Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice ed. by Elizabeth M. Ginway and J. Andrew Brown (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice ed. by Elizabeth M. Ginway and J. Andrew Brown Samuel Manickam Ginway, M. Elizabeth, and J. Andrew Brown, eds. Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice. New York: Palgrave, 2012. Pp. 241. ISBN 978–1–137–28122–7. In the last approximately fifteen years, scholarly attention on Latin American science fiction has steadily increased. Once confined to the shadows of Hispanic literary studies, this genre is now taken seriously by scholars since it is considered to be an important window into the cultures and histories of this region. Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice, edited by M. Elizabeth Ginway and J. Andrew Brown, is a good addition to this growing field of studies since, as the editors note, if many early studies tended to be “archeological,” that is, bringing to light various lost and unknown science fiction texts, then the essays contained in this volume represent some current attempts to interpret this literature in its various cultural and historical contexts in Latin America. The ten essays are divided into three categories: “Speculating a Canon: Latin America’s SF [Science Fiction] Traditions,” “On the Periphery of the Periphery: Cyberpunk and Zombies in Latin America” and “Comics and Film: Latin American SF across Genres.” Essays on Mexican, Argentine and Brazilian science fiction constitute a majority since these three countries are the main Latin American producers of this genre. There are also essays on science fiction from Cuba, Chile and Bolivia. As will be apparent by reading these essays, science fiction has given Latin American writers, as well as filmmakers and cartoonists, the artistic license not normally afforded by more traditional approaches to questions of national identity, among other issues. The most interesting essays in this volume carefully examine science fiction texts through theories on, for example, historiographic metafiction, irony and allegory, while contextualizing them within the history and culture of their respective Latin American countries. In her essay “Islands in the Slipstream: Diasporic Allegories in Cuban Science Fiction since the Special Period,” Emily A. Maguire outlines the problematic relationship Cubans experience with technology in a country forcibly isolated by economic sanctions and a repressive government. The three stories analyzed show three authors utilizing science fiction to speak symbolically about their isolated, exiled situations. In “Time Travel and History in Carmen Boullosa’s 1991 Llanto, novelas imposibles,” Claire Taylor convincingly demonstrates how this Mexican novelist uses the SF trope of time travel to problematize the historiographic process of ascertaining the truth regarding the Aztec emperor Moctezuma’s death. Álvaro Bisama’s essay “Bolaño and Science Fiction: Deformities” creatively strays from conventional “scholarly” protocols and is therefore a true pleasure to read. Bisama weaves the narrative of Bolaño’s life with his works [End Page 328] while showing aspects of science fiction in both. Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado’s essay “Ending the World with Words: Bernardo Fernández and the Institutionalization of Science Fiction in Mexico” is perhaps the first serious critical overview of this author, who has been key in endowing science fiction with literary respect and credibility in Mexico today. The author’s thorough analysis of Fernández’s works by couching it in the post-NAFTA era is commendable. In her essay “Oesterheld’s Iconic and Ironic Eternautas,” Rachel Haywood Ferreira gives a complete overview of the evolution of this Argentine’s comic series titled Eternautas (for which he wrote the text while the drawings were done by others). Haywood Ferreira clearly contextualizes the Eternautas series in the Cold War and Dirty War eras in Argentina. Oesterheld’s “disappearance” by the military junta in the eighties sadly demonstrates how science fiction in Latin America imbued with political commitment can be considered “dangerous” by the authorities. The other five essays in this collection focus on further variations of science fiction in Latin America: a dystopian vision of Argentina in the film Sexilia, the Brazilian João Guimaráes Rosa’s early science fiction stories, the figure of the zombie as conceived in Chilean and Bolivian novels, science fiction motifs in Brazilian comics from the turn of the twentieth century, and elements of science fiction in some Brazilian films. These...