Yolanda Molina-Gavilán, Andrea Bell, Miguel ángel Fernández-
Delgado, M. Elizabeth Ginway, Luis Pestarini, and Juan Carlos Toledano Redondo
A Chronology of Latin-American Science Fiction, 1775-2005
Abstract. -- This bibliography presents the most comprehensive inventory to
date of science fiction published in Latin America. Arranged chronologically and
spanning more than two centuries (1775-2005), it gives bibliographic information
about sf novels, anthologies, magazines, and key short stories originally
published in Spanish or Portuguese. The listings are prefaced by an essay that
reviews the genre’s development and its major exponents in each country and
region studied. The bibliography also contains a directory of primary works
available in English translation and concludes with a guide to relevant critical
essays.
Rachel Haywood Ferreira
The First Wave:
Latin American Science Fiction Discovers Its Roots
Abstract. -- This essay examines three of the
earliest works of Latin American sf together for the first time: “México en el
año 1970” [Mexico in the Year 1970, 1844, Mexico], Páginas da história do
Brasil escripta no anno de 2000 [Pages from the History of Brazil Written in
the Year 2000, 1868-72, Brazil], and Viaje maravilloso del Señor Nic-Nac al
planeta Marte [The Marvelous Journey of Mr. Nic-Nac to the Planet Mars,
1875-76, Argentina]. Nineteenth-century works such as these have been added to
the genealogical tree of Latin American sf in recent years. The addition of
pre-space-age texts to the corpus of Latin American sf does more than provide
its writers and readers with local roots: it broadens our understanding of the
genre in Latin America and the periphery; it extends our perceptions of the role
of science in Latin American literature and culture; and, together with later
Latin American sf, it contributes new perspectives and new narrative
possibilities to the genre as a whole.
Aaron Dziubinskyj
Eduardo Urzaiz’s
Eugenia: Eugenics, Gender, and Dystopian Society in Twenty Third-Century
Mexico
Abstract. -- The earliest known work of Mexican sf was a moon voyage
tale penned by the eighteenth-century Franciscan Friar Rivas in the San
Francisco de Mérida Convent, on the Yucatán
Peninsula. A century and a half later, in 1919, Eduardo Urzaiz would publish
Mexico’s first sf novel of the twentieth century, Eugenia, also in the
town of Mérida. What both of these works have in
common is a critical view of the societies of their respective authors vis-à-vis
enlightened scientific discourse. An extensive corpus of speculative fiction—to
which Eugenia belongs—inspired by the science of eugenics was published
during the period from the late-nineteenth to the early-twentieth centuries.
Urzaiz, who wrote extensively but produced little fiction, lends his unique
perspective as a trained medical doctor with a specialty in mental illness to
the question of eugenics as a viable solution for social and moral reform. This
article analyzes Eugenia, Urzaiz’s only novel, as a work of dystopian sf
set against the backdrop of twenty-third century Villautopia, in the
Subconfederation of Central America, within its literary and historical
contexts.
J. Andrew Brown
Edmundo Paz Soldán and his Precursors:
Borges, Dick, and the SF Canon
Abstract. -- This article charts the ways in
which Jorge Luis Borges has been deployed in the articulation of sf literary
canons. It begins with an analysis of the Argentine writer’s own ambiguous
relationship with science fiction, then turns to his adoption as an honored
precursor by Stanislaw Lem and William Gibson. In particular, it focuses on
Philip K. Dick’s career and, using ideas from Borges’s essay "Kafka and his
Precursors," examines the various methods by which Dick’s supporters have used
Borges in their defense of the American novelist. The culminating aspect of this
construction of a Borgesian sf canon is the work of Bolivian novelist Edmundo
Paz Soldán, especially his 2003 novel Turing’s Delirium. In this novel,
Paz Soldán constructs a web of intertextual references and allusions that set
Borges and Dick on an even footing as co-precursors to a new Latin American
literary tradition.