#153 = Volume 51, Part 2 = July 2024
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE
2024 Mullen Grant Winner Announced. The Mullen Fellowship offers stipends of up to $5000 for one post-doctoral award and up to $3000 each for up to two PhDs candidates to support research at any archive that has sf holdings. Fellowships are awarded in support of doctoral research, dissertationsS or book projects that have science fiction as a central research focus. The program was instituted to honor Richard “Dale” Mullen, founder of Science Fiction Studies.
Our PhD award for 2024 goes to Nudrat Kamal, a doctoral student in the program of Comparative Literature and Literary Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Nudrat’s research interests include South Asian studies, science fiction and fantasy, environmental humanities, postcolonial theory, gender, and sexuality studies, and Urdu/Hindi literary studies. Her Mullen project will trace the emergence of science fiction written in Urdu, Hindi, and English within the larger context of South Asian literary history, in order to explore a set of vital questions. In her own words: “What might be the place of South Asian science fiction in various languages within the conceptual framework of global science fiction? What happens to the category of global science fiction when we place the 19th and early 20th century science fiction writing in Urdu and Hindi—which have very particular and specific genealogies—within the larger project of global science fiction? To what extent is this corpus of 19th and 20th century South Asian science fiction in conversation with other science-fiction texts circulating in the global literary marketplace? What are the possible connections between this corpus and the contemporary Anglophone South Asian science fiction which is participating more consciously in the global literary marketplace?”
To engage with these very large—and very important—inquiries, Nudrat will conduct archival research at the British Library’s Indian Office Collection this summer. We wish her the best with this pursuit and look forward to learning more about what her investigations yield when she returns. Congratulations, Nudrat!—Lisa Swanstrom, SFS
Science Fiction of the 1870s. To mark the 150th issue of Foundation in spring 2025, we would like to include contributions on the topic of sf from 150 years ago, published during the 1870s. Darko Suvin once proposed 1 May 1871 as the starting-point for sf—the day that Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race was published, George Chesney’s The Battle of Dorking began serialization, and Samuel Butler submitted Erewhon to his publisher. Jules Verne, however, was already in full swing and would soon be joined by such contemporaries as Camille Flammarion. Where else can we trace the roots of science fiction in the 1870s? How can we reassess the writers we know, and who are the writers we need to rediscover?
We welcome articles on any aspect of sf published between 1870 and 1880. Articles should be 5000-8000 words and written in accordance with the style guide available on the website <www.sf-foundation. org/journal>. Topics may include but are not limited to the following: ideas of utopia; humans and machine technology; the impact of evolution and the biological sciences; sf and the invasion novel; sf and astronomy; satire and allegory; science and pseudo-science; space travel and other worlds; exploration and voyages of discovery; race and empire; gender and sexuality; Arnold, Huxley and the “two cultures” debate; sf and the non-anglophone world.
The deadline for articles is 7 October 2024. Please email your submission to Paul March-Russell at <paulmarchrussell@gmail.com> with a short (50-word) bio-note.—Paul March-Russell, Ed., Foundation, The International Review of SF
Call for Chapters: “Interdisciplinary Studies on German Philology: Cyberpunk and Digital Rebellion of AI.” As a literary genre and a form of cultural aesthetic, cyberpunk narratives depict dark visions of the future in which technology, society, and human existence merge. A major element of this setting is Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is often portrayed as a powerful, autonomous entity in cyberpunk universes. In cyberpunk genres, AI typically symbolizes both the zenith of human advancement and a looming existential danger for human beings. The dynamic between humans and AI in these narratives not only raises ethical dilemmas but also highlights the potential conflicts and challenges associated with the development of advanced AI technologies. The deadline for submissions is Thursday, 31 October 2024.— Prof. Dr. Habib Tekin, Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey
CFP: Celebrating 215 years of Edgar Allan Poe. Ring in the Halloween season by celebrating the life and works of the US’s grandfather of Goth, Edgar Allan Poe. Scholars across all disciplines are invited to convene for a (tentatively) two-day conference on the weekend of the 215th anniversary of his death: 5-6 October 2024. We will critically examine the “Tomahawk’s” works, a nickname inspired by his negative book reviews. Topics might include his poetry, prose, novel, and essays. Other media such as theatrical, televised, or cinematic adaptations of his work may also be considered, provided they relate back to the author’s legacy and work. For instance, any of the Universal Studios adaptations, Scott Cooper’s loosely biographical The Pale Blue Eye (2022), or the recent Mike Flanagan production The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) may be explored. Presentation topics may include but are not limited to: orientalism, psychoanalysis, feminism, Marxism, the Gothic, corporeality, the other-than-human; spatiality, temporality, race, narratology, disability, trauma, monstrosity, abjection, religion, spirituality, the occult, theology, ecocriticism, rhetoric, poetics, new materialism, gender, sexuality, and/or queerness.
Please submit abstracts of 200 words as well as any and all inquiries to <eap215conference@gmail.com>. Please also provide a short biographical note of up to 100 words in addition to your time-zone in order to best arrange presentation times for those outside of PST. This conference will be held online at no charge. The Zoom link will be sent out the week prior. The deadline for submissions is 2 August 2024.—Noah Gallego, California State Polytechnic, Pomona
Call for Papers: Special Issue of Modern Fiction Studies on African Literature and Climate Change. MFS invites essay submissions for a special issue on “Planetary Fiction: African Literature and Climate Change.” At the 2020 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Ugandan climate-justice activist Vanessa Nakate was cropped out of an Associated Press photograph that shows other young activists (Isabelle Axelsson, Greta Thunberg, Loukina Tille, and Luisa-Marie Neubauer). As the only Black African activist in a photo with white Europeans, Nakate commented: “You didn’t just erase a photo. You erased a continent” (69). Indeed, political ecologist Malcom Ferdinand contends that the erasure is typical of much of the Global North’s environmentalism, which seeks to account for the climate crisis without addressing issues of colonialism and race and thereby perpetuates modernity’s “colonial ... fracture” (41). By contrast, this special issue turns to African literature to develop what Ferdinand calls a “decolonial ecology”—one that promises to transform the conceptual and political implications of the climate crisis. It recognizes African literature as the site of ecological thinking, which provides resources for what Ferdinand calls “world-making” (51): ways of living with human and non-human others on the Earth.
Critics are increasingly turning to climate fiction, or “cli-fi,” to address global warming during a time of climate breakdown. By imagining future climate-changed worlds, writers and filmmakers can help us to understand the risks of global warming and associated phenomena, including extreme weather events, droughts, flooding, biodiversity loss, and species extinctions. Climate fiction also provides models for environmental activism, which can give a sense of agency in responding to the climate crisis. While climate fiction is most often studied from a Euroamerican perspective, this special issue turns to African literature to rethink the climate crisis. In doing so, it builds on work in the emerging fields of the African environmental and energy humanities, including Cajetan Iheka’s positioning of Africa as “the ground zero of the energy humanities” (10). It seeks to identify urgent topics of environmental concern and develop new collaborative methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches. It welcomes further theorization of the key term “planetary fiction,” which might initially be understood to include many genres and media, and to refer to those works of fiction that register the planetary transformations associated with global warming. Ultimately, this special issue uses such fictions to explore the conditions of what Achille Mbembe calls “planetary habitability” (115).
We invite essays that address any aspect of African literature and climate change. Topics might include but are not limited to: African futures: scenarios, pathways, and planning; speculative fiction: Africanfuturism, science fiction, and fantasy; energy transitions: fossil fuels and renewable energy; extractivism: fossil fuels, transition minerals, and sacrifice zones; global warming and the uneven distribution of environmental risk; imperial ecologies: colonialism, race, and climate colonialism; narratives of environmental crisis: Anthropocene, African Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Racial Capitalocene, Plantationocene, and Necrocene.
Essays should be 7,000–9,000 words, including all quotations and bibliographic references, and should follow the MLA Handbook (9th edition) for internal citations and Works Cited. Please submit your essay via the online submission form at <http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mfs>. Queries ahead of submission are welcomed, and may be directed to Nedine Moonsamy (nedinem@uj.ac.za) and David Shackleton (shackletond@cardiff.ac.uk). The deadline for submissions is 1 February 2025.—Nedine Moonsamy, English Dept., University of Johannesburg and David Shackleton, English Dept., University of Cardiff, Guest Editors
Remedios Varo: Science Fictions at the Chicago Art Institute. Readers of Thomas Pynchon may remember a peculiar emotional frisson at the end of the first chapter of The Crying of Lot 49 (1965). In this moment protagonist Oedipus Maas recalls her time in Mexico City with former lover Pierce Inverarity, when the two of them “somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo” (20-21). There Oedipa is captivated by “the central painting of a triptych” (21). For a moment the painting, “Bordando el manto terrestre” (“Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle” 1960), appears to mirror her, or perhaps refract then duplicate her image into luminous carbon copies: “a number of frail girls with heart shaped faces, huge eyes, spun gold hair” look out from the painting. Her reaction to them is telling, if not surprising: “Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried.” The Varo painting is lovely, but it is no mystery why Oedipa weeps. In Pynchon’s description, the women in the painting are “prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void.” In their confinement, Oedipa sees herself and cries, but “No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades,” her sunglasses providing a visual echo of the women’s own “huge eyes.” This passage is haunting—infused with an exquisitely calibrated sense of paranoia that is as compelling as it is stifling. Oedipa recognizes herself as trapped, a “prisoner,” and senses that the source of her entrapment is “magic, anonymous and malignant.” Adding insult to injury, her only weapons against this malevolent force are limited: “Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning,” what can she do? Pynchon’s answer is both humorous and disappointing: “she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey....” (22). What’s missing from Pynchon’s reading of the Varo painting, however, is not something that a casual observer of a single work—even a triptych—could hope to glean. In the context of the novel, of course, the reading works beautifully. It is easy to see Oedipa as one of the maidens trapped inside the tower, to see her own heart-shaped face echoed in theirs. The reading even holds when held on the painting’s own terms. Varo herself notes that all but one of the women in the first painting, “Hacia la torre” (“Toward the Tower” 1960), are “hypnotized,” and, after all, the final image is entitled “La huida” (“The Escape” 1961). But when viewed in the context of Varo’s larger body of work, Pynchon’s synopsis falls short. While the moment in the novel expands one’s understanding of Oedipa’s yearnings, deep in her inner depths, it shortchanges the superbly nuanced oeuvre of one of the most exciting and vibrant surrealist painters of the twentieth century.
Remedios Varo was a Spanish painter who fled Spain during the Second World War. Although a formally trained surrealist with impeccable credentials and undeniable talent, she is not as widely known as her male counterparts, and her paintings rarely circulate. It was, for example, over twenty years ago that they last visited the United States—until now. Thankfully, the Chicago Art Institute’s recent exhibition, Remedios Varo, Science Fictions (29 July-27 November 2023), helped to remedy this by introducing Varo’s larger body of work to the larger public it deserves. Composed of more than twenty of her most significant paintings, as well as a variety of studies, sketches, drafts, curiosities, and commentaries, Remedios Varo, Science Fictions highlights, in the words of the curators, “the tensions and possibilities Varo brought together in her work as she searched to visualize hidden orders and unseen truths.” This is patently true but also a bit vague. To be only slightly more precise, what struck the viewer most (at least this viewer) was—contra Pynchon—the wild and adventurous mobility that inhabits nearly every piece. From flying wheeled creatures to a nun on a bicycle to tiny river boats to dirigible-like spacecrafts, nearly every work in the exhibition features an enchantingly improbable mechanics of motion. Perhaps the most charming of these is “Vagabundo” (“Vagabond” 1957), in which a man cycles through a forest on two tiny wheels whose pedals whirl above his shoulders, wind-propelled. He tent-like jacket opens to reveal that he carries with him all the creature comforts of home: dishes, a flowerpot, books, a portrait of a loved one, and a tabby cat who rests comfortably at his ankles.
To be sure, Varo does not shy from depicting women working in confined places. Rather, she delights in transforming small spaces into portals to infinity. In such scenes women are experimenting with alchemy, such as Cienca inútil, o El alquimista (“Useless Science, or The Alchemist” 1955) or flying men around in contraptions like kites, as in “Vuelo mágico” (“Magic Flight” 1956). But even within the most confining environments, the paintings gesture outward. In “Papilla estelar” (“Celestial Pablum” 1958) a woman sits in a tiny room, spoon-feeding the moon; and in “Naturaleza muerta resucitando” (“Still Life Reviving” 1963) a set table in a small dining room doubles as the cosmos.
It was a delight to walk among several large rooms filled with these and other exquisite paintings. Leaving the exhibition, I felt that a reassessment of Oedipa’s angst was in order. Varo’s women are not always trapped. Rather, they are wholly wrapped up in the exhilarating, complicated, and all-absorbing pastime of creation—of the warping and the weaving of the whole wide world. For those lucky enough to have visited this exhibition, which wrapped in November 2023, I suspect the wonder of it will abide for many years to come. For those who were not able to attend but are curious about Remedios Varo’s larger body of work, the exhibition catalogue is a fantastic resource (Remedios Varo, Science Fictions, The Art Institute of Chicago, distributed by Yale UP, 2023).—Lisa Swanstrom, SFS
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