Across the Ocean: Historicizing SF Studies in Japan and Beyond

Abstract

518 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 47 (2020) discussion of “intergroup dialogue,” defined as a “facilitated, face-to-face encounter that aims to foster innovative levels of understanding between two or more identity groups” (109), uses Butler’s writing alongside other texts from contemporary popular culture in a rigorous, multiphase approach to classroom discussion. Indeed, Parker’s chapter offers the most pragmatic (and, arguably, radical) guide to teaching Butler’s science fiction; the appendix of exercises alone is absolutely true to the productive unsettlement generated by Butler’s work. The volume concludes with a section on “The Aesthetics of Afrofuturism” that serves as a valuable recapitulation of a historical literary moment. Here we return to a more familiar interpretation of Butler, circling back to the more literary-critical reception of her work. From models of Black female leadership (as identified by Stanley) to the generic instabilities of a text such as “Bloodchild,” moving through science fiction and historicism to the “liberation politics coupled with critical race theory” (132) that inform Isaiah Lavender’s definition of Afrofuturism, the concept is rendered urgent, timely, and perhaps necessarily expansive in scope. Yet, despite the importance of students becoming cognizant of Afrofuturist aesthetics as they play out “across music, art, film, and other cultural practices” (147), it would have been desirable to see a little more nuance in positioning Octavia E. Butler as an Afrofuturist author. Marisa Parham, for instance, uses the term “astrofuturism” to define the more literary and text-based praxis of Butler, who, indeed, expressed bemusement at being grouped with other contemporary black artists such as Samuel R. Delany (let alone musicians such as George Clinton and Sun Ra). Given that this final subsection is the shortest, containing only three chapters, it might have been more effective to incorporate them into the preceding sections. Stanley’s “Teaching Afrofuturistic Thought Leadership in Butler’s Fiction” would be a fine fit for the “Social Justice” section, for instance, whereas Lavender’s critical reading of Parable of the Sower would be entirely at home in the first subsection on literary approaches. Furthermore, all subsections would have benefited from drawing a little more upon the abundant archival materials held at the Huntington Library which houses Octavia E. Butler’s papers, as well as more fully using some of the interview materials cited in the excellent first section. Butler, in her papers and interviews, had much to say on issues of pedagogy and politics. Nonetheless, this volume presents a wide-ranging and generous framework for teaching the works of Octavia E. Butler in a variety of contexts and educational levels, and I thoroughly recommend it.—Phoenix Alexander, University of Liverpool Across the Ocean: Historicizing SF Studies in Japan and Beyond. Takayuki Tatsumi, ed. Trans-Pacific Cultural Studies. Vol. III: Science Fiction and Cyber Culture. New Delhi: Sage, 2019. 289 pp. $1100 hc. (4-volume set, not sold individually) 519 BOOKS IN REVIEW [For the sake of consistency with Tatsumi’s series, Chinese and Japanese names appear as they would in English, with given name first and surname second. I would like to thank Baryon Tensor-Posadas at the University of Minnesota for his advice on the Japanese titles listed here.] Takayuki Tatsumi’s introduction to this volume argues that “without the existence of Japan, postwar science fiction could not have developed the transpacific imagination. It is true that Japan played the leading role of trans-pacific science fiction” (vii-viii). Global popular culture since at least the 1960s would be vastly different were it not for the circulation of images, tropes, and topoi between and within the United States and Asia, and particularly without Japan’s successful internationalization of all manner of franchisable characters, from the cool to the cute (volume IV is devoted entirely to the topic of “Cool Asia” and is worth finding in your library). While the four-volume series in toto—which also includes “Trans-Pacific Americanism” (vol. I) and “Trans-Pacific Literary Studies” (vol. II)—features a more truly trans-Pacific focus, the introduction to this particular volume and its contents are focused more squarely on Japan and on the influences of the United States during the Cold-War era rather than...