Science Fiction Studies

#132 = Volume 44, Part 2 = July 2017

ARTICLE ABSTRACTS

  • Fernando Ángel Moreno and Cristina Pérez. An Overview of Spanish Science Fiction

  • Symposium on Spanish SF 

Sara Martín

Introduction. Spanish SF: A Phantom Genre

Arielle Saiber and Umberto Rossi’s introduction to the SFS special issue on Italian science fiction (July 2015) raised many issues that closely correspond to the Spanish case. Like Italy, Spain has a very limited presence on the world map of sf production; and like Italy, Spain has failed to impress the international sf readership with a universally embraced classic. The Italian editors praised, for example, the Czech Republic for contributing Karel Čapek’s new trope of the robot in his play R.U.R (1921), and I could praise Poland for contributing Stanisław Lem’s oeuvre. Its low international impact does not mean, however, that Spanish sf is negligible: Fernando Ángel Moreno and Cristina Perez’s survey of the field and our joint bibliography/ filmography demonstrate the existence of an already long tradition of Spanish sf. Yet, regrettably, most writers and titles seem to be invisible not only to foreign readers and spectators, but also to their local peers. It is for this reason that I call Spanish science fiction a “phantom genre.”

I am not using this label in any of its usual meanings: a genre that remains undescribed though it is perceived to exist or a genre that used to be relevant but that now has faded away. By “phantom genre” I mean a literary genre with a willfully ignored national tradition whose proliferation depends, paradoxically, on its being massively consumed in translation from English. The impact of sf in Spain is doubly ignored by the cultural establishment, including academia: the translations are treated as an unwanted foreign intrusion, justified only for commercial reasons, and the subsequent generation of a local tradition is perceived as demeaning local parasitism. It seems clear, despite this bigotry, that Spaniards do love sf, particularly if we measure this preference by the success of Anglophone films and TV series within the genre.1 Spaniards seem less keen on reading sf, but there is certainly a lively market for translations (mostly from English) and a passionate and very erudite local fandom.

Like their Italian peers, however, Spanish sf writers and filmmakers face many difficulties in convincing their reluctant audience of the credibility of their texts, as local readers and spectators seemingly believe that sf stories can only happen in the US or the UK. Saiber and Rossi allude to a famous anecdote. Carlo Fruttero, editor of the specialized series Urania, responded in the 1960s to criticism regarding the lack of Italian authors in his series with a witticism: “what, you think a flying saucer would land in Lucca?” (qtd. in Saiber and Rossi 210; see also Saiber). In contrast, when I asked the students of my undergraduate class on Anglophone science fiction (2015-2016) to imagine a flying saucer landing on the stadium of Football Club Barcelona, they did not bat an eye. It made perfect sense to them that our extraterrestrial visitors would choose Barcelona, now an extremely popular city for tourists from all over the world. But what caused immense hilarity was my next request that they imagine the current Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, welcoming the alien visitors. Impossible, my students explained, overcome by laughter; this first contact could only be the stuff of our typical television sit-coms, full of loudly speaking, boorish, perpetually sneering Spanish types. A bizarre sight indeed.

Although many in Spain argue that Spanish sf suffers from local disinterest in supporting science and technology (a certainly exaggerated impression), I believe that the main problem, as exposed by my students’ reactions, is our very low self-esteem. Convinced of the leading role of America in the world, most US citizens take it for granted that, if aliens finally arrive, they will land somewhere on American territory. In contrast, we Spaniards are fully aware that our time as world leaders ended long ago—in the seventeenth century, not in 1898 when the last colony was lost. What remains is a post-imperial nation struggling to occupy a place in Europe, if only a marginal one. Why would the aliens wish to land here at all? This low self-esteem is the reason why not merely first contact stories but all sf elicits a certain discomfort in Spain.

It should be clarified that the early stages of Spanish sf were influenced by a clear sense of post-imperial decadence, which resulted in the intellectual movement known as Regenerationism.2 This manifested itself in the proliferation of compensatory (or consolatory) fantasies about a Spain free from the moral taint of decadence (rule by caciques, corruption, empty politics, lack of executive action) and of concurrent scientific backwardness. The Regenerationist glorification of scientific Positivism is thus the foundation for early Spanish sf, with author Nilo María Fabra its leading personality. There was never any colonial nostalgia in his writings; indeed, cultural colonialism has never been the focus of any Spanish sf writer. Rather, they soon expressed a strong critique of other European colonialisms, such as British or French.

Concerning the translation of Spanish sf into other languages and its ensuing international presence, Spain’s authors face a complicated situation, conditioned by the nation’s post-imperial past. Spanish is a language spoken not only in Spain but also in eighteen Latin American nations and one African nation (Equatorial Guinea), all former colonies. Spanish is also an official language in the American commonwealth of Puerto Rico and, though unofficial, it is spoken by a minority in New Mexico and California—even in the Philippines (where its numbers are decreasing). This means that, as shown on the Translated SF website, few of the sf volumes translated from Spanish have actually been written by authors from Spain.

The habitual academic practice is to place Spanish sf in the context of Latin American sf because of the shared language, without considering Spain’s place in Europe and the particularities of Spanish sf.3 A well-known example of this widespread trend is the indispensable volume edited by Andrea L. Bell and Yolanda Molina-Gavilán, Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain (2003). University teaching of Spanish-language sf in the US tends to be based precisely on this merger of the Spanish and Latin American traditions, even with the addition of other South American linguistic areas such as Brazil (see Ginway). In addition, academic volumes dealing with global sf mostly leave Spain aside, with the focus falling only on Latin America. For example, in Sonja Fritzsche’s The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film (2014), an article on Argentinean cinema represents the whole Spanish-speaking domain. In Jennifer L. Feeley and Sarah Ann Wells’s Simultaneous Worlds: Global Science Fiction Cinema (2015), Argentinean cinema is again analyzed, this time accompanied by Cuban cinema. Our volume is intended, then, to correct the omissions regarding our local sf by considering exclusively the sf produced in Spain and in Spanish.4

The local Spanish sf tradition is conditioned mainly by the turbulent history of the country in the last hundred years, which are roughly those of science fiction as a modern genre. Spain did not take part in the First and Second World Wars, unlike the main producers of Anglophone sf, the US and Britain. Yet, at the time when Hugo Gernsback launched Amazing Stories (1926), Spain was being governed by a military dictatorship (1923-1929) headed by Miguel Primo de Rivera and established with the complicity of King Alfonso XIII (1886-1931). The second Spanish Republic (1931-1939) ended their joint, undemocratic monarchic-military regime and sent the King into exile. The Republic was then destroyed by a cruel Civil War (1936-1939), which resulted in a long-lasting second military dictatorship (1939-1975) led by General Franscisco Franco. His fascistic regime imposed brutal political, social, and cultural repression, supported by relentless censorship—hardly the conditions that would lead to the flourishing of any fictional genre.

When Franco died in 1975, King Juan Carlos I (1975-2014)—the grandson of the deposed King Alfonso—had to lead a delicate transition to democracy. One of its main pillars, the hastily assembled 1978 Constitution, failed to accommodate the diverse regional nationalisms, resulting in the widespread terrorism of the separatist Basque movement E.T.A. (inactive since 2011 but still armed) and in the current growth of Catalan independentism. At present, the reigning monarch, Felipe VI (2014-), struggles to defend the increasingly challenged monarchy and the unity of the Spanish territory within a European Union affected by Brexit. Spain’s unstable history continues to affect the popularity of home-grown science fiction in a nation with serious problems imagining its future.

Beyond the sociopolitical context, Spanish sf today faces two main obstacles: the considerable indifference of the academic world and a rapidly diminishing market for published books. Also, as noted, Spanish sf struggles to project itself internationally through translation, a problem shared with other sf traditions in the world (except the Anglophone one). The process of legitimation that enabled English-language sf to be admitted into American and British university classrooms back in the 1970s is by no means over in Spain.5 The land of Miguel de Cervantes’s El Quijote (1605, 1615), the knight who goes insane because of his passion for chivalric romance, still mistrusts the fantastic (at least in academic circles). Ramón Menéndez Pidal, the founding father of “Filología Española,” the German-style academic study of the national language and its culture, concluded that realism is the most prevalent feature of Spanish literature. His biased reading of Cervantes—in defense of realism as, literally, sanity—became the canonical interpretation of this Spanish masterpiece, displacing fantasy in the process and moving it to a cultural ghetto.6

This extremely conservative attitude has influenced many generations of Spanish “filólogos” [philologists], who still today harbor a widespread prejudice against science fiction, seen as a trivial genre that lacks seriousness. The academic defense of the genre is currently led by specialists trained in areas outside of filología española, such as comparative literature and literary theory—dominated by the impact of Todorov’s ideas about the fantastic—and English studies, a discipline which has allowed specialists like myself to legitimate imported academic traditions in Spain (or at least, attempt to do so). Those of us stranded between our own Spanish culture and the foreign Anglophone culture(s) that we study are trying, perhaps too impatiently, to speed up the resolution of the crisis of legitimation affecting sf. Our colleagues in the field of literary theory, such as my co-editor Fernando Ángel Moreno (also trained as a Spanish literature specialist), are doing their best to correct an absurd imbalance: there are now more sf writers than ever in Spain but hardly any scholars studying their work.

The future of the genre seems to be in the hands of the committed fans who sustain the yearly Hispacón and those of a few publishers who dare to brave the reality of the Spanish market. A survey dated October 2016 confirmed what many suspected: 40% of the 48 million inhabitants of Spain never read books; of the remaining 60%, only 12% read more than four books a year. No doubt Spanish sf readers are part of that 12%, but given the small size of the market, publishers still rely mainly on translations of well-received Anglophone sf. Certainly, leading publishers such as Gigamesh or Aristas Martínez are trying to keep the sf segment alive. Local authors, however, stand little chance of selling more than 300 or 400 copies of each book. The professionalization of sf writers remains, consequently, an impossible dream. The little impact thus generated does not help either to secure the attention of foreign publishers. There appear to be, however, fewer obstacles for translation into French, German, or Italian than into English, most likely because the production of sf is so abundant in English that there seems to be little need to publish sf from other countries.

As the reader will see, my co-editor Fernando Ángel Moreno and I made the decision to focus exclusively on print fiction in this volume. We wish to emphasize that there is plenty of Spanish print sf that deserves academic attention, enough to fill not only this volume but several. In our view, the inclusion of articles on Spanish sf cinema and television would dilute our message. Moreover, although Spanish sf cinema and television have often been studied jointly with print fiction (see Sánchez Conejero), there is little interaction between sf writers and the audiovisual production of sf in Spain, which offers very few adaptations. In any case, the purpose of our filmography is to inspire others to edit a subsequent study of Spanish sf cinema, here or elsewhere.

The volume now in the reader’s hands is intended to accomplish the double task of exploring key authors and of tracing an historical overview of sf in Spain.7 This introduction is followed by Fernando Ángel Moreno and Cristina Pérez’s “An Overview of Spanish Science Fiction,” an indispensable survey designed to provide readers with a basic history of the sf genre in Spain. (Their inclusive panorama is complemented later in the issue by a select bibliography/filmography of Spanish sf that is also presented in chronological order.) The “Overview” is followed by a vibrant “Symposium” on the topic of Spanish sf. In this piece, coordinated and edited by Juanma Santiago (a central personality in Spanish fandom), several important figures in contemporary Spanish sf (authors, publishers, critics) share their thoughts on the current state of the genre.8 The Books in Review section includes reviews of four key volumes essential to understanding the evolution of sf in Spain and how it is addressed by its academic specialists.

The main body of this special issue consists of seven articles covering a number of important authors, works, and issues. “Domingo Santos: Bringing on the Golden Decade,” by Mikel Peregrina and Jimena Escudero Pérez, examines the career of an author and editor who is fundamental to Spanish sf. Santos brought a new maturity to the genre and the confidence required to finally start a native tradition in Spain. He was also responsible for the revolution in sf publishing, consolidated by the publication of the leading magazine Nueva Dimensión [New Dimension] and collections such as those by Acervo, Orbis, and Ultramar. The article by Francisco J. López Arias, “The Spanish Civil War in Spanish Alternate History: Jesús Torbado’s En el día de hoy,” deals with the normalization of sf in Spain from a very different perspective, by considering the place of alternate history in mainstream Spanish literature once democracy was restored after Franco’s death. Torbado’s novel was the 1976 recipient of the the most recognized Spanish award for science fiction, the Premio Planeta. López Arias considers not only Torbado’s treatment of a very different outcome for the Spanish Civil War with a Republican victory, but also how this novel earned respect for the sf subgenre of alternate history.

In “Dark Mothers and Lovelorn Heroines: Avatars of the Feminine in Elia Barceló’s Sagrada,” Isabel Clúa deals with an influential work by the most renowned female sf writer in Spain. Her article demonstrates how the participation of women such as Barceló in the field altered its generic codes and expanded potential topics by bringing in new visions of gender and by questioning how femininity was represented by men. In “The Jewels of Indra’s Net: Sublime Cosmologies and Juan Miguel Aguilera” Dale J. Pratt explores the work of Barceló’s generational companion, Juan Miguel Aguilera, in particular his story “Todo lo que un hombre puede imaginar” [All That a Man Can Imagine, 2005], which closes Aguilera’s recent novel Indra’s Net (2009). According to Pratt, Aguilera magisterially weaves the interconnections between the macro and the micro versions of the universe in what might be called a kind of techno-existentialism.

Mariano Martín Rodríguez’s “Alternate History in Spain: Eduardo Vaquerizo’s Tinieblas Series in Its Literary Context” connects with López Arias’s exploration of Torbado’s pioneering alternate-history fiction, considering in this case more recent work. Martín examines how Eduardo Vaquerizo’s novels—Danza de tinieblas [Dance of Darkness, 2005] and Memoria de tinieblas [Memory of Darkness, 2013]—reconsider the Positivist ideal, revisiting the long-lasting Spanish empire imagined by Fabra in his story “Cuatro siglos de buen gobierno” [Four Centuries of Good Governance, 1883]. Mixing his alternate history with the codes of steampunk, Vaquerizo has inspired other writers to expand on his universe.

The last two articles deal with the neglected work of female authors. Teresa López-Pellisa’s “Alucinadas: Women Writers of Spanish Science Fiction” examines stories by Spanish women included in these two foundational anthologies. As López-Pellisa shows, these authors—Felicidad Martínez, Marian Womack, and Lola Robles, among others—share many interests despite the diversity of their approaches and styles. Finally, Irene Sanz’s “Human and Nonhuman Intersections in Rosa Montero’s Bruna Husky Novels” explores the work of a premier Spanish literary author openly involved in improving the reception of sf in Spain. Rosa Montero’s novels Lágrimas en la lluvia [Tears in Rain, 2011] and El peso del corazón [The Weight of the Heart, 2015], both influenced by Philip K. Dick, examine the relationship between the human and the nonhuman and demonstrate how science fiction is proper material for Spanish Literature with a capital “L.” Montero is also, together with Felix J. de Palma, one of the very few Spanish sf authors to have broken the translation barrier to be well-received in English.

It is the hope not only of the editors, but also of the contributors to this volume that its publication sparks new or renewed interest in Spanish sf. We understand, given the conditions of Spanish academia, that we may find abroad rather than locally the scholars we need to publicize to the world the abundant sf written in Spain. Hence, we realize the importance of publishing this volume in English. We hope that it soon can have a Spanish version for, sadly, there is not currently any equivalent volume available in Spain.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The volume editors would like to thank the contributors for the enthusiasm with which they welcomed our proposal to publish a special issue on Spanish sf and the reviewers who gave their time and feedback with such generosity. We also would like to thank Ian Watson for initiating the project, the editors of SFS for accepting it and, above all, Sherryl Vint for her support, patience, and wonderful editorial skills.

NOTES
1. My survey of Spanish and Latin American fans of The X-Files (1993-2001) showed that, perhaps because of dubbing among other factors, local spectators have no problems whatsoever in accepting American sf even as part of their own culture (Martín, “US Cult TV Series”).
2. My deepest thanks to Mariano Martín Rodríguez. The observations in this paragraph are entirely his, adapted from personal email communication that took place on 30 January 2017. See also his article in the Works Cited.
3. This is what Morrow and Morrrow did in 2007 as editors of The SFWA European Hall of Fame. They privileged geographical proximity over linguistic homogeneity.
4. We leave to other editors the task of producing special issues on the abundant Catalan sf, and on the less fertile Basque and Galician sf, all three also produced in Spain in the other official languages of our country.
5. See my analysis, “Science Fiction in the Spanish University.”
6. See Menéndez Pidal.
7. We also wanted to ensure that key Spanish academics exploring sf were represented in this volume. It is often difficult to create stable research networks in Spain, given the scarcity of full-time jobs (among the authors I am the only full-time teacher).
8. See also Santiago’s witty account of the Spanish fandom wars.

WORKS CITED
Bell, Andrea L., and Yolanda Molina-Gavilán, eds. Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2003.
Feeley, Jennifer L., and Sarah Ann Wells, eds. Simultaneous Worlds: Global Science Fiction Cinema. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 2015.
Fritzsche, Sonja, ed. The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2014.
Ginway, M. Elizabeth. “Teaching Latin American Science Fiction and Fantasy in English.” Teaching Science Fiction. Ed. Andy Sawyer and Peter Wright. Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2011. 179-201.
Martín Alegre, Sara. “Science Fiction in the Spanish University: The Boundaries that Need to Be Broken.” Alambique 4.1 (2016). Online.
─────. “US Cult TV Series in the International Market: Considering the Reception of The X-Files in Spain.” A Comparison of Popular TV in English and Spanish Speaking Societies: Soaps, Sci-Fi, Sitcoms, Adult Cartoons, and Cult Series. Ed. Marta Fernández and J.I. Prieto Arranz. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2010. 107-35.
Martín Rodríguez, Mariano. “Longing for the Empire? Modernist Lost-Race Fictions and the Dystopian Mode in Spain.” SFS 40.3 (2013): 463-79.
Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. Un aspecto en la elaboración de El Quijote. Madrid: La Lectura, 1924.
Morrow, James, and Kathryn Morrow, eds. The SFWA European Hall of Fame: Sixteen Contemporary Masterpieces of Science Fiction from the Continent. New York: Tor, 2007.
Saiber, Arielle. “Flying Saucers Would Never Land in Lucca: The Fiction of Italian Science Fiction.” California Italian Studies 4.1 (2014): 1-47.
─────, and Umberto Rossi. “Introduction: Italian SF: Dark Matter or Black Hole?” SFS 42.2 (2015): 209-16.
Sánchez Conejero, Cristina. Novela y cine de ciencia ficción española contemporánea: Una reflexión sobre la humanidad. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2008.
Santiago, Juanma. “Yo Sobreviví a las Guerras del Fándom (incluso a las que Provoqué).” Pornografía Emocional. 6 Dec. 2014. Online.

Mikel Peregrina and Jimena Escudero Pérez

Domingo Santos: Bringing on the Golden Decade

Abstract. Domingo Santos is arguably the most influential and prolific personality in Spanish science fiction, and this paper provides an overview of his career. Although ideologically conservative, dating from his life before the political changes witnessed during the Spanish Transition, Santos initiated an entire process of both formal and thematic maturation that would culminate in Spanish sf’s Golden Decade (1985-1995). As a writer, he is the author of one of the best dystopian short-story collections written during the late Francoism of the 1970s: Futuro imperfecto [Imperfect Future, 1981]. Despite their dark endings, these tales raise new political and ecological issues and employ innovative narrative techniques non-existent until then in Spanish sf. Furthermore, Santos was also involved in some of the most prominent sf editorial projects in the country, from the leading sf magazine Nueva Dimensión [New Dimension, 1968-1983] to new sf book series by publishers such as Acervo, Orbis, and Ultramar. These sf editorial initiatives enabled the publication of many important sf works—including those by a host of New Wave authors—and launched the writing careers of many modern Spanish sf authors such as Gabriel Bermúdez Castillo and Rafael Marín.

Francisco J. López Arias

The Spanish Civil War in Spanish Alternate History: Jesús Torbado’s En el día de hoy

Abstract. While the English-language genre of alternate history often does not enjoy much prestige, its Spanish counterpart is seen as having greater literary legitimacy. For many years, the censorship of a Fascist regime prevented alternate history from being developed, but after Franco died in 1975, a Parliamentary democracy in 1976 was restored and, with it, freedom of speech. That same year, alternate history found its place in Spanish mainstream literature: Jesús Torbado’s En el día de hoy [On This Day, 1976] was awarded the Premio Planeta, the most important commercial award in Spain, second only to the Nobel Prize. This essay analyzes Torbado’s novel in terms of its interrelation with the tumultuous political circumstances at the time of its publication. I contextualize it by following two main thematic axes: first, its status as one of the influential works dealing with the counterfactual scenario of a Republican victory in the Spanish Civil War (1939), and second, the prestige it conferred on the genre of alternate history that would lead other prominent Spanish writers to try their hands at it.

Isabel Clúa

Dark Mothers and Lovelorn Heroines: Avatars of the Feminine in Elia Barceló’s Sagrada

Abstract. This paper examines Elia Barceló’s collection of stories Sagrada [Sacred, 1989]. Firmly within the conventions of science fiction (high technology, exploration and colonization of other worlds, alien species, etc.), the collection stands out for its intense reflection on emotional bonds between humans and nonhumans and for placing female characters at the center of this web of relationships. This paper shows how women’s roles in these stories not only renew the generic codes of sf, giving prominence to mother and goddess figures, but also deconstruct the literary representations of the feminine by challenging the idea of woman as life-giver and rejecting the idea of women in love as passive and defenseless.

Dale J. Pratt

The Jewels of Indra’s Net: Sublime Cosmologies and Juan Miguel Aguilera

Abstract. Juan Miguel Aguilera’s story “Todo lo que un hombre puede imaginar” [All That a Man Can Imagine, 2005] serves as a powerful conclusion for his novel La red de Indra [Indra’s Net, 2009], although it was originally published separately. The infinite vastness of a universe-spanning network of artificial singularities (“geodes” or jewels in Indra’s net) and the cosmic scale of a project to curate the entirety of the universe’s consciousness and intelligence finds microcosmic reflection in the human experiences of a scientific/military team hurled 236 million years into Earth’s future, for each individual’s consciousness also bejewels Indra’s net. “Todo lo que un hombre puede imaginar” recounts the mission of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to rescue the aged and embittered Jules Verne from self-imposed exile in Amiens. Teilhard’s question—“What do you think of eternity?”—begins a sublime technoscientific odyssey for Verne, who ultimately discovers he and every other intelligent being have been informationally resurrected to live eternally in Teilhard’s Omega Point, the moment of maximal intelligence in our universe. Verne’s new life in this constructed world mirrors the secret revealed in the novel, that our universe is but a micro-universe created by and for the “geodes.”

Mariano Martín Rodríguez

Alternate History in Spain: Eduardo Vaquerizo’s Tinieblas Series in Its Literary Context 

Abstract. Although a nineteenth-century Spanish tale, Nilo María Fabra’s “Cuatro siglos de buen gobierno” [Four Centuries of Good Governance, 1883], was among the first examples of alternate history, this subgenre has not been widely cultivated in Spain until contemporary times. In our century, the alternate worlds imagined by Keith Roberts or Kingsley Amis—in which the Spanish Empire prevailed—have found a Spanish equivalent in Eduardo Vaquerizo’s work. His novels Danza de tinieblas [Dance of Darkness, 2005] and Memoria de tinieblas [Memory of Darkness, 2013], as well as several short stories, establish a consistent alternate universe within which Fabra’s positivist ideal of an enduring Spanish Empire acquires features that can be illuminating if compared to the “Rule Britannia” scenarios popular in English fiction. Vaquerizo’s world in the Tinieblas series has been adopted by other writers in a shared fictional universe, showing the importance of these novels in the evolution of alternate history in Spain.

Teresa López-Pellisa

Alucinadas: Women Writers of Spanish Science Fiction

Abstract. Science fiction by women in Spain has received little attention, as demonstrated in Spanish sf anthologies of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The anthology Alucinadas (2014, forthcoming in English as Spanish Women of Wonder) responds to this situation, and it includes work by twelve women writers (ten Spanish, two Argentinean). Alucinadas II (2016) features ten writers (eight Spanish, one Argentinean, and one Cuban). This article studies three thematic clusters found in these stories—ecocriticism and (de)colonization, sexuality(ies), and cyberspace—highlighting a wide range of social and political issues. Relevant motifs in science fiction, including dystopia/utopia, time travel, the preservation of a balanced ecosystem, cybersex, virtual reality, space travel, and planetary colonization, are reimagined with a new critical feminist perspective. Most of these stories feature societies in which natural and sexual diversity co-exist.

Irene Sanz

Human and Nonhuman Intersections in Rosa Montero’s Bruna Husky Novels 

Abstract. Rosa Montero’s novels Tears in Rain (2011) and Weight of the Heart (2015) focus on Bruna Husky, a war android, who strives to survive until her expiration date and works as a private detective. Montero takes the reader on a journey from a futuristic Madrid to space colonies to investigate crimes that are related to human and nonhuman entities. This article explores those intersections of the human and nonhuman, analyzing the role of the other in the novels. My analysis focuses on how Montero continuously plays with the image of the other through metaphors that bond Bruna Husky with animals.

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