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History and Speculative Fiction

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  • Open Access
  • © 2024

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Overview

Editors:
  1. John L. Hennessey

    1. Lund University, Lund, Sweden

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  • Contributes new perspectives on recent popular works of speculative fiction
  • Examines the synergies between history and science fiction
  • Engages with postcolonialism
  • This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access

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About this book

This open access book demonstrates that despite different epistemological starting points, history and speculative fiction perform similar work in “making the strange familiar” and “making the familiar strange” by taking their readers on journeys through space and time. Excellent history, like excellent speculative fiction, should cause readers to reconsider crucial aspects of their society that they normally overlook or lead them to reflect on radically different forms of social organization. Drawing on Gunlög Fur’s postcolonial concept of concurrences, and with contributions that explore diverse examples of speculative fiction and historical encounters using a variety of disciplinary approaches, this volume provides new perspectives on colonialism, ecological destruction, the nature of humanity, and how to envision a better future.



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Table of contents (14 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
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  2. Introduction to History and Speculative Fiction: Essays in Honor of Gunlög Fur

    • John L. Hennessey
    Pages 1-25Open Access
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  3. Colonialism, Oppression and Concurrences

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 27-27
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    2. Concurrences and the Planetary Emergency: Ursula K. Le Guin in the Capitalocene

      • Johan Höglund
      Pages 29-44Open Access
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    3. Concurrent Whiteness: Science Fiction Film’s Close Encounters in Apartheid South Africa

      • Ashleigh Harris
      Pages 45-64Open Access
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    4. Settler Colonial Solutions to Settler Colonial Problems: Settler Cinemas and the Crisis of Colonization of Outer Space

      • Janne Lahti
      Pages 65-81Open Access
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    5. The Weirdness of White Strangers: Imaginations of Westerners in Southeast Asian Lore and Tradition

      • Hans Hägerdal
      Pages 83-99Open Access
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    6. How [Not] to Run a Colony in the Distant Past and the Future

      • Karen Ordahl Kupperman
      Pages 101-119Open Access
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  6. History, Speculative Fiction and Real-World Social Change

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 245-245
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    2. Intervening in the Present Through Fictions of the Future

      • Kristín Loftsdóttir
      Pages 247-263Open Access
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    3. Building a Kinship Society (Short Story)

      • David Belden
      Pages 265-284Open Access
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  7. Back Matter

    Pages 285-293
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Reviews

"Proposing a symbiosis between history and speculative fiction, this wide-ranging collection of essays asks how critical visions of alternative possibility can help us confront the dire legacies of colonialism, the specter of ecological catastrophe, and the burdens of systemic injustice. Historians and literary scholars alike should welcome this intervention." (John Rieder, Professor Emeritus, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa)


"This volume makes a substantial contribution to the scholarship on speculative fiction by illuminating how the concept of ‘concurrences,’ as articulated and theorized by Gunlög Fur, can serve as a valuable methodological tool in the study of speculative fiction. Drawing on a wide variety of cultural and historical sources, the essays in this volume offer useful case studies that render the concept of concurrences more comprehensible through concrete application." (Cyrus R. K. Patell, New York University)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    John L. Hennessey

About the editor

John L. Hennessey is a research fellow in the History of Ideas and Sciences at Lund University. He has published on global colonial history and the history of science in journals including Science in Context, History and Anthropology, French Colonial History, Settler Colonial Studies and Japan Review. 


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: History and Speculative Fiction

  • Editors: John L. Hennessey

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42235-5

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2024

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-42234-8Published: 15 December 2023

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-42237-9Due: 15 January 2024

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-42235-5Published: 14 December 2023

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIV, 293

  • Topics: Comparative Literature, Literature, general, History of Science, Modern History

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