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In “‘Great Wall Planet’: Estrangements of Chinese Science Fiction,” Veronica Hollinger offers a few observations about Chinese SF, specifically in terms of its potential to defamiliarize what scholars have begun to refer to as “global science fiction.” She suggests five ways in which Chinese SF can estrange a taken-for-granted Anglo-American mainstream: 1) as an “alien” cultural product; 2) as a product of China’s “rise” as a global superpower; 3) as the product of an “alternate” cultural history; 4) as representative of something called “global science fiction”; and 5) as a kind of “second-language” version of the discourse of Anglo-American globalization. She uses fictional works by Liu Cixin and Han Song to emphasize her points.

In “Beyond Techno-Orientalism: Virtual Worlds and Identity Tourism in Japanese Cyberpunk,” Baryon Tensor Posadas demonstrates how the impact of techno-Orientalism on Japanese SF opens up an important space to articulate the larger stakes of how the mechanisms of colonial cognitive estrangement continue to set the terms for the imagination of futurity. It goes beyond the mere cataloging of cultural misrepresentations. He uses Gorō Masaki’s Venus City (1992) to bring attention to the structural pervasiveness of the gendered and racialized infrastructure that sets the terms of the genre’s attempts to imagine other worlds and futurities.

Chapter 6 examines the cyberpunk subgenre. Beginning in the early eighties, films like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and novels like William Gibson’s Neuromancer employ the conventions of noir and hard-boiled detective fiction in a science-fiction context as a way of mapping the complexities and contradictions of the capitalist world-system. I focus primarily on novels by Gibson in order to argue that the ethos of hybridity and bricolage that defines both cyberpunk and much of the critical discourse on postmodernism is, in the terms of my study, not a violation of authenticity but rather the postmodern form of authenticity. Although cyberpunk rejects essentialist identities in favor of a hybrid, “cyborg” aesthetic, that cyborg aesthetic is imagined as a new site of authentic resistance to the dominance of consumer capitalism.

This chapter explores the history of science fiction in relation to religious ideas about cosmology, human nature, fate, and techno-science. Documenting the evolution of the literary genre from ‘classic’ authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Hugo Gernsback, and Isaac Asimov, to the rise of ‘cyberpunk’ authors such as William Gibson, the chapter examines the relationship of these authors with religious movements such as Theosophy, modern occultism, and New Age spirituality. The chapter argues that science fiction (and science-fictionalized everyday life) constitutes a form of religion outside religious contexts – a secularized, commercially driven religiosity, based on a shared vocabulary of ‘wonder’, ‘awe’, ‘amazement’, ‘redemption’, and ‘salvation’.

Lysa M. Rivera, in “Critical Dystopia and Cyborg Consciousness: Ernest Hogan’s Chicano/a Cyberpunk,” examines the relationship between science fiction and experiences of mestizaje, colonialism, and survival within the greater Chicano/a cultural community. Concentrating on the work of Ernest Hogan, Rivera traces the ways in which Hogan embeds Mesoamerican indigenous mythologies in high-tech, technophilic science fictionalized futures and comments on the synergistic affinities between experiences of alienation under colonialism in the Americas (specifically Mexico) and experiences of posthuman, decentered technologies. Rivera then situates Hogan’s work within an electrifying but unexamined genealogy of Chicano/a cyberpunk produced in direct response to the shifting terrains of borderlands politics in a post-NAFTA late capitalistic world. Drawing on cyborg consciousness as an oppositional practice, Rivera expresses how Chicano/a cyberpunk represents a critical incursion into the classic cyberpunk of the 1980s.

This chapter examines the “Second Wave” comics or komiks subculture in Russia from 1991 to the present. It begins with an assessment of the situation not only for comics but for many other areas of Russian culture following the collapse of Communist rule. It then looks at the rebirth of Russian comics under Perestroika reforms. It considers the success of Mukha (The Fly), an anthology journal published by Vitaly Mukhametzyanov and which represented native Russian comics in their most commercialized, mainstream form. Furthermore, it discusses the rise of a number of komiks journals at the turn of the twentieth century; Russian scholars’ attitudes toward production advances and professionalization of komiks in the late 1990s; and the impact of the Internet on comics, with reference to Komiksolyot, one of the first venues to publish work in a relatively new genre, Cyberpunk. Finally, the chapter analyzes the influence of manga and anime on Russian comics.

Charts the emergence of cyberpunk, especially through the pages of OMNI, and considers its leading authors, including William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling and John Shirley. It also considers the growth of ASIMOV’S SF MAGAZINE under the editorship of Shawna McCarthy who strove to publish more challenging and daring stories. Between these two magazines science fiction began to undergo a new revolution. Even ANALOG, the most conventional of the sf magazines, saw changes introducing more challenging high-tech stories exploring nanotechnology and the technological singularity.

The emergence of cyberpunk and the appearance of a new generation of writers saw the development of a more radical set of magazines for whom OMNI, ASIMOV’S and F&SF did not go far enough. These were called the SF Underground by John Shirley and included Scott Edelman, Lewis Shiner, Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, Paul Di Filippo and others. Like the New Wave of the 1960s they influenced the sf mainstream through broadening ideas, techniques and content. Some of the fiction was dubbed slipstream. Key magazines were PULPHOUSE, NEW PATHWAYS and NOVA EXPRESS.