{"id":744,"date":"2020-12-31T17:35:03","date_gmt":"2020-12-31T17:35:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/?post_type=article&p=744"},"modified":"2021-04-29T13:42:29","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T13:42:29","slug":"editorial-no-5-2020","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/archives\/article\/editorial-no-5-2020","title":{"rendered":"Editorial – No. 5 (2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo: Duarte Amaral Netto<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Messengers From The Stars<\/em> \u2013 No. 5 (2020)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

GUEST EDITOR: Matthew Hill<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CO-EDITOR: Jo\u00e3o F\u00e9lix<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This issue of Messengers from the Stars <\/em>is largely concerned with two interrelated notions: that of utopia<\/em>, the imagination of an improved or idealized society, and its obverse, dystopia, <\/em>an imagination of a corrupted society governed and structured by the most corrosive human impulses.  Critically examining these fictional worlds can often serve as a means to more fully understanding our own current realities; through the unfamiliar lens of the unreal, the myriad problems and challenges of our own world can be seen more clearly. Such a focus is particularly relevant in 2020, a year that has been marked by accelerated climate-related catastrophes, pervasive racial, ethnic, and religious conflict, the ascent of far-right authoritarianism, and a global pandemic that has transformed modern life and killed nearly two million people.  The articles and stories in this year\u2019s issue shed light on how numerous works of fiction and film have engaged with these new and possible versions of our world.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan Hay\u2019s \u201cUtopia\u2019s Extinction: The Anthroposcenic Landscapes of Ursula K. Le Guin,\u201d illustrates how Le Guin\u2019s fiction reconfigures humanity\u2019s relationship with its environment, offering an alternative to the harmful human agendas of controlling\u2014and often ruthlessly exploiting\u2014the natural world.   Le Guin\u2019s Hainish Cycle, <\/em>according to Hay, imagines a humanity recognizing its ultimate symbiosis with nature, rejecting overriding notions of utopian \u201cprogress.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later utopian works by Le Guin and Margaret Atwood\ncomprise the subject of Trang Dang\u2019s \u201cIs there still hope for a better future?\nProbing the answer in Ursula Le Guin\u2019s The\nDispossessed <\/em>and Margaret Atwood\u2019s The\nYear of the Flood<\/em>.\u201d  In this article, Dang presents both novels as\nwhat Tom Moylan has called \u201ccritical utopias\u201d that satirize and critique\ncurrent social realities and offer the possibility of \u201ca healthier and more harmonious\nsociety.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recognizing a darker counterpoint to the vision\noffered by Le Guin and Atwood\u2019s work, \u201cBlack Mirror\u2019s <\/em>\u2018Fifteen Million\nMerits\u2019: Re-Defining Human Bodies with Dystopian Technology,\u201d by Zita H\u00fcsing\nexamines \u201cwhat it means to be human <\/em>in our digital times.\u201d  H\u00fcsing argues that the \u201cFifteen Million\nMerits\u201d episode of the BBC \/ Netflix series Black Mirror <\/em>reveals and\nimplicitly protests an accelerating late-capitalist nightmare, a dystopian interconnection\nbetween humanity and technology that ultimately dehumanizes and commodifies\npeople. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a similar interrogation of a capitalist dystopia,\nthe FOX series Gotham <\/em>(2014-2019) is the subject of Rhiannon McHarrie\u2019s \u201cThere\nare no heroes in Gotham\u201d: Subverting the Superhero Narrative and Depicting\nDystopian Landscapes in Gotham.<\/em>\u201d \nHere, McHarrie discusses at length how the series, through an inversion\nof the superhero narrative that focuses on primarily on villains, both builds\nand critiques a materialistic dystopia of corruption and power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luke Holmaas\u2019 essay \u201cSome Years From This Exact\nMoment: Ambivalent Dystopian Science Fiction Satire\u201d offers a take on a similar\nact of social critique as that present in Gotham <\/em>through the analysis of\n\u201ctrashy\u201d satire films The Running Man, Southland Tales, <\/em>and Gamer.  <\/em>The \u201cexaggeration and excess\u201d in these\nfilms, Holmaas suggests, defines these works as \u201cambivalent dystopian science\nfiction satires\u201d that are often misunderstood and unjustly dismissed by critics\nand scholars.   <\/em>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Likewise adjusting a critical and scholarly paradigm\nis Ali Bouacha Oualid and Kaid Nassima\u2019s essay \u201cBridging Afrofuturism and Arab SF: Locating the\nContemporary Algerian SF within the Postcolonial Speculative Fiction.\u201d This\nessay situates the body of contemporary Algerian Science Fiction within the\nAfrofuturist and Post-Colonial frames by \n\u201creflecting on [the Arab and Afrofuturist] colonial and post-colonial\nexperiences respectively,\u201d while also examining the relative scarcity of Arab\nand North African science fiction, which, in the authors\u2019 view, should have\npromoted \u201csimilar artistic expressions\u201d to Black Afrofuturism, given the\n\u201chistorical commonalities\u201d between the traditions.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A similar act of\nconnection, this time between the past and future, is explored in In\u00eas Vaz\u2019s \u201cNavigating\nthe Stars: Thinking the Present and Projecting the Future by Looking at the\nPast.\u201d  Here, Vaz critically examines the\nanimated steampunk film Treasure Planet <\/em>(2002) as a recasting of the Victorian\npast and somewhat problematic \u201chopeful message for the future.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike Carey\u2019s short story \u201cI Will Tell You Seven\u201d takes\nplace in a dystopian world of superstition and violence populated by sorcerers,\nghosts, witches, giants, and shapeshifters. The story\u2019s undead protagonist,\nhowever, chronicles a righteous battle against monsters of another, far more\ndangerous type.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue\u2019s concluding entry is Farah AlYaqout\u2019s\nreview of Palestine+100: Stories from a Century after the Nakba<\/em>, the 2018 PEN Translate award-winning\nanthology of Palestinian science fiction. \nThe collection, according to AlYaquot, explores through the futuristic,\nspeculative lens the \u201cdystopian reality\u201d of the Palestinian diaspora, both\nwithin and without Palestine.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is our hope that this issue of Messengers from\nthe Stars<\/em>, through its various interrogations of this world and other\npossible ones, offers insight into our particular cultural and social\nreality.  Enjoy!  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew Hill. Photograph by Duarte Amaral Netto<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":718,"menu_order":18,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"issuem_issue":[25],"issuem_issue_categories":[4],"issuem_issue_tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1255,"href":"https:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/744\/revisions\/1255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"issuem_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issuem_issue?post=744"},{"taxonomy":"issuem_issue_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issuem_issue_categories?post=744"},{"taxonomy":"issuem_issue_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issuem_issue_tags?post=744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}