Following the Thread

Abstract

177 BOOKS IN REVIEW with the genre (except for the brief mention of Blade Runner [1982] as the UTT discusses their architecture projects). With all the hats I wear as an interdisciplinary scholar, contract instructor, and consumer of films, media, and culture, Utopia and Reality best appealed to my interests in documentary cinema and activism, so scholars in those fields should take note. Chapters from this volume, such as the exceptional contributions by Spiegel and Gaines, could also supplement teaching in visual culture, media studies, journalism, and politics courses.—Troy Michael Bordun, University of Northern British Columbia/Trent University Following the Thread. Robert H. Waugh. The Tragic Thread in Science Fiction. New York: Hippocampus, 2019. 236 pp. $20 pbk. In a fashion that is of a piece with its subject matter, Robert H. Waugh’s sprawling work, The Tragic Thread in Science Fiction, is driven and defined by the sense of wonder, curiosity, and vastness that has defined the genre itself. In this series of loosely connected and variously sized chapters, Waugh leans on his distinctive voice to drive the project, examining authors as diverse as Olaf Stapleton, William Gibson, and James Tiptree Jr. This style, more than the titular thread of tragedy, unites the book’s chapters, bringing an interrogatory eye to the etymological, the mythological, and the genealogical. Waugh’s love of language shows both in his lush writing and in the subject of his argumentation. These essays continuously zero in on the Latin roots of names, tracing them back to the classical canon, and plumbing the implications of these various connections. This analytical style is made more impressive as it is supported by Waugh’s own translations of German and Latin texts. These threads are primarily tied together with Waugh’s associative structure, relying on the organic flow between ideas to drive the work forward. The effect, at times, is that of being at a dinner party whose host seems to have read and thought carefully about every book under the sun. David Lindsay’s “A Voyage to Arcturus” (1920) receives the most attention, opening the book in a trilogy of essays examining its influence, influences, and language. Fritz Lieber also receives three essays but shares one of these with James Tiptree Jr. Olaf Stapleton and Arthur C. Clarke each receive two essays dealing with both their most famous and lesser known works. The collection is rounded out by one-off essays on Mervyn Peake, William Gibson, and H.P. Lovecraft. Often the precise thread of tragedy which the title promises is lost in the freewheeling tumble through diverse authors and, one could argue, genres, but the dinner party offers sumptuous food for thought, nonetheless, if particularly to those already considerably familiar with the subjects beforehand. I said that the book’s composition reflects its subject and in no way is this truer than the feeling of academic time-travel. The book embodies the classical tradition of literary criticism, tracing cultural lineage from canonical texts, asking the big questions of philosophy and psychology, and looking for grounding aesthetic and artistic principles. The examination of sf through such 178 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 48 (2021) a critical lens is particularly novel since the genre only really began to share the academic stage in the last decades of the twentieth century. And it is this gap that I believe Waugh’s book most substantially fills, establishing an anachronistic meeting of sf with the critical discourses that dominated just before the genre’s wider acceptance. This convergence produces a number of pairings which will delight readers whose own eclectic reading matches Waugh’s: David Lindsay with Goethe’s drama, Olaf Stapleton with Petrarch’s poetry, Arthur C. Clarke with Matthew Arnold’s lyrics. Like fusion cuisine, it is often the most surprising of these combinations that provide the keenest insights and most compelling material. It is a rare pleasure to spend time thinking through T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (1922) alongside Mervyn Peake’s GORMENGHAST novels (1946-1960). The chapter on Gibson is particularly satisfying in this way. Beginning with a quote from Wittgenstein and including extended references to the Christian Bible, Waugh makes surprising and evocative claims...