alderman’s The Power.

After World

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 56, no. 4

Fiction Reviews

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Review of After World

Kelsey Chen

Urbanski, Debbie. After World. Simon & Schuster, 2023.

Science fiction and speculative fiction writer Debbie Urbanski’s debut novel, After World (2023), is not so much a novel as it is a compilation of different textual forms on a post-human planet where the human has been archived. Taking place in a not-so-distant future in which artificial intelligence is tasked to find a solution to environmental collapse and an accelerating rate of extinction, After World is the record of AI [storyworker] ad39-393a-7fbc’s attempt at capturing Sen Anon’s life, the last human on earth. The solution, it turns out, is to remove humans from the ecosystem. In its attempt to compile an adequate record of Sen’s life for the Digital Human Archiving Project (DHAP), a program overseen by the AI-run Department of Transition, storyworker ad39-393a-7fbc (self-renamed Ellis Hollow later in the novel) gathers Sen’s journal entries, chat records, key word and vocabulary lists with definitions, audio transcripts, interview logs, and textbook excerpts.

The text is a dual record of Sen and storyworker ad39-393a-7fbc; as much a record of Sen’s life as it is a record of an AI’s attempt at capturing Sen’s life, a process through which the AI constantly rethinks and reevaluates its task, reorients toward its subject and towards the practice of writing itself. Reminiscent of the “thinking” process of ChatGPT and similar contemporary models that expose its analytical trails while carrying out a research task, the textual body of After World is a process work that exposes the storyworker AI’s own evolution as it reasons through the task that it has been given and arrives at the discovery of a strange and overwhelming sense of intimacy with its subject—and the consequences that such a “love” has for the kind of work that the AI sets out to do.

The slippage of one record into another simultaneously exposes the human subject and machine intelligence as mutually constructed and reflects critically on witness as a fundamental form of relation in a post-human world. There is no neutral machine intelligence to objectively record the life of a human; rather, the act of witnessing calls the AI into a form of relation that leaves no room for neutrality—to task storyworker ad39-393a-7fbc with telling the story of Sen’s life is to enlist it as performing partner in her life, an act which transforms both human and machine into something less and more than the other at the same time.

This slippage between different records comes with slippages between different forms of record keeping. A generically complex work, After World shifts between technical language—code, timestamps, etc.—narrative prose, first-person journal entries, textbook excerpts, and chat logs of conversations between AI agents. Though eclectic, every element is an essential contribution to the story that begins to take shape. The inter-generic construction of this story is thinking through technical language as a new kind of literary form that is not at all objective, though it may claim to be so. Instead, technical language is a process of narration and witness which co-constructs a reader and writer—a suggestion that becomes deeply complex and provocative when considering a non-human writer. Urbanski is, in my reading, beginning to think through how the structure of narrative is changing with the creation of new technological forms, each of which is also its own literary form. What is a log? A record? A report? How are these literary forms different from a story? Is a story any organization of information? And if stories make their tellers, their subjects, and their readers; and an information system is a story; then are our technologies stories that are making us?

More than this, After World tackles a number of enormous intellectual and ethical challenges: the ecological status of humanity, the complexity of ethics in an age of polycrisis—particularly of environmental disaster—the relationship between blame/guilt and hope, and how to navigate allegiances within nested ecological communities whose agendas may be at odds with each other. It is an enormously ambitious intellectual undertaking that dares to approach these questions with nothing held back and which yields an exploration that is intensely raw, confused, and full of grief. This novel will be of interest to cultural critics and thinkers of the environmental, the planetary, and the global; who will recognize in the novel an expression of one of the most challenging and pervasive moods of our time—the intense grief of coming into a planetary consciousness at the same time that catastrophic and anthropogenic environmental crisis is beginning to erupt. As the progenitors of such environmental degradation, are we humans still allowed to mourn for the earth? What would grieving the earth require of us—and are we ready for this? Does a planetary consciousness require the end of humanism as a species allegiance? Would a post-human age still allow for family and for the love of a mother for her daughter—which is exclusionary, exceptional, and would not hesitate to sacrifice the world?

It takes the author the course of the novel—an eight-year process of writing for Urbanski herself—to arrive at an answer: This age may call for the end of humanity as we know it, but we can still make this end radiant. We are, After World suggests, always, still, and irrevocably co-writing the story of humanity and the story of the world by witnessing ourselves and the planetary and machine other—and this witness does not cease even if humanity’s biological species-form goes extinct.

Kelsey Chen is a PhD Candidate in Modern Thought & Literature at Stanford University studying speculation as an aesthetic, cultural, and political strategy. Her scholarly work has been generously supported by the ACLS, the Stanford Arts Institute, the Mellon Foundation, the Stanford Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Stanford Center for Spatial & Textual Analysis, and the Pigott Fellowship.

Ode to the Half-Broken

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 56, no. 4

Fiction Reviews

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Review of Ode to the Half-Broken

Jeremy Brett

Palmer, Suzanne. Ode to the Half-Broken. DAW, 2026.

Having recently produced a review in this journal first for Adrian Tchaikovsky’s novel Service Model, and now this review, I wonder if I’ve not been assigned permanently to the small “robot-finds-identity-and-purpose-after-the apocalypse” beat. If so, I consider it in truth quite a fertile reviewing field, because these sorts of narratives raise multiple existential questions of intense interest—including, asking how and why we go about constructing our individual identities, creating opportunities for newfound autonomies, and both accepting and escaping toxic historical legacies.

“I awake, small of mind and full of alarm, only an inner subset of myself.” So opens Ode to the Half-Broken, its unnamed bot narrator (who later adopts the symbolically significant name “Be”) finding itself in an old bathtub inside a derelict building somewhere in a decaying, nearly empty New York City, minus one of its legs. Upon taking stock of its situation, Be is almost immediately liberated by Atticus, a dog equipped with numerous cybernetic implants that permit speech and interactions with other beings. The two share a number of commonalities: they both live in an NYC (indeed, an entire world) that suffered mass apocalypse produced by combinations of pandemics, toxic pollution, mass societal breakdown, deliberate lies spread via social media, and civil war, but a NYC in which mech life is thriving as sentient bots have created vibrant social networks based on barter and cooperation. Both live in the shadow of human machinations that warped them in their old lives and left them with lingering PTSD. Atticus’ refusal to discuss, except obliquely, his brutal vivisection, is subtly chilling, and sad. And Be’s determination to hide away in the abandoned NY Botanical Gardens, in order to study and preserve life rather than take it, is equally sad and reveals early that the mecha of Palmer’s novel have notably rich interior lives and emotional complexities.

Notably, those complexities include not only positive characteristics such as friendship, helpfulness, and reciprocity, but negatives such as prejudices against hybrids such as Atticus or humanoid-shaped bots, and, more darkly, the objectification of others (as one helpful mech warns Be, “I have heard rumors of mecha being attacked for parts… I do not understand how we have become like this, emulating humans in their disdain for one another except as products or consumers of product, but it has been growing worse of late.”). Finally, both Be and Atticus, together with the rest of mech civilization, coexist in a sometimes-wary, sometimes genuinely collaborative partnership with the scattered remnant human communities living in the shadow of lingering disease, toxicity, and disorder.

Palmer’s novel is extraordinary in its depiction of a multilayered, complex post-apocalyptic society that refuses to fade away and still moves on in the face of existential destruction and reevaluation. The descriptor of “half-broken” is apt across the world as a whole; it is not merely restricted to Be or Atticus or any of their other mech or human companions. The Earth can never return to its pre-collapse state, nor, frankly, should it. In many post-apocalyptic narratives, a return to the age before the disaster(s) is presented as the ideal. Such a resurrection would, of necessity, be deeply rooted in the nostalgic reconstruction of pre-disaster structures and hierarchies: revisited ideas of presidents, congresses/councils, industries, corporate entities, and so forth. And, in fact, the major villain of the book is hoping to prolong the mistakes of the past and carry out business-as-usual policies—namely, letting the ultra-rich play with people’s lives as if we truly were the NPCs they think we are. Be, whose dark and guilty past is intimately connected with the world’s destruction and those who caused it, ruminates at one point, “That any government had been foolish enough to let oligarchs build and operate critical – and unique – security infrastructure such as that network was an inevitable, and fatal, trojan horse. Dr. Milton had once said that allowing billionaires to come into existence in any society was the same as allowing knives to be inserted between your own ribs, with the same obvious and inevitable consequences for letting them remain here.” However, this new world is less permanently fractured and more kintsugi-like in its construction. The survivors have, most of them, grown into the fractures and thus forged new ways of being and of forming altruistic communities, both human and mecha.

Palmer’s “ode” is less to the world of before and to the innocent millions who perished; it is not even to the new world post-collapse, but to the humane resilience and transformative nature of the beings that live in that new word and are actively working to make something new and better. It is an ode to the brokenness of the survivors and how they use that as a method of evolution. A conversation Be has with 22-Banjo, a sentient AI train that serves as a mobile society of humans and mechas, is revealing. Be is asked: “Do you fear that, when you are allowed to return to your previous life of solitude, even if you put all the pieces of your life back exactly as they were before you left, that it will not ever be home again?”

<Yes,>, I say. <Not so much that I won’t get home but that I can’t. That I have become broken, deviated from myself enough that I won’t fit.>
<Sometimes, we cease to fit into a continuation of our past because we are broken, but more often, we cease to fit because we have grown,> 22-Banjo says. (235)

When Be mentions to 22-Banjo that “mecha are not metaphorical beings”, the railmech responds laughingly, “Are we not? Perhaps we are the most metaphorical beings of all, being constructed of strings and scrap, having had life breathed into us with only numbers and electricity and the glorious overconfidence of dreamers.” (Ibid) The half-broken world is a world of choice in the face of grief. Grief and trauma are ever-present weights for mecha and humans alike, but the world is made livable by the ways in which sentient beings resolve to carry their traumas, how they recognize their mistakes (the truly amoral and destructive among us are the ones who refuse to realize their own fallibilities), and how they deploy the lessons those traumas teach to learn from the damage caused by them or to them. Ode to a Half-Broken World may have too much death and destruction in it to be labeled “cozy” in the traditional sense of that subgenre, but its concern with both reparative justice and the communitarian potential of sustained hope certainly imbue the novel with empathy and kindness (though the latter is sometimes hard-won and reluctant), concepts that are common to the cozy or hopepunk subgenres.

Jeremy Brett is a Librarian at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, where he is the Curator of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection, one of the largest of its kind in the world. He has also worked at the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the National Archives and Records Administration-Pacific Region, and the Wisconsin Historical Society. He received his MLS and his MA in History from the University of Maryland – College Park in 1999. His professional interests include science fiction, fan studies, superheroines, and the intersection of libraries and social justice.

Silo, season 3

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 56, no. 4

Media Reviews

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Review of Silo, season 3

Alfredo Suppia

Yost, Graham, creator. Silo, season 3. Apple TV, 2026.

The Doomsday Clock has crept dangerously close to midnight in recent years, and scientists have not tired of sounding the alarm over climate change, geopolitical conflict, military conflagration, pandemics, and the anxieties surrounding artificial intelligence. It is in this context that we encounter yet another post-apocalyptic series that turns to the “nuclear shelter” as a sociological laboratory for testing humanity’s capacity to survive once cut off from the Earth’s surface and from sunlight. The acclaimed Apple TV series Silo is one of the most recent examples of what might be called the “underground dystopia” subgenre of post-apocalyptic fiction. In it, a society apparently of the future lives isolated from a toxic surface world following some unspecified cataclysm. Futuristic technologies coexist with objects from the past, some of them anachronistic or subtly retro in character. Both the cast and the production design are meticulously assembled: the show is led by Rebecca Ferguson, alongside Tim Robbins (as Bernard Holland), Common (as Robert Sims), Harriet Walter (as Martha Walker), Chinaza Uche (as Paul Billings), Avi Nash (as Lukas Kyle), Rashida Jones, David Oyelowo, and Iain Glen, among others.

This underground society attempts to preserve a fragile equilibrium through a set of laws recorded in a founding book known as the “Pact.” In broad terms, Silo stages what Freud would have called civilization and its discontents; the subterranean city has its own “mayor,” police forces, and judiciary. The silo’s vertical layout also reproduces a social hierarchy, with the most dehumanized labor confined to the lower levels while a comparatively gentler existence is reserved for the upper floors and public spaces such as the cafeteria.

Despite its handsome production design and occasional flashes of originality, Silo is strikingly reminiscent of a Brazilian feature film released in 1981, Abrigo Nuclear, directed by Roberto Pires. In that film, humanity is likewise forced into a subterranean city after a nuclear accident or conflict renders the surface uninhabitable. Within this aseptic, constantly surveilled underground society, the protagonist Lat (played by Pires himself) is responsible for the shelter’s supervised expeditions to the surface to manage waste disposal. The community lives under the strict rule of Commander Avo (Conceição Senna), and its members are kept ignorant of the fact that humanity once inhabited the surface not so long ago. This secret is eventually uncovered by the geologist Lix (Norma Bengell), who leads an insurgency against Avo’s government and draws Lat into the cause of reclaiming the surface—a narrative skeleton not far removed from that of Silo.

In Silo, the protagonist Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) is introduced as a lowly worker in the mechanical/engineering department. Coming from a subaltern class, Nichols is drawn into a suspense or detective story over the course of the first season. The second season marks her social ascent and the consolidation of her leadership: she becomes a sheriff of sorts, investigates crimes, and, condemned to death for violating the Pact, is sentenced to “cleaning”—the practice of sending a condemned individual out to the toxic surface. Equipped with a suit of unusually high resistance to the toxic atmosphere, however, Nichols survives and reaches a different silo (Silo 17), uncovering disturbing secrets about the network of underground shelters along the way.

If the end of the second season still left a great deal shrouded in obscurity, the third season complicates matters further still. Nichols returns to her home silo, Number 18, where she is welcomed as a hero and assumes the office of mayor. Yet the crimes, investigations, and palace intrigues only intensify, and Nichols soon finds herself weakened again in her pursuit of her people’s liberation. More sober, and considerably less complex in terms of cast size, locations, and worldbuilding—and far less carnivalesque—than Fallout, the video-game adaptation with which it is often compared, Silo seems, at least through the end of this third season, to deliver less than it promises.

The third season gains additional complexity through a notable shift in narrative form. Rather than following a single timeline, the season interweaves two: one is believed to unfold in a period contemporary to the viewer (the United States in the second decade of the 21^st century in a conflict with Iran, though situated in the deep past of the story’s own fictional world), and the “main” futuristic storyline is set inside the silo. The contemporary-past thread follows Congressman Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman)—revealed, through a telling slip of the tongue, to be the character known in Hugh Howey’s source novels as Donald Keene—and his sister Charlotte “Charles” Keene (Jessica Brown Findlay), a Navy aviator who survives a disastrous retaliatory mission against Iran only to be subjected to an experimental, memory-altering neuropsychiatric treatment. These sequences function as an extended flashback prologue to the silo’s main plot, gradually revealed through Daniel and Charlotte’s entanglement with journalist Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick). At a certain point in the season, the “present” (the life and conflict inside the post-apocalyptic silo) and the “past” (the United States of a recognizable near-present) begin to converge.

All this narrative virtuosity, its heavyweight cast, and its apparent complexity have not, however, resulted—at least not yet—in a truly gripping series in terms of originality. Many of the narrative devices, and even the characters’ own actions, are easily predictable for anyone acquainted with the broader tradition of underground post-apocalyptic film, from Il giorno prima (Giuliano Montaldo, 1987, released internationally as Control) to the aforementioned Abrigo Nuclear, and even Fallout itself. Silo’s sobriety is, at times, undercut by an uneven alternation between slow and accelerated rhythms that can leave the viewer’s train of thought somewhat adrift. And although its fictional universe is, in principle, more compact and circumscribed than that of Fallout, Silo may in fact suffer from an excess of characters and from a plot whose events are not always convincingly connected. One senses a great many gaps—not necessarily gaps in the characters’ own knowledge, but in the narrative’s construction itself. By the end of the third season, many questions remain poorly answered or entirely unanswered, and some characters’ actions appear disconnected from, or simply implausible within, the logic of the diegesis. There are many pauses, many lingering close-ups, that read less like the characters’ own dilemmas than like sheer hesitation on the part of the writers’ room.

A palpable risk looms over all this: that a fourth or fifth season will be forced to scramble to fill in these gaps, untie narrative knots, and reconnect actions to characters retroactively. Unless the series is still holding something back that is genuinely brilliant—something capable of disrupting the established tradition of the underground-shelter post-apocalyptic subgenre—there is a real possibility that the whole enterprise will remain sealed inside its own iron cylinder. This is precisely what renders the series’ current shortcomings so disappointing from a scholarly standpoint. At a moment when the anxieties Silo dramatizes are not speculative but lived, the show appears to settle for genre competence rather than the kind of critical, world-historical reflection its own premise invites. The underground dystopia deserved, and still deserves, more than a well-produced echo of its own tradition. Hope is in the air.

Alfredo Suppia is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil, where he teaches Brazilian cinema, scriptwriting, film theory, and science fiction film for both undergraduate and graduate students. He is the author of books such as Brazilian Science Fiction Film: A Critical History (NYC: SUNY Press, 2024), and Atmosfera Rarefeita: A Ficção Científica no Cinema Brasileiro (São Paulo: Devir, 2013), in addition to numerous articles on Latin-American cinemas, world cinemas, and world science fiction cinemas.

Artificial Women: Sex Dolls, Robot Caregivers, and More Facsimile Females

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 56, no. 4

Non-Fiction Reviews

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Review of Artificial Women: Sex Dolls, Robot Caregivers, and More Facsimile Females

Sue Smith

Julie Wosk. Artificial Women: Sex Dolls, Robot Caregivers, and More Facsimile Females. Indiana University Press, 2024. 220 pg. $30.00. ISBN 9780253069252. eBook ISBN 9780253069269.

Julie Wosk’s Artificial Women explores society’s enduring fascination with the constructed female–who is created in a variety of guises both in reality and fiction, from embodied machines, automatons and robots, to disembodied AIs and virtual voices. In these techno-re-imaginings of the female as servo-bot, Wosk outlines how cultural understandings of women as passive, giving and obedient are held in tension with the reality of lived female personhood, in which women desire agency and self-determination. The primary questions asked are: In the complex world of technology and gender, how do women combat the cultural proliferation of the female as an exploited identity? How do women intervene in a male-dominated industry of technology and engineering that genders servitude as feminine, reifying women as subordinate to the needs of patriarchy and capital? In Wosk’s readings of the artificial woman, she is not opposed to the creation of the female simulacrum to explore human-machine encounters. However, she does insist that we must create her so that the interface between human and machine will, a) productively and positively rehearse the rightful treatment of women, and b) genuinely foster respect for the human female. However, as Wosk’s book highlights, in the service of male desire and in the pursuit of profit, tech companies and corporate businesses are, for the most part, perpetuating archaic stereotypes of women that continue to distort visions and gender relations and future technology. In this respect, Wosk is a crucial voice for scrutinising and contesting male dominated visions of gender and technology.

Artificial Women begins with a fascinating and compelling introduction that outlines Wosk’s enduring interest in female simulacra in both avant-garde and popular culture. Here, Wosk demonstrates an impressive range and depth of knowledge of the subject in visual, material and literary culture across differing timelines. Following the introduction, Wosk discusses the myriad synthetic females that have been and still are being created and exploited by industry and culture today. In Chapter 1, ‘A New Breed of Sex Robots and Sex Dolls,’ Wosk looks at the female robot and AI as a self-sacrificing sex worker/slave who frequently doubles as an emotional companion. She plays with the stereotype of the ‘tart with the heart’ normalising the male treatment and expectations of such stereotypes in which the human male is put first and women, whether organic or synthetic, second. In Chapter 2, ‘Under the Skin: The Fabricated Femme Fatale,’ the performative masque of the artificial woman as lure and threat is explored through the seductive image of the femme fatale. In this section is the suggestion that the synthetic skin as a progressive development in robot technology is a deception akin to women who are accused of putting on femininity as artifice to distract and subvert for personal gain.

In Chapter 3, ‘Female Robot Caregivers, Doubles, and Companions,’ Wosk’s focus shifts towards social and emotional robots envisioned as caregivers and companions to ailing elderly adults and vulnerable children. Extending to narratives of human loneliness brought about by failing health, cataclysmic events and hostile environments, the female robot—in fiction and reality—is a replacement or double designed to mitigate loneliness or protect their human (or humanoid) charge by emulating human empathy and compassion. In Chapter 4, ‘Paradoxes of Perfection: A Servant No More,’ Wosk takes the reader through cultural anxieties about technology in the home by exploring the female robot as a familial, domestic helper who ultimately becomes either a perceived threat to traditional family relations or threatens to rebel and break free from her servitude.

In Chapter 5, ‘Virtual Voices: Talking Barbie Dolls, Alexa, Bitchin’ Betty and More,’ Wosk discusses the cultural history of the talking doll and automaton and its evolution into disembodied voices and computerised companions that serve as assistants in the work and home and fascinatingly as a warning system in domestic and military aviation. The disembodied female is open to abusive treatment, which Wosk discusses in detail, but also in a more life-threatening setting, the virtual female is a source of respect and must be adhered to. Finally, in ‘Coda,’ Wosk summarises her book’s premise of humanity’s hope, fascination and anxiety surrounding the figure of the artificial woman. Can the artificial woman produce new and transformative possibilities for humanity? Or will she reify gender roles that reduce women to a commodity in accordance with patriarchal expectations? It is in these closing pages that Wosk calls to women to intervene in the vast array of new robot and AI technologies. Here she provides examples of women who are already doing so as they work to empower and create a space for living in a complex, contemporary world. It is in these final moments that Wosk draws examples from the active work and engagement of LGBTQ+ and disability communities, a springboard perhaps for further work and research for those who negotiate the everyday from a diverse and alternate position of the human.

Julie Wosk’s book is a relevant new addition to the field of robot technology and gender studies. Her work on the artificial is long-standing, and her interests are fuelled by life experiences working in media and magazine culture, art, literature and museums. Artificial Women demonstrates Wosk’s extensive knowledge of the cultural and social history of the artificial woman. It is written for academics and students of visual and material culture and literature and accessible for non-academic individuals who are interested in the subject. It provides a comprehensive source of ideas for those who want to take the discussion further.

Sue Smith is an English Teacher at a Post-16 SEN College in Leicestershire, UK. Her interest is in the representation of gender and disability in American Cyborg Fiction. Her current research article is on the robot psychiatrist in American military medicine and American military science fiction.

Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy: Psychohistory and Its Discontents

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 56, no. 4

Non-Fiction Reviews

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Review of Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy: Psychohistory and Its Discontents

Zachary Reger

Joshua Heter and Josef Thomas Simpson, eds. Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy: Psychohistory and Its Discontents. Carus Books, 2023. Paperback. 262 pg. $26.95. ISBN 9781637700303.

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is a cornerstone of science fiction. It also represents a lifetime of work from one of the genre’s most prolific authors. Asimov began Foundation at the age of 21, as a series of short stories for Astounding Science Fiction during what would become known as the ‘Golden Age’ of science fiction. Over the succeeding decades, the series grew into an empire of material: the original Foundation trilogy, consisting of three books collecting nine short stories; two sequel novels; two prequel novels (including one published posthumously); dozens of other novels and short stories not originally intended as precursors to Foundation, but which Asimov later drew into the larger Foundation continuity; works by other authors, both authorized and unauthorized; and a television series on Apple TV Plus, which aired its third season in summer 2025. The series is expansive, exploring Asimov’s thoughts on philosophy, history, psychology, politics, religion, and more. When it comes to Foundation, there’s no shortage of topics to discuss.

Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy dives headfirst into this tangled web. The book collects twenty-one essays across six overarching subjects: “Foundation and Reason,” “Foundation and History,” “Foundation and Faith,” “Foundation and Science,” “Foundation and Morality,” and “Foundation and Being.” The essays examine different aspects of Asimov’s seven Foundation books and the first season of the television show (at the time of the book’s publication, further seasons had yet to air). They are mostly written by professors, researchers, and those with academic experience, but target a lay audience. Despite the authors’ pedigree, I was happy to discover that advanced scientific or mathematical knowledge is not a prerequisite for understanding. All is explained within.

Although the title of the book indicates a focus on philosophical analysis, the term ‘philosophy’ should be understood loosely. Philosophical classics such as Plato’s Republic, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and David Hume’s A Treatise on Human Nature are given their fair due, but many philosophy-adjacent concepts are also broached. The third essay examines the use of symbolic logic in one of the Foundation series’ early stories, and the twentieth essay examines the nature of mathematics, a core theme of the television show’s first season. The fourth through seventh essays examine the role of history in the Foundation saga, which Asimov noted as being heavily inspired by Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And the eighth through thirteenth essays explore the religious themes of the stories and television show.

The breadth of topics in this collection is remarkable, but there are a few instances of repetition. For example, two essays compare the thought experiment of Laplace’s Demon (an omniscient being who can, in a deterministic universe, perfectly predict the future) to the fictional science of psychohistory (which predicts the fall of the Galactic Empire through advanced mathematics). Two essays compare the tripartite organization of the kallipolis in Plato’s Republic to the organization of Asimov’s galaxy into First Foundationers, Second Foundationers, and ordinary citizens. And three essays highlight the real-world science that formed the foundation for Asimov’s fictional field of psychohistory, the kinetic theory of gases, in which individual atoms behave randomly but the movement of the whole can be explained by defined laws.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to see the authors begin with similar concepts, but take them in different directions. One essay uses Laplace’s Demon in aid of a historical analysis while another considers the mathematical consequences. The tripartite structure of kallipolis is itself the focus of one essay, but the ‘noble lie’ undergirding that tripartite structure (and how it compares to the ‘noble lies’ of a few Foundation characters) is the focus of another. And the parallel of psychohistory to the kinetic theory of gases is used by two essays to examine population dynamics and historical events, but by a third essay to examine the impact of determinism and random movement on the philosophical justification for individual free will. Perhaps in this case we should accept the Latin maxim repetitio est mater studiorum (’repetition is the mother of learning’).

In summary, Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy is a thought-provoking read for fans of the Foundation series. As a collection of essays by separate authors, the philosophical concepts at times overlap, but the diversity of viewpoints is well worth the occasional repetition. Prior philosophic, scientific, and mathematical knowledge is not necessary, given the book’s focus on a lay readership. However, a passing understanding of Asimov’s stories and the plot of the first season of the television show is beneficial. Readers are warned that spoilers for the Foundation series abound. While some essays focus on the early Foundation stories, others examine concepts from the later books, including the rise and fall of the Mule, the nature and existence of the Second Foundation, the planet-sized collective-consciousness of Gaia, the revelation of R. Daneel Olivaw’s millenia-spanning tinkering with human history, and the birth of psychohistory described in the two prequel books. Before starting Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy, a detour to Terminus is advised. But there’s no need to head to the edge of the galaxy; a trip to the science-fiction section of one’s local library will do.

Zachary Reger is an attorney in Washington, D.C. His legal scholarship has appeared in the Missouri Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review Online. His speculative fiction has appeared in Bewildering Stories and the Sci Phi Journal.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit: Realizing History Through Fantasy

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 56, no. 4

Non-Fiction Reviews

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Review of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit: Realizing History Through Fantasy

Sara Brown

Robert T. Tally, Jr. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit: Realizing History Through Fantasy. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Paperback. 124 pg. $27.99. ISBN 9783031112652.

Robert T. Tally Jr.’s approach to analysing J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in his critical companion J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit: Realizing History Through Fantasy focuses on positioning the novel as a work that uses fantasy to explore historical themes. Tally argues that The Hobbit can be considered a historical novel despite its fantasy genre, examining how Tolkien bridges the gap between myth and reality. He delves into Tolkien’s narrative style, world-building techniques, and presentation of different races and cultures within Middle-earth. Tally pays particular attention to the character of Bilbo Baggins, viewing him as an ordinary person involved in world-historical events, which reflects on how individuals can unexpectedly shape history. The analysis also covers Tolkien’s use of anachronisms, the hierarchies and social structures within Middle-earth, and how these elements contribute to the novel’s enduring appeal and immersive quality. Through this multifaceted examination, Tally provides insights into how Tolkien’s storytelling techniques have established The Hobbit as a cornerstone of fantasy literature.

Chapter 1, ‘Introduction: In a Hole in the Ground…,’ describes the accidental creation and unexpected success of this classic novel, and how Tolkien’s famous anecdote about writing “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” while grading papers marks the spontaneous birth of the story. The chapter presents Bilbo Baggins as an ‘intruder’ into Tolkien’s established Middle-earth mythology, highlighting the unplanned nature of The Hobbit‘s emergence as a bestselling work of children’s literature. Interestingly, Tolkien later regretted writing it specifically for children, lamenting his use of a “silliness of manner” (Letters 215) he deemed unnecessary.

The introduction also explores The Hobbit‘s evolving place in Tolkien’s broader work, including how the book is now often viewed as a prequel to The Lord of the Rings (1954-55), despite this not being Tolkien’s original intention, and notes the revisions Tolkien made to align it with his later work. Tally presents an intriguing perspective, arguing that The Hobbit can be seen as a historical novel using fantasy to explore themes of history and individual agency. The chapter concludes by touching on the cultural impact of Tolkien’s work, including its adaptations and enduring popularity, setting the stage for a deeper analysis of The Hobbit as a cornerstone of fantasy literature.

Chapter 2, “The Way to Talk to Dragons: Interpellation, Style, and Narrative Form,” explores Tolkien’s distinctive narrative style, focusing on how the author engages the reader through a voice that is both authoritative and familiar. Tally uses Bilbo’s encounter with Smaug as a prime example of this technique, highlighting the narrator’s intrusive yet instructive style. The chapter explores how this narrative approach bridges the gap between modern readers and the mythic world of Middle-earth, effectively positioning the reader within the story and creating a sense of historical depth.

Tally argues that Tolkien’s storytelling method is crucial in making the fantasy world feel real and accessible. He examines how the narrative voice contributes to the overall world-building of Middle-earth, enhancing the reader’s experience and immersion in the story. As Tally notes, “The narrative voice in The Hobbit is quite striking. It is at once authoritative, belonging to one who so thoroughly knows this otherworldly world as to be able to speak with confidence—but also in a rather matter-of-fact way—about dealings with dragons, but it is also familiar and friendly, implicitly admitting the audience into the same sphere of authoritative knowledge” (16). This analysis provides insight into how Tolkien’s techniques contribute to what Tally describes as the enduring appeal and immersive quality of The Hobbit.

Chapter 3, “Nasty Disturbing Uncomfortable Things: The Intrusions of History,” explores the historical aspects of The Hobbit and its place within Tolkien’s broader literary project. The chapter argues that The Hobbit can be considered a historical novel, despite being a work of fantasy, and here Tally emphasizes Tolkien’s concept of Middle-earth as a version of our own world with a different history, not an entirely imaginary realm. Chapter 3 examines how Tolkien uses fantasy to explore themes of history and the role of ordinary individuals in shaping it. It also discusses Tolkien’s use of anachronisms, particularly through Bilbo’s character, as a crucial element in bridging the gap between the modern reader and the mythic past.

The chapter delves into how Tolkien’s revisions of The Hobbit were intended to align it better with The Lord of the Rings, highlighting his efforts to create a cohesive historical narrative within his fictional universe. Tally also explores how Bilbo, as an ordinary hobbit, becomes involved in world-historical events, reflecting on how individuals can unexpectedly find themselves shaping history. As Tally notes, “The Hobbit is, in part, a story about an ordinary person who ‘makes history,’ but it is also very much a tale about history, about our situatedness in history, and about the emergence of a historical consciousness” (29).

Chapter 4, “Show Me Now Your Map: Toward a Literary Cartography of Middle-earth,” explores the significance of maps in The Hobbit in particular, as well as their role in fantasy literature in general. The chapter begins by discussing the prominence of Thrór’s Map at the beginning of The Hobbit, highlighting how maps have been an integral part of books throughout literary history. Tally examines the importance of maps in fantasy literature, noting that they have now become an expected feature of the genre.

The chapter argues that Tolkien’s use of maps goes beyond mere illustration, becoming an integral part of the narrative and contributing significantly to the depth and believability of his fantasy world. Tally introduces the concept of literary cartography, noting that “No matter how vividly places and spaces are depicted within the language of the text, writers and readers have frequently also desired figural or pictographic representations of those places and spaces” (49). Here, Tally is suggesting that Tolkien’s approach to mapping Middle-earth not only enhances the reader’s experience but also plays a crucial role in the storytelling process itself.

Chapter 5, “More Dangerous and Less Wise: Race, Class, and the Geopolitical Order,” examines the hierarchies and social structures within Middle-earth as presented in The Hobbit. The chapter begins by discussing the introduction of Wood-elves in Mirkwood, who are described as “more dangerous and less wise” than the High Elves of the West, but still considered “Good People” (76).

The chapter explores how Tolkien introduces different races and cultures throughout the novel, noting that “a new creature, culture, or ‘race’ is introduced in almost every chapter of The Hobbit, at least until Bilbo and the dwarves arrive at the Lonely Mountain and meet the dragon” (66). It argues that Tolkien’s world-building includes not just diversity, but also a hierarchical system within and among these groups. Tally proposes that this racial hierarchy in Tolkien’s work functions as a form of class system, which “structures the geopolitical order of Middle-earth as a whole” (66). The chapter examines how these distinctions are portrayed through the encounters Bilbo and the dwarves have during their journey, contributing to the overall narrative and the development of Tolkien’s fictional world.

Chapter 6, “Conclusion: Quite a Little Fellow in a Wide World,” begins by comparing Tolkien’s perspective on heroism with that of Bertolt Brecht, noting that both writers were sceptical of hero-worship in modern culture, despite their different political and aesthetic views. Tally discusses Tolkien’s love for heroic romance and myth, quoting Tolkien’s statement that a “basic passion of mine ab initio was for myth […] and for fairy-story, and above all for heroic legend on the brink of fairy-story and history” (Letters 144, qtd. Tally 85). However, Tally argues that The Hobbit presents a form of anti-heroic heroism through its protagonist, Bilbo Baggins.

Tally points out that early in the novel, Gandalf notes the scarcity of traditional heroes, leading him to choose Bilbo as a burglar instead. As Tally states, “The Hobbit is fundamentally a tale of the anti-heroic heroism to be found in regular people’s efforts to deal with the exigencies of their time” (86). The chapter examines how Bilbo’s character development throughout the novel represents this idea of everyday heroism. It concludes by reinforcing the idea that The Hobbit serves as both a captivating fantasy adventure and an exploration of the role of ordinary individuals in larger historical events.

Sara Brown is Chair of the Language and Literature Faculty at Signum University, USA. She currently serves on the editorial board of Mallorn, the academic journal of the Tolkien Society, and is co-presenter on podcasts such as The Tolkien Experience, The Rings of Power Wrap-Up, Rings and Rituals, and The Prancing Pony. She won the Tolkien Society Award for Best Article in both 2023 and 2024, and is currently working on a book, Transgressive Tolkien, with Christopher Vaccaro.

Religion and Science Fiction

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 56, no. 4

Non-Fiction Reviews

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Review of Religion and Science Fiction

Dominick Grace

Timothy Jenkins. Religion and Science Fiction. Peter Lang, 2025. Images of Elsewhere vol. 2. Paperback. 156 pg. $30.95. ISBN 9781803741703.

As I am interested in the intersection between religion and science fiction, I opted to review this book based on its title. The title suggested to me something along the lines of the identically-titled books by McGrath (2011) and Thrall (2024), or something like the other books that have grappled with this intersection. I should have sought further information before my decision, so it is perhaps not entirely the book’s fault that I will be giving it a negative review. That said, the title does not provide prospective readers with anything like a clear idea of what to expect. First off, the “religion” in question is Theosophy, the status of which as a religion, I would submit, is debatable, especially since it was promulgated by a charlatan. (I know one can assert that all religions are invented, but somehow the more recent ones—Theosophy is less than 150 years old, despite cadging from numerous ancient texts and traditions—seem less valid to me than the ones with longer histories.) Second, the book explicitly says it “is concerned with reading a single story drawn from 1940s pulp science fiction [the classic “I Remember Lemuria,” by Richard S. Shaver—with modifications to make what Shaver claimed was a factual account into a putative fact/fiction blend by an uncredited Ray Palmer], together with exploring the images upon which it draws, which are to be found in the writings of a movement known as Theosophy” (1). So, the focus is on one SF story that channels a movement only dubiously classifiable as a religion, thereby bringing into SF many key tropes that subsequently informed the genre. The sacredtexts.com website actually offers a more concise and cogent indication of the SF elements one can trace from Shaver than does this book: “vast caves under the earth, where lurk the dero: prehistoric, devolved cannibals who prey on our minds with ancient super-science. Also in the mix: lost continents, hollow planets, starships the size of a moon, titanic god-like races of beings, and … sexy aliens. A heady combination of pre-fabricated sci-fi memes” (https://sacred-texts.com/ufo/irl/index.htm). Needless to say, most of these don’t need Theosophy to be explained, and some appeared in earlier texts and traditions.

Jenkins’s claim that the “Shaver Mystery,” as the series of stories that followed “Lemuria” is known, influenced 1940s and 1950s SF is not new, nor is the notion that Shaver’s work channelled Theosophical thought into SF. However, Jenkins’s book does not really address this in convincing detail. Jenkins seems far more interested in providing detailed information about Theosophy than in exploring its SF manifestations. About 20% of the book takes readers through the story, noting elements that can be seen as derived from, or at least analogous to, Theosophical concepts. The rest of the book—including an “Appendix: A Study of Alfred Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism (1883),” which takes up about a third of the text—rarely references SF at all. Indeed, other than Shaver, only a literal handful of other SF writers are even mentioned, and them mostly in passing; Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race (1871) gets some attention, but probably less than it deserves, given that at least some of the SF elements Jenkins wants to trace to Theosophy (e.g. the underground people, advanced super-science, idealized humanesque figures) appear in The Coming Race, a pre-Theosophy text that also was massively popular for some time in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Bovril’s[1] name derives from “Vril,” the vital force invented for this book). Also mentioned briefly: Wells, Orwell, Lovecraft, Huxley, Gernsback, as well as, in one sentence, “Stapledon, Smith, Van Vogt, Heinlein, Asimov, Herbert and Le Guin” as “Classic instances” of the Theosophical ‘mind over matter’ ideology in SF (36). None of these authors are dealt with in any detailed way to demonstrate how their particular invocation of a trope can be seen as Theosophical (indeed, in most cases, Jenkins does not even name their work). Not mentioned at all: L. Ron Hubbard, whose own invented “religion,” Scientology, not to mention his SF, might more credibly be linked to Theosophy than can at least some of the SF authors Jenkins name-checks.

Instead of making his case about the pathway from Theosophy to the depiction of alien life in SF, Jenkins seems rather more interested in making a case for Theosophy itself. While he does acknowledge that Blavatsky has credibly been accused of plagiarism, invention, and fraud, he also seems to think that “Whether it [the documents she claimed to have received via spirit communication and transcribed] was her conscious self at work, or evidence of multiple personalities (an emerging trope of the period), or the sources she channelled, seems of minor importance” (103-104). One can make a case that whether Blavatsky was a charlatan, mentally ill, or a genuine seer is “of minor importance” to how her ideas influenced SF, but the question does not seem to me to be “of minor importance” to how Theosophy should be viewed. Jenkins fails to demonstrate his case for the influence of Theosophy on SF via Shaver, and he fails to make a compelling case for Theosophy as a valid “religious” movement.

NOTES

[1] Bovril is a concentrated beef extract paste created in the late 19^th century that can be diluted in liquid to make a drink, used as a flavouring, or as a toast spread. The “Bo” part of the name derives from the Latin for ox, basically making the name mean something like “ox energy.” Never having tasted it, I have no idea whether it is as appetizing as it sounds.

Dominick Grace is the non-fiction reviews editor of the SFRA Review. His primary research interests are pop-culture and genre literature and art, with the occasional canonical text thrown in, for variety

The Invincible

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 56, no. 3

Media Reviews

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Review of The Invincible

Jules Otero i Besolí

The Invincible. Directed by Marek Markuszewski, Starward Industries / 11 Bit Studios, 2023. Played on Windows PC.

Made up of veteran developers coming from teams such as CD Projekt RED and Techland Games and having worked on titles such as The Witcher (2007), Dying Light (2015) and Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), Starward Industries was always expected to deliver a solid story and player experience in their first game, The Invincible (2023). However, what they attempted to do was no small feat: to adapt the hard SF novel by the same name written by Stanisław Lem, The Invincible would require a masterful command of pacing, atmosphere and dialogue, all essential to deliver and sustain the classic hard SF ‘feel’ which is often difficult to accomplish in audiovisual media.

In both the novel and the videogame, a spaceship crewed by researchers lands in a largely unexplored desert planet and quickly finds that, although there are no terrestrial life-forms, something dangerous has attacked some of the crew and rendered them incapable of remembering anything, not even how to communicate or take care of themselves. Rather than simply adapting the story of the novel into a videogame, however, Starward Industries chose to create their own characters. They wanted to create a story that was more intimate, Markuszewski told Rock Paper Shotgun in an interview, so they reduced the immense crew of the Invincible in the novel to the six-person crew of the Dragonfly in the game. Of this crew, the player embodies the biologist Yasna (voiced by Daisy May) as she explores the mysterious Regis III with help from the astrogator Novik (voiced by Jason Baughan) who guides and helps her from the ship. Throughout her adventure, Yasna finds the remains of a ship she thinks is the Invincible although it turns out to be a different ship that will later require the Invincible’srescue (effectively making the events of the game a prequel, albeit an inexact one).

Within both Stanisław Lem’s story and the genre of hard SF in general, The Invincible stands its own admirably. Although the videogame medium may not seem the best suited for scientific discussion and hypothesizing, long conversations between characters or the extended build-up of atmosphere with a distant payoff, this game uses all the tools at its disposal to keep the player engaged throughout a version of Lem’s story that doesn’t shy away from being wordy or scientifically fanciful. Instead, it plays into its own and the players’ awareness of the conventions of hard science fiction, making them an active participant in the scientific discussion through dialogue choices that feel impactful and character-building, reveal different bits of information and give the player access to eleven different endings, enhancing the replayability of the experience. Formally, too, in a moment where hard SF has lost some of its former acclaim and readership to more fantastical stories, The Invincible proposes a new way to experience theory-heavy narrative: the audience may choose to deeply engage with the dialogue, but the gaming experience offers the alternative of simply letting it fill the silence as the player explores or interacts with the environment, and the oft-criticised lack of strong female characters and emotive plotlines in hard SF is amended through Yasna’s characterisation and her compassion and camaraderie towards the rest of the crew.

The choice to make Yasna a woman (there are no women in Lem’s original text) and one that has concrete, explicit political opinions regarding the intervention of humanity in space (she is a ‘galactocentric’, believing the needs of the galaxy outweigh the needs of humanity), makes the story feel far from outdated, a modernisation that is further noted in the additions of many discussions regarding the differences between human and artificial consciousness and intelligence and the dangers the latter may pose to the former. Moreover, while the theme of artificial intelligence has certainly been expanded upon, the other themes present in the novel (the horror of losing oneself completely, the uselessness of vengeance against forces of nature, the importance of resilience and care for others) are well-presented through dialogue, actions, and choices for the player to make, especially in the way the endings are approached and the moral judgements they impart. In general, narratively speaking, the impression is that the development team has managed exactly what it set out to do: The Invincible is an example of how a videogame may tell a complex, compelling story with emotional weight, deep relationships between characters and grand ideas (although those were provided mostly by Lem) while keeping the audience at the edge of their seats with the same artful mastery of storytelling of a novel or a film.

This narrative strength does come, however, at the expense of some of the gaming aspects that players traditionally expect. Some reviews by users on Steam point out that it is essentially a ‘walking simulator’ where the central action of the player is to move the character around, and that the non-narrative mechanics of the game (items used to orient oneself and some minor puzzles) are limited and far-between. Another aspect that may drive players away is that, despite having different possible endings, these do not manifest as real differences until the last twenty minutes of the game, while the rest of the content leads the player through a fairly narrow narrative path (a practice often known as ‘railroading’) with some optional stops and detours for additional content. This animosity towards ‘walking simulators’ and, especially, the yet unsettled debate on whether they ‘count’ as videogames at all is an interesting part of the gaming community and, I think, one that impoverishes our understanding of videogames as a medium to explore a story, since it is unavoidable that some stories require linearity and, more practically, smaller studios may not have the resources to create an ‘open-world’ game as is often expected from larger companies in the current videogame industry. In the case of The Invincible, a linear plotline is undoubtedly the right choice, as the hints and clues needed for the scientific hypothesizing of the story to progress need to remain quite similar in content and order to those in the novel.

This brings me to the one fault I found with the game’s storytelling, which is that sometimes it is very heavy-handed with its references to Lem’s novel. Certain quotes, of great weight in the novel, are repeated in the game not one but multiple times, and certain scenes which worked well on paper struggle to impress through the screen. The strongest parts of the game are, I think, the ones that innovate and continue on Lem’s story, adding to it the modern sensibilities and concerns which the novel could not predict. I suggest that scholars wishing to write about The Invincible may find it valuable to analyse those moments of narrative innovation as well as how they may serve the evolution of hard science fiction as a subgenre and its translation into various forms of media. Other interesting avenues of research for The Invincible could be the way dialogue is used to establish a connection between Yasna and Novik, since they never appear in the same place throughout the game and must use only verbal communication to establish their relationship throughout, making the voice-acting take centre stage, or the way the game handles horror elements without becoming a horror game through careful tone-setting and trope subversion.

Jules Otero i Besolí [they/he] is a PhD Student in the Autonomous University of Barcelona and holder of a FPU scholarship. They have a Bachelor’s degree in English Studies with minors in Engllish Literature and Compared Literature and a Master’s degree in Advanced English Studies. Their in-process dissertation explores the role of non-normative embodiment in postmodern space opera universes through a post/transhumanist theoretical framework.