Du Bois (published in 1920) and “Blake, or The Huts of America” by Martin R. Grayson follows this with an erudite introduction which defines terms and places a number of the book’s older pieces-such as “The Comet” by W.E.B. I’ll start with the “wonderful” and get to the “important” later.īlack Sci-Fi Short Stories opens with a brief but thoughtful foreward from Do You Dream of Terra-Two? author Temi Oh, who discusses the role of science fiction, the ways individuals and stories can inspire us, and the impact of seeing or not seeing the Black experience represented in science fiction, all beginning with an anecdote about Stephen Sondheim and Oscar Hammerstein. Turns out, not only did we have a misunderstanding, but this book is both wonderful and important. Cool books, and I used to love poring through them, but they just aren’t what I’m looking to cover in my Lightspeed reviews. Penguin has a lot of these, such as The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories or The Penguin Book of the Undead.
SCIENCE FICTION STORIES AND CONTEXTS PDF SERIES
Not that the cover is “bad” or that the title is “wrong.” But when I initially glanced at the cover image, along with the word “gothic” thrown into the series title (not to mention that many in genre feel “sci-fi” is a term used mainly by people outside of “science fiction” literature), I had the impression of one of those anthologies which reprints old-timey stories. Let me tell you, folks: I am not a fan of the cover, nor the title. This anthology and I had a huge misunderstanding at first.
From these historical contexts, I historicize the development of speculative Orientalism from New Wave sf magazines and the works of major American sf writers.
In the first chapter, I explore the three major historical contexts that generated it: first, the changed geopolitical position of the United States in Asia-Pacific regions during the Cold War period second, the influx of Asian immigrants into the US mainland since 1965 third, the fascination with Asian religions of the Beat writers. Hence, I use the term Speculative Orientalism.I argue that speculative Orientalism is one of the key elements that changed the course of American and British sf history. What distinguishes speculative Orientalism is the sf writers’ use of the imagined Asia/ns as a speculative instrument for estranging American readers’ familiar epistemology and ontology.
The Oriental figure I analyze is neither understood as premodern and threatening as in Saidian Orientalism, nor as futuristic or robotic as in techno-Orientalism. I distinguish this type of Orientalism from Edward Said’s traditional Orientalism found mainly in the early twentieth-century yellow peril genre and from techno-Orientalism in the 1980s’ cyberpunk genre. I argue that American New Wave sf writers understand Asia/ns as a gateway to an alternative reality, and, in the process, simplify, alienate, exoticize, and effeminize Asia/ns and conflate them in one homogeneous group or with Indigenous people. This dissertation traces the genealogy of a type of Orientalism found in American New Wave science fiction (sf) between the 1950s and the 1970s.
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