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Levy, Michael M., and Farah Mendlesohn, eds. Aliens in Popular Culture. Greenwood, 2019. 335 pp. Hardcover. ISBN 978-1-4408-3832-8. $94.00.
Aliens in Popular Culture is a useful resource of more than 130 short encyclopedia entries on various science fiction texts about the alien written by nearly 90 scholars with diverse expertise. This expansive collection, which is organized as "Entries A-Z," acts as a strong reference guide to crucial sf authors and popular stories, films, and video games, but it is the book's essays that provide its most thought-provoking critiques of the evolution of aliens in fiction and popular culture. Five essays, including an introduction by awardwinning author Gregory Benford, establish four categories that one might use to classify the collection's short one-to-four page encyclopedia entries that follow: alien origins in early sf, alien colonial narratives, the alien as child or child as alien, and the evolution of aliens in video games. The short entries largely provide information on the background, summary, reception, and impact of an sf author, text, or series. Most of the entries are accompanied by a short list of further reading. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in need of an expansive reference guide of essential sf alien narratives that have informed popular culture. The book's strength lies in this capacity and in the five essays that establish its loose framework, but one should not expect a collection of in-depth arguments or analyses aside from the book's five essays.
The book's preface and essays are most valuable. They provide foundational arguments for critiques of alien narratives. The editor, Farah Mendlesohn, opens the volume by contemplating what is at the heart of our fascination with aliens. Mendlesohn positions most alien narratives as either a metaphor for Western colonialism or a critique of it that challenges colonialist presumptions. She furthermore argues that alien texts have helped us to speculate on what other worlds might be and how they might function, and in turn have provided us with tools that help...