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The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction By Rachel Haywood Ferreira (Wesleyan University Press, 2011, 320p, $29.95)
Reviewed by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay
Stories of genre emergence figure prominently in the recent trend towards a global history of sf. In this context, global specifically refers to sf produced outside Europe and the United States in colonized, formerly colonized, or technologically dependent locations in the nineteenth century. Rachel Haywood Ferreira's The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction is a valuable contribution in this trend that highlights the intersection of political exigencies, science, and historical vision in early sf in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, written between 1850 and 1920.
Ferreira's approach to her material is traditional. She employs literary historiography, which is the chronological plotting of literary texts and thematic distribution, as well as the sociological approach which studies the ways in which literary texts are embedded in society and reflect social concerns. Ferreira's use of these traditional approaches is skilful. The four chapters address four different themes. "Displacement in Space and Time" describes works of future history. "The Impact of Darwinism" looks at works that deal with the complex biosocial narratives that were the by-products of Darwinist thought such as social Darwinism, degeneration, race theory, and eugenics. "The Double" analyses texts with artificial humans. "Strange Forces" deals with sf based on discredited or "dubious" sciences such as mesmerism.
Ferreira provides ample helpful summary of the texts she discusses as many of these texts are little known even in Latin America. She analyses the influence of European sf writers and works on writers in Latin America and the constant tension regarding influence from writers in the North, in addition to studying the reception of European science and technology in these countries and the impact of scientific ideas in Latin America. The chapters follow an internal chronology that is necessary for coherence in an emergence narrative. To give an example of her approach, Ferreira discusses Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg's Two Factions Struggle For Life (1875) and stories in Leopoldo Lugones' Strange Forces (1906, revised 1926) as an instance of direct literary influence in the Argentine c ontext. Both these writers attempt to tease out the implications of Darwinism within their fiction in different ways. Holmberg's less known work contains a debate...