This month's reading is upsettingly timely, as we read Jordan S. Carroll's Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024). Carroll covers both the historical uses of science fiction by the far right, and the current ways white nationalists imagine the future and read the genre. Topics include: fans being slans and the genre of the mutational romance; klan being fans and the "hermeneutics of obtuseness" they need to avoid recognizing anti-racist themes; science fictional mythologies of whiteness. It's an interesting topic, which Carroll discusses both accessibly and in detail, involving a wide variety of the worst people to read science fiction, and we try to keep discussion as light and as biting as mutually possible, given the above.

Topics: whiteness, speculation, fandom

Content warning for discussion of white supremacist ideology and neo-nazis, including discussion of racist claims about human nature, but not any extensive discussions of racist acts of violence.

Next month's episode is currently uncertain! When we know what we're reading, we'll let you know.

This month, we read Kingsley Amis's provocatively titled New Maps of Hell (1960) - in which Amis sets forth a his account of the nature and hopes of science fiction at the end of what's often called the Golden Age. New Maps has been often referenced in works we've read so far, and ends up something of an eccentric snapshot of a moment in the genre, a commentary on the state of the genre through Amis's very particular concerns. These include the “comic inferno”, the power and danger of advertising, and the anti-conformist streak in SF, as well as an extended analogy between SF and jazz. Overall, it's an odd book, one that had us asking if Amis even really liked science fiction - or maybe whether he liked that he liked it or not.

Topics: SF history, Golden Age, pulp

Next episode, we will be reading Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024) by Jordan S. Carroll.

For this (belated - apologies!) episode, Mark is joined by guests Jackson and Nora of Anomalous Readings and other fine podcasts. We read John Moore's “Miracle Stalker: Personal and Social Transformation in Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic”, published in Foundation in fall 1997. The article starts out with some strong Freudian claims and then goes on to mostly talk about other stuff, leaving us a bit confused as to its ultimate argument. We're always happy to talk Roadside Picnic, though. It's a brief, but wide-ranging discussion on the novel's interest in class, family, and miracles.

Topics: Roadside Picnic, Freudian analysis

Find Jackson at headfallsoff.com on Bluesky, and on many podcasts on the Abnormal Mapping network.

Find Nora at skulldaughter.bsky.social on Bluesky, and on many podcasts on the Export Audio network.

Next month, we will cover New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (1960), by Kingsley Amis.

For this episode, we read Pilgrims Through Space and Time: Trends and Patterns in Scientific and Utopian Fiction, J.O. Bailey's 1947 book about the emerging genre of “scientific fiction”: its history, its plots, and its value. Quite a bit of the first two, especially, as a large portion of the book is catalogue and summary, and frankly it was a bit of a slog, but it still holds great interest for us - Pilgrims is arguably the first work of scholarship on science fiction every published, at least academically. We consider the categories Bailey uses, the frustration of summary, and the limitations of catalogue, as well as what we can learn about the period's science fiction and its ethos. An ethos that, unfortunately, definitely also included eugenics.

Topics: SF history, Victorian literature, pulp

Next month: Ben will be taking December off to focus on dissertating and family, so Mark will be joined by Jackson and Nora of Anomalous Readings (and many other fine podcasts) to discuss John Moore's “Miracle Stalker: Personal and Social Transformation in Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic” (1997).

For this episode, we read Graham J. Murphy's article “Cyberpunk's masculinist legacy: Puppetry, labour and ménage à trois in Blade Runner 2049” published in Science Fiction Film and Television, in a symposium on the legacy of Blade Runner. This continues our string of articles, and gives us a chance to think about a movie we both enjoy and dynamics we both find fascinating. Murphy both interests and frustrates us, identifying some of the most interesting moments of gender and embodiment in the film, but leaving us wanting more analysis and discussion, so be prepared for a bunch of digressions about Blade Runner in general and in gender.

Content warning: Though there’s nothing explicit, the discussion as a whole focuses on gendered violence.

Topics: Gender, feminism, film, Blade Runner, cyberpunk

Next month, we plan to read what might be the first historical study of science fiction as a genre, Pilgrims Through Space and Time by J. O. Bailey.

This episode we read an article on a mission: "Shadows of the Empire/A New Hope: A Dialectical Critique of Gender Historicization and Utopian Desire in Isabel Fall's “Helicopter Story”" by JD Fulloon, which is a mouthful, and was published in the May 2024 issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly. Fulloon's goal is to engage with "Helicopter Story" not for the controversies surrounding its publication and the backlash, but taking it seriously as a work of literature with something to say, a mission we're entirely on board with. In that spirit, while we do address the context, we focus on engaging with Fulloon's historicizing Marxist analysis of "Helicopter Story" as well as what we find interesting and exciting in the story itself, plus get into some confusion about what plastics are and what the story is doing with military science fiction - and what that Star Wars is doing in that title besides making it a bit longer.

Topics: Gender, trans studies, military SF, Marxism

Next month, we’re reading “Cyberpunk's masculinist legacy: Puppetry, labour and ménage à trois in Blade Runner 2049” by Graham J. Murphy.

For this episode, we read Gary Westfahl's The Mechanics of Wonder: The Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction (1998). This book frustrated us quite a bit with its insistence that the fundamental nature of science fiction was defined in the 20s and has not changed since. On the other hand, we came away with a new appreciation for its central figures, Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell, Jr., especially Gernsback, as thinkers of science fiction, if not theorists per se. The depth of Westfahl's research into these two men's writings fascinated us; we simply disagree strongly with his conclusions. The book presents itself as a challenge to the field of science fiction studies. We find ourselves in the position of answering that challenge.

Topics: sf history, biography

Note: The original 1973 science fiction history by Brian Aldiss is actually called Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction, and the updated version from 1986 is Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction. Apologies for the error!

Next time, we'll be looking at JD Fulloon’s “Shadows of the Empire/A New Hope: A Dialectical Critique of Gender Historicization and Utopian Desire in Isabel Fall’s ‘Helicopter Story’” (2024), this time for certain.

This episode, we read an article from the most recent issue of Science Fiction Studies, one that touches on topics near and dear to our hearts. With “Toward a Science-Fictional Interpretational Method: Reading Three Borges Stories” by Michael O'Krent, we get to engage both with science-fictional reading and the work of Jorge Luis Borges. O'Krent proposes a way to define science fiction around a Delany-derived practice of “reading for worlds”, then applies it to three classic Borges stories. In reading the article, we discuss Borges (of course), genre history, and articles that start with “toward a”. On the way we get into our respective childhood feelings on the finitude of possible human thought and experience, get a bit punchy, and talk about Tlön more than a little.

Topics: Science-fictional reading, SFS, cognitive estrangement

Next time, we'll be looking at JD Fulloon’s “Shadows of the Empire/A New Hope: A Dialectical Critique of Gender Historicization and Utopian Desire in Isabel Fall’s ‘Helicopter Story’” (2024).

This month, we read “The Working Planetologist: Speculative Worlds and the Practice of Climate Science” by Katherine Buse, which is the second chapter of Practices of Speculation: Modeling, Embodiment, Figuration (2020), an anthology collection of pieces on speculation. This article in particular is about Dune and its impact on climate science as a field, so we get into discussions of kangaroo rats, climate models, and what makes fiction “ecological” - with surprise conversation topic Delicious in Dungeon. Buse proposes that climate scientists are, in effect, big nerds, and being big nerds ourselves we find this fascinating, and find her account of the influence of science fiction and science fictional thinking on climatology compelling.

Topics: Speculation, science and technology studies, ecology, fandom

Next month, we’ll read Michael O’Krent’s “Toward a Science-Fictional Interpretational Method: Reading Three Borges Stories” (2024).

This month, we took a brief dip into a different medium with The World Is Born From Zero: Understanding Speculation and Video Games (2022), by Cameron Kunzelman, and got into the mechanics of speculation. This book crosses both science fiction studies and game studies, with a significant infusion of speculative materialism/realism, so there’s a number of new ideas to juggle as we talk over Kunzelman’s approach to science fiction video games. We discuss “speculation” as a philosophical category, and the way Kunzelman locates it in game mechanics, as well as his case studies in games like VA-11 Hall-A’s cyberpunk job training, The Last of Us’ use and misuse of speculation in perspectives, and the various models of climate-change strategy game. We also discuss pessimistic scholarship, grindset nazgûl, and how neither of us know that much about Metal Gear Solid. The book talk we mention in the episode can be found here.

CONTENT WARNING: The third chapter of The World Is Born From Zero discusses anti-black violence and racism in The Last of Us’ narrative structure in detail, and so our discussion from 1:39:52 - 1:50:47.

Topics: Speculation, speculative realism, cognitive estrangement, video games

Note: we learned after recording the episode that A Hand With Many Fingers uses archival information about the Nugan Hand Bank scandal, which we did not know about at the time, and assumed based on its discussion in the book was fictional.

Next episode's reading is TBD, so watch this space!