Call for Contributions: Fafnir—Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research

Abstract

611 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE SFCS Book Award, 2020. The Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science Book Award (previously the Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies Book Prize) honors an outstanding scholarly monograph that explores the intersections between popular culture, particularly science fiction, and the discourses and cultures of technoscience. The award recognizes groundbreaking and exceptional contributions to the field. Books published in English between 1 January and 31 December 2020 were eligible for the award; this year’s jury included Aimee Bahng (Pomona College), Elizabeth Swanstrom (University of Utah), and Sherryl Vint (University of California, Riverside), with Pawe³ Frelik (University of Warsaw) serving as jury chair. After intense deliberations, the jury has announced that the ninth annual SFCS book award is awarded to Melody Jue, a professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater (Duke UP 2020). Wild Blue Media treats the global ocean as itself a speculative, science-fictional medium and an entity that provokes speculation. The study expands the principal focus of its “ecological” turn by engaging with a variety of artistic and cultural objects and practices. One judge described the monograph as “a beautifully rendered, deeply situated study of underwater mediations, from coral mapping to deep-sea photography”; another praised its role in helping readers to “think beyond conventional Western epistemologies as it repositions cognitive estrangement and ‘diving as method’ as modes of humanistic enquiry that are embodied, ethically attentive to their interactions with their objects of enquiry, and reflexively open to making knowledge anew.” By theorizing the ocean as “a science-fictional medium of estrangement,” Wild Blue Media provides new ways to understand kinship and connectivity. The judges also recognized two works as particularly strong runners-up: William O. Gardner’s The Metabolist Imagination: Visions of the City in Postwar Japanese Architecture and Science Fiction (Minnesota UP 2020) and Christopher B. Paterson’s Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games (New York UP 2020). One of the judges praised Gardner’s book as “a powerful example of how science-fiction imaginaries shape collective cultural ways of understanding and inhabiting urban space,” approaching speculative architecture by raising intertwined questions of technology, media, and environment. Another judge singled out Paterson’s study as “taking seriously the pleasures afforded by gaming, even as it demonstrates gaming’s uncomfortable connections to global exploitation and racism”; the book “not only calls attention to the limitations of the ‘freedom’ gaming promises but also interrogates the play that eludes game design imperatives.”—Pawe³ Frelik, University of Warsaw Call for Contributions: Fafnir—Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research. Founded in 2014, Fafnir is a World Fantasy Award-winning, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal published by the 612 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 48 (2021) Finnish Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy Research. The journal, which publishes two issues each year, provides an open-access international forum for scholarly exchanges on science fiction, fantasy, other speculative genres, and issues current in the field. Fafnir welcomes contributions from a wide range of perspectives. The editors are particularly interested in innovative (yet rigorous) approaches to scholarship, and give submissions from emerging scholars, independent researchers, and researchers from non-traditional backgrounds the same careful consideration shown to established and university-based scholars. Articles can be in English or in any of the Nordic languages. Authors are very welcome to query the editors about proposed research at . Fafnir also maintains a lively book-review section; inquiries about providing books for review can be directed to . The journal’s entire archive is available online at no cost, along with our submission guidelines at .—The Editors of Fafnir Mass Markets: Studies in Franchise Cultures: New Book Series. Sturgeon’s Law—Theodore Sturgeon’s claim that “90% of everything is crap”—suggests that most cultural production is not worthy of our attention, except perhaps as a guilty pleasure. Yet as popular media storyworlds increasingly dominate the global entertainment landscape, they call out for serious criticism. The “Mass Markets” of our series title refers both to the audiences who consume media franchises and immerse themselves in those storyworlds and to one of the key media forms through...