Roger LuckhurstScience Fiction: A Literary History

Abstract

191 BOOKS IN REVIEW by its blindnesses and opacities” (36). Certainly, many people do in fact believe that we live in a postracial society (Loza quotes not a few in the second chapter alone). But as an academic argument, debunking this is hardly an original position, as the wealth of citations attests. The second chapter, “Colonial Cosplay,” will probably be the most valuable to scholars, as the material presented there is recent, relevant, and largely unstudied, and the depth of research in the presentation can generously seed many future projects. As for the rest, the remixed criticism on Avatar, District 9, Doctor Who, and Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes does not advance a new critique and tends to repeat what has already been said, without much difference.—Taylor Evans, University of California, Riverside Finding a Middle Way in Science Fiction’s Literary History. Roger Luckhurst, ed. Science Fiction: A Literary History. London: The British Library, 2017. 256 pp. $27.95 hc. Adam Roberts opens Roger Luckhurst’s edited collection Science Fiction: A Literary History with a preface arguing in part that “To read these essays is to start to understand just how many branching paths ... add up to the composite way, the tao, of science fiction” (6). I believe that Roberts’s assessment is correct. This collection illustrates the tao of science fiction, and it also succeeds as a different kind of middle way between recently published histories of sf tending toward concision on the one hand and expansion on the other. Examples of the former category, at about 200 pages or less, include Adam Roberts’s Science Fiction (2nd ed. 2006), David Seed’s Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction (2011), and Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint’s The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction (2011). It also includes Brian Baker’s Science Fiction (2014) and Sherryl Vint’s Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed (2014), both of which take a critical theory approach to sf history. In general, these concise histories focus on sf across media, including television and film. At the other end of the sf history spectrum are longer and more expansive works, most of which are 300 pages or more. Single-author monographs in this category include Roger Luckhurst’s Science Fiction (2005) and Adam Roberts’s The History of Science Fiction (2nd ed. 2016). Edited companions containing sf histories include Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn’s The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (2003), David Seed’s A Companion to Science Fiction (2008), and Mark Bould et al’s The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction (2009). Like their more concise counterparts, these longer histories and companions approach sf as a genre expressed in different media. Science Fiction: A Literary History stands out in this crowded field for its tight focus on the history of written sf as told by knowledgeable voices in the field (most of whom, it is worth noting, have published their own or contributed to other sf history projects). The collection divides sf history across eight chronologically overlapping and interconnected chapters: “The Beginnings: Early Forms of Science Fiction” (Arthur B. Evans), “From Scientific Romance to Science Fiction: 1870-1914” (Roger Luckhurst), “Utopian Prospects, 1900-49” (Caroline Edwards), “Pulp SF and its Others, 192 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 46 (2019) 1918-39” (Mark Bould), “After the War, 1945-65” (Malisa Kurtz), “The New Wave ‘Revolution,’ 1960-76” (Rob Latham), “From the New Wave into the Twenty-First Century” (Sherryl Vint), and “New Paradigms, After 2001” (Gerry Canavan). In general, the chapters follow a pattern of historical context for the given period, a number of sections discussing representative themes and subgenres (these are supported by descriptions, readings, and publishing history contexts), some explanation of literary sf beyond the Anglosphere (including France, Russia, Japan, China, and Iraq, among others), and finally, a transitional conclusion leading to the next chapter. Each chapter includes connections to others, and on occasion separate authors explore a given writer’s work within the specific contexts of their chapters, such as the analyses of George S. Schuyler’s works in Caroline Edwards’s “Utopian Prospects” (80-81) and in Mark Bould’s “Pulp SF and its...