Science Fiction, New Space Opera, and Neoliberal Globalism

Jerome Winter

Description

One of the few points critics and readers can agree upon when discussing the fiction popularly known as New Space Opera – a recent subgenre movement of science fiction – is its canny engagement with contemporary cultural politics in the age of globalisation. This book avers that the complex political allegories of New Space Opera respond to the recent cultural phenomenon known as neoliberalism, which entails the championing of the deregulation and privatisation of social services and programmes in the service of global free-market expansion. Providing close readings of the evolving New Space Opera canon and cultural histories and theoretical contexts of neoliberalism as a regnant ideology of our times, this book conceptualises a means to appreciate this thriving movement of popular literature.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Science Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783169450
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 16 Mo

Extrait

New Dimensions in Science Fiction

Science Fiction, New Space Opera, and Neoliberal Globalism

New Dimensions in Science Fiction

Series Editors Professor Pawel Frelik Maria CurieSklodowska University

Professor Patrick B. Sharp California State University, Los Angeles

Editorial Board Dr. Grace Dillon Portland State University

Dr. Tanya Krzywinska Falmouth University

Dr. Isiah Lavender III Louisiana State University

Prof. Roger Luckhurst Birkbeck University of London

Dr. John Rieder University of Hawai‘i

Science Fiction, New Space Opera, and Neoliberal Globalism Nostalgia for Infinity

Jerome Winter

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS 2016

© Jerome Winter, 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.

The publishers have generously granted permission for use of quotations from the following copyrighted works: Shismatrix , courtesy of Writer’s House, LLC; Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh courtesy of Hachette Book Group and Curtis Brown Ltd.; Consider Phlebas , Excession , Matter , The Player of Games , Surface Detail , Use of Weapons by Iain Banks courtesy of Hachette Book Group; Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson courtesy of Hachette Book Group; and Light, Nova, and Empty Space by M. John Harrison courtesy of The Orion Publishing Group, London.

www.uwp.co.uk

British Library CIP Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN eISBN

9781783169443 9781783169450

The right of Jerome Winter to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Typeset by Marie Doherty Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksham

Series Editors’ Preface

Science fiction (SF) is a global storytelling form of technoscientific modernity which conveys distinct experiences with science, technology and society to a wide range of readers across centuries, continents and cultures. The New Dimensions in Science Fiction series aims to capture the dynamic, worldwide and mediaspanning dimensions of SF storytelling and criticism by providing a venue for scholars from multiple disciplines to explore their ideas on the relations of science and society as expressed in SF.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1

2

3

4

The Neoliberal Masters of the Universe: The Origin of New Space Opera in Samuel R. Delany’s Nova and M. John Harrison’s Centauri Device and Kefahuchi Tract Trilogy

‘Moments in the Fall’: Neoliberal Globalism and Utopian Socialist Desire in Ken MacLeod’s ‘Fall Revolution’ Quartet and Iain M. Banks’s ‘Culture’ Series

Global Feminism and Neoliberal Crisis in Gwyneth Jones’s ‘Aleutian Trilogy’

‘Archipelagoes of Stars’: Caribbean Cosmopolitics in Postcolonial SF

Works cited

Notes Index

ix

1

43

87

127

155

189

205 219

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the irredeemable debt I owe to my PhD dissertation committee members at the University of California, Riverside: Sherryl Vint, Rob Latham, Weihsin Gui and Steven Axelrod, under whose dedicated guidance and with whose generous support I was shepherded towards achieving all the virtues of this book and, needless to say, they are responsible for none of its flaws. Moreover, the journal Extrapolations published an earlier version of a portion of this book’s second chapter in their December 2014 issue. I would like to thank the editorial team at Extrapolations for their copious feedback and faith in the project and, in addition, the editors at Science Fiction Studies for their excellent feedback on related articles and reviews. Furthermore, I wish to acknowledge The Los Angeles Review of Books , under the editorial leadership of Tom Lutz and Johnathan Hahn, and for the speculativefiction page, under the diligent attention of Rob Latham. For this venue, I had the opportunity to interview professional writers in the SF field − Norman Spinrad, Michael Moorcock, Alastair Reynolds and Ken MacLeod − who were all magnanimous with their precious time. My appreciation goes out as well to Nalo Hopkinson for her discussion of Salt Roads with the University of California, Riverside SF Club, and to Tobias Buckell for thoughtfully answering questions during a reading courtesy of Hopkinson’s undergraduate sciencefiction course. Lastly, I cannot explain the depths of my greatest appreciation for my mother and father, Pam and Warren Quattlebaum, as well as my better half, Melinda Winter.