Gutenberg in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Abstract

145 BOOKS IN REVIEW the backdrop. A creative and different approach is taken by the Bollywood director Rakesh Roshan for his film Koi ... Mil Gaya [Someone ... Has Been Found, 2003], which re-adapts both Ray’ script as well as Spielberg’s E.T. This film, while very ordinary in quality, was a runaway success and a landmark in Indian sf blockbuster cinema. It has spawned two wildly popular sequels with a fourth film in the works, and also inspired Indian sf film production in this century. Ray’s work has also inspired art. For instance, the Rubin Museum in New York recently hosted work by the German artist Matti Braun, the centerpiece of which is the lotus pond from Ray’s script (rubinmuseum.org/ events/exhibitions/a-lost-future). The fascinating experience invites viewers to cross the pond on floating wooden logs, and draws them into the world of Ray’s—and Braun’s—vision by transforming viewers into both the human and alien observers on the otherworldly surface of a dark lake on the fifth floor of the museum. Even more importantly, the book pays homage to Ray’s vision for sf, especially the uses it could be put to both for the imagination in general and for Bengal more specifically. Much of Ray’s sf, with a couple of exceptions, is meant for a relatively young audience, but Ray’s ideas about sf were always about laying a certain groundwork for the reception of sf in Bengal, something that he wanted to do with the Cine Club. Others, including Adrish Bardhan and Ranen Ghosh, who were associated with Bangla sf magazines such as Ascharja [variant spelling Ashchorjo, trans. Wonder] and Fantastic, shared his goal. Ray was well aware of all kinds of sf, as the foreword by Sandip Ray and the book itself make clear: he read the latest sf, subscribed to magazines such as Omni and Heavy Metal, and also had personal friendships with several sf writers. Thus the specific form of sf to which he wanted to contribute, juvenile or young adult sf, was a deliberate choice. The sf Cine Club was meant to bring the best of European and American sf film to audiences in Bengal; the magazines, led by Bardhan, were to bring a more adult awareness to the genre, and create and promote sf; and the more juvenile strain was meant to encourage curiosity among younger audiences. This strategy, laid out by Ray, Bardhan, and others, did not completely work in its own time, but its traces are now the seed of the current generation of sf writing in Bengal. The mythos of the unmade The Alien works in the Bangla sf imaginary as a beacon to a promised future. This book deserves to be read by anyone interested in the history of sf cinema, Indian sf, or world sf.—Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, University of Oslo Gutenberg in a Galaxy Far, Far Away. Artur Skweres. McLuhan’s Galaxies: Science Fiction Film Aesthetics in Light of Marshall McLuhan’s Thought. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019. xxvi+110 pp. $89.99 hc, $69.99 ebk. Scholarly work that makes the claim that it is exploring uncharted territory immediately prompts two questions: “how well does it map this new territory?” and “what is left unmapped?” In the introduction to McLuhan’s Galaxies: Science Fiction Film Aesthetics in Light of Marshall McLuhan’s Thought, Artur Skweres asserts that “McLuhan’s theories have not been systematically linked with interpretation of science fiction” (xi). This is a fair 146 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 47 (2020) enough assessment, given that the frequently Joycean and aphoristic nature of McLuhan’s speculations makes them easier to apply to broader cultural trends than to close readings of single artistic works or genres. Even so, McLuhan dropped hints that there might be fruitful links between his ideas and sf. You do not have to venture too far into The Gutenberg Galaxy (U of Toronto P, 1962) to find the pronouncement that “Our technologies … now demand an interplay and ratio that makes rational coexistence possible” (5; emphasis added). Technology creating rational coexistence fairly conjures up visions of the pacifist futuristic utopias that provided the setting for many...