Middle Ground Between Light and Shadow

Abstract

148 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 48 (2021) [and] permits bypassing in many instances the reptilian part of our brain that holds onto ideologies and fears precipitating violent conflict and overreactions” (166). Murphy’s chapter has already been addressed above, while Sperling’s investigation of fungal themes and what she calls “weird embodiment” in VanderMeer’s oeuvre (195) and Bishop’s examination of ekphrasis also situate the place of the new weird in plant studies. Bishop’s interest in ekphrasis, or the linguistic description of art or the image, is a fascinating trope to examine speculative fiction’s construction of the visual and holds much potential for further research within and beyond plant studies. Bishop contends that the linguistic expansion of the image via interpretation draws attention to the previously overlooked: “When paired with speculative fiction, the interpretative operations of ekphrasis are powerfully political, particularly when tuned to a vegetal key, reanimating that which we take for granted as safe, sessile, if not controlled then controllable’ (229). Plants in Science Fiction establishes key theoretical concepts and offers approaches that point the way for further studies addressing the dearth of critical studies on plants in sf. Perhaps reflective of the novelty of this emerging discipline, and providing a coherent thematic thread for the collection, multiple chapters cite several academic and popular scientific works, including journalist Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire: A Plant’sEye View of the World (2001), T.S. Miller’s “Lives of the Monster Plants: The Revenge of the Vegetable in the Age of Animal Studies” (2012), and those by Stefano Mancuso (for example, Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence, co-authored with Alessandra Viola [2015], and Communication in Plants: Neuronal Aspects of Plant Life, coedited with František Baluška and Dieter Volkmann [2006]). This book rightly acknowledges that plants have been neglected in sf studies and in wider literary and cultural criticism, despite—as Bishop shows in the introduction—how frequently they appear in sf and how important they are to those narratives. The book demonstrates a complementarity among different approaches to the representation and meaning of plants in sf. Plants in Science Fiction is a much-needed study of plants in sf that offers potential for synthesis with human-animal studies and broader ecological and environmental criticism.—Chris Pak, University of Swansea Middle Ground Between Light and Shadow. Barry Keith Grant. The Twilight Zone. Wayne State UP, TV MILESTONE SERIES, 2019. v+121 pp. $19.99 pbk. Each study in Wayne State UP’s TV MILESTONE SERIES is designed to offer a close examination of an individual television series, placing it within its industrial, historical, and cultural contexts while also offering space for more detailed analysis of the qualities that make it stand out against other shows. The series titles are diverse, encompassing comparatively recent programs alongside classics of television history, as well as representing a wide selection of television genres. The inclusion of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1959- 149 BOOKS IN REVIEW 1964) in the series positions it as a key title in televisual history and in the growing canon of quality television shows. While its presence in such a canon may seem obvious to many fans and sf scholars, Grant offers an insightful and convincing rationale for its significance. Building upon a wealth of production histories, tv scholarship, episode guides, and published and broadcast interviews with Serling, as well as his own close analysis, Grant offers a compelling discussion of this show and its distinctive legacy. As he explains, The Twilight Zone remains a highly recognizable and eminently quotable television series and an established icon of popular culture. Grant begins the book by acknowledging this influence, citing numerous contemporary pop-culture references to the show, including Family Guy (1998-) and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2015-). These citations not only allude to specific episodes but also assume that modern audiences will be familiar with the narrative, generic, and stylistic qualities that underpin the series, such as its fantasy elements, its twist endings, and its renowned theme music; this is not an assumption that one would make about many of its contemporaries. Grant provides a lengthy breakdown...