What do you think?
Rate this book
Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction
This is the first full-length study of emerging Anglo-American science fiction's relation to the history, discourses, and ideologies of colonialism and imperialism. Nearly all scholars and critics of early science fiction acknowledge that colonialism is an important and relevant part of its historical context, and recent scholarship has emphasized imperialism's impact on late Victorian Gothic and adventure fiction and on Anglo-American popular and literary culture in general. John Rieder argues that colonial history and ideology are crucial components of science fiction's displaced references to history and its engagement in ideological production. He proposes that the profound ambivalence that pervades colonial accounts of the exotic other establishes the basic texture of much science fiction, in particular its vacillation between fantasies of discovery and visions of disaster. Combining original scholarship and theoretical sophistication with a clearly written presentation suitable for students as well as professional scholars, this study offers new and innovative readings of both acknowledged classics and rediscovered gems.
Includes discussion of works by Edwin A. Abbott, Edward Bellamy, Edgar Rice Burroughs, John W. Campbell, George Tomkyns Chesney, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard, Edmond Hamilton, W. H. Hudson, Richard Jefferies, Henry Kuttner, Alun Llewellyn, Jack London, A. Merritt, Catherine L. Moore, William Morris, Garrett P. Serviss, Mary Shelley, Olaf Stapledon, and H. G. Wells.
Includes discussion of works by Edwin A. Abbott, Edward Bellamy, Edgar Rice Burroughs, John W. Campbell, George Tomkyns Chesney, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard, Edmond Hamilton, W. H. Hudson, Richard Jefferies, Henry Kuttner, Alun Llewellyn, Jack London, A. Merritt, Catherine L. Moore, William Morris, Garrett P. Serviss, Mary Shelley, Olaf Stapledon, and H. G. Wells.
200 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2008
33 people are currently reading
543 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 1, 2024
Research read. Excellent study of colonialism as a significant historic context for early science fiction. Rieder looks at how the early genre ‘lives and breathes’ in the atmosphere of colonial history and its discourses, how it reflects or contributes to ideological production of ideas about the shape of history, and how it might, in varying degrees, enact a struggle over humankind’s ability to reshape it.
Rieder frames speculative fiction in a ‘colonial gaze’. Key to the history of the genre is the realisation that “one’s own culture is only one of a number of possible cultures”, which points to the concept of pluriversality so favoured by decoloniality.
He comments:
… many of the repetitive motifs that coalesced into the genre of science fiction represent ideological ways of grasping the social consequences of colonialism, including the fantastic appropriation and rationalisation of unevenly distributed colonial wealth in the homeland and in the colonies, the racist ideologies that enabled colonialist exploitation, and the cognitive impact of radical cultural differences on the home culture.
Rieder frames speculative fiction in a ‘colonial gaze’. Key to the history of the genre is the realisation that “one’s own culture is only one of a number of possible cultures”, which points to the concept of pluriversality so favoured by decoloniality.
He comments:
… many of the repetitive motifs that coalesced into the genre of science fiction represent ideological ways of grasping the social consequences of colonialism, including the fantastic appropriation and rationalisation of unevenly distributed colonial wealth in the homeland and in the colonies, the racist ideologies that enabled colonialist exploitation, and the cognitive impact of radical cultural differences on the home culture.
January 9, 2015
Excellent! Clear and readable writing, good pace, great selection of texts discussed, extensive notes. Highly recommended for critical theorists and sci-fi fans.
April 19, 2017
Es muy interesante.
Aunque el título sugiere que aplica un punto de vista postcolonial a la historia de la ciencia ficción, y ciertamente eso está y es interesante, creo que el valor del libro es más general por su manera de fijarse en la evolución de temas y motivos en los orígenes del género, más que en la aparición de obras clave (que también utiliza a modo de ejemplo, claro).
Aunque el título sugiere que aplica un punto de vista postcolonial a la historia de la ciencia ficción, y ciertamente eso está y es interesante, creo que el valor del libro es más general por su manera de fijarse en la evolución de temas y motivos en los orígenes del género, más que en la aparición de obras clave (que también utiliza a modo de ejemplo, claro).
March 22, 2020
If you only ever read one scholarly book about science fiction, this should probably be it. I don’t think there’s another book that does such a good job of identifying and demonstrating the one cultural-historical dynamic that underlies the genre’s development.
October 21, 2011
I am glad to see someone taking science fiction seriously. Enjoyed the breakdown.
March 9, 2022
This was basically an examination of science fiction from the republications of Frankenstein around 1830, to right at World War II - so basically immediately pre-Asimov and Clarke.
It was pretty readable as far as academic work goes. There's a bit of apologia for Jack London and H.G. Wells, but for the most part it's a pretty good examination of how colonialism is baked into the fabric of science fiction and the very concept of the novel in a more general sense.
It was cool to see where science fiction started and to start to get an idea of where and why "silver age" science fiction is aging so poorly.
It was pretty readable as far as academic work goes. There's a bit of apologia for Jack London and H.G. Wells, but for the most part it's a pretty good examination of how colonialism is baked into the fabric of science fiction and the very concept of the novel in a more general sense.
It was cool to see where science fiction started and to start to get an idea of where and why "silver age" science fiction is aging so poorly.
December 10, 2024
To be honest, if I had a better idea of what this book was before I ordered I might not have gotten it. Accidentally this became the second book I have read this year about 19th-century SF, that predates the actual invention of the name of the genre itself. The author is a researcher and scholar I was not familiar with before reading this book. First things first, this is an excellent well well-researched book, that said when I ordered it I thought it was entirely about the early pulps.
There is little coverage of such stuff, but the majority of the book covers the era at the end of the 19th century and how the fantastic literature of the era responded to Colonialism at a time when it was at its nakedly worst phase. Of course, there is a lot of breakdown of HG Wells, including the incredible background on Time Machine, War of the Worlds and I enjoyed the analysis of my favorite Wells novel the Island of Doctor Moreau. Thankfully this book goes deeper and provides insight beyond the classics we remember.
19th-century pre-SF is not exactly my wheelhouse, I am certainly excited to become more knowledgeable in this area of the genre. One thing this book does is highlight the fiction that was available to most of the Golden Age authors as children. There is no shortage of books that explore Wells or Edgar Rice Burroughs but what this book does well is present an argument for how many of these works interface with 19th-century ideals of Colonial conquest. Often these novels reflect those modes of thinking or are influenced by them.
The lost land narratives of the era, of untouched islands and civilizations often expressed the nasty othering that was inherent to colonial conquest.
Otherwise lost books are what I read books like this for. Most interesting to me was a popular subgenre at the time that went by the name Future Wars. There were also disaster novels like After London which sounds great to me.
This is a pretty important work of SF academic research that I think should be in every library for scholars who study or teach the history of Science Fiction.
There is little coverage of such stuff, but the majority of the book covers the era at the end of the 19th century and how the fantastic literature of the era responded to Colonialism at a time when it was at its nakedly worst phase. Of course, there is a lot of breakdown of HG Wells, including the incredible background on Time Machine, War of the Worlds and I enjoyed the analysis of my favorite Wells novel the Island of Doctor Moreau. Thankfully this book goes deeper and provides insight beyond the classics we remember.
19th-century pre-SF is not exactly my wheelhouse, I am certainly excited to become more knowledgeable in this area of the genre. One thing this book does is highlight the fiction that was available to most of the Golden Age authors as children. There is no shortage of books that explore Wells or Edgar Rice Burroughs but what this book does well is present an argument for how many of these works interface with 19th-century ideals of Colonial conquest. Often these novels reflect those modes of thinking or are influenced by them.
The lost land narratives of the era, of untouched islands and civilizations often expressed the nasty othering that was inherent to colonial conquest.
Otherwise lost books are what I read books like this for. Most interesting to me was a popular subgenre at the time that went by the name Future Wars. There were also disaster novels like After London which sounds great to me.
This is a pretty important work of SF academic research that I think should be in every library for scholars who study or teach the history of Science Fiction.
Read
October 10, 2023sharp book. didn't feel like anything wished or washed in his argumentation or evidence, which was cool. it did read fast, a little too fast for me; i feel i wasn't great at following arguments, as they were a little too tight, but also i was jetlagged as hell while reading this so who can say.
across these essays, i think rieder does a really cool job pointing out science fiction works that both intentionally undermine, satirize, or trouble the traditional colonial gaze -- for ex inverting it in War of the Worlds -- while point ought ways these works will still reproduce colonialism. his take isn't as straightforward as "scifi reproduces colonialist thought" as much as it is an interaction, a product of its time, a neuroticism of sorts around colonialism and imperialism, and therefore expresses fear, criticism, and admiration around colonialism all.
specific bits i liked was interpreting "Who G0es There" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" not just as cold war "who knows who is a commie" paranoia, but also a colonialist guilt/fear about being invaded by the colonizer, as colonialism itself shifted from taking resources and killing natives to transforming them and their economies and culture and therefore their selves beyond recognition. i also liked the reads on the martians in War of the Worlds as all brain and no body; of these hyper technologized, biologically-devoid beings as a sort of *racialized* end point; they are manifestations of a /natural/ superiority and its evolutionary endpoint, which is a biological antipathy towards lesser creatures by virtue of evolving past the biological. i think this is also a good example of rieder pointing out how War of the Worlds is obviously critiquing british treatment of tasmanians, while also still upholding the rhetoric of "survival of the fittest" in some parts.
another cool thing about this book is that it doesn't read these works in isolation, but rieder takes care to contextualize them in terms of publication date, but also in terms of popularization date. for ex he points out that Frankenstein received a resurgence in popularity when it was republished in the late 1890s (it had a more restricted publication when it was written in 1818); and that its popularity perhaps could be people reading into or annealing racial interpretations of the work that Shelley perhaps didn't intend. i thought this was really thoughtful approach to historicizing the phenomenon of scifi as well.
i defo should reread this at some point, again i Ran through it. fun!
across these essays, i think rieder does a really cool job pointing out science fiction works that both intentionally undermine, satirize, or trouble the traditional colonial gaze -- for ex inverting it in War of the Worlds -- while point ought ways these works will still reproduce colonialism. his take isn't as straightforward as "scifi reproduces colonialist thought" as much as it is an interaction, a product of its time, a neuroticism of sorts around colonialism and imperialism, and therefore expresses fear, criticism, and admiration around colonialism all.
specific bits i liked was interpreting "Who G0es There" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" not just as cold war "who knows who is a commie" paranoia, but also a colonialist guilt/fear about being invaded by the colonizer, as colonialism itself shifted from taking resources and killing natives to transforming them and their economies and culture and therefore their selves beyond recognition. i also liked the reads on the martians in War of the Worlds as all brain and no body; of these hyper technologized, biologically-devoid beings as a sort of *racialized* end point; they are manifestations of a /natural/ superiority and its evolutionary endpoint, which is a biological antipathy towards lesser creatures by virtue of evolving past the biological. i think this is also a good example of rieder pointing out how War of the Worlds is obviously critiquing british treatment of tasmanians, while also still upholding the rhetoric of "survival of the fittest" in some parts.
another cool thing about this book is that it doesn't read these works in isolation, but rieder takes care to contextualize them in terms of publication date, but also in terms of popularization date. for ex he points out that Frankenstein received a resurgence in popularity when it was republished in the late 1890s (it had a more restricted publication when it was written in 1818); and that its popularity perhaps could be people reading into or annealing racial interpretations of the work that Shelley perhaps didn't intend. i thought this was really thoughtful approach to historicizing the phenomenon of scifi as well.
i defo should reread this at some point, again i Ran through it. fun!
March 31, 2019
Achei o livro excelente, fortemente embasado em uma grande quantidade de produções nos primórdios da ficção científica e traçando paralelos bem fundamentados com eixos centrais à colonialidade e também a gêneros literários que a antecederam
December 21, 2024
One of the more interesting reads this semester. It's easy to understand critiques within science fiction, but I was a big fan of how Rieder's work takes a step back and explains the intimate connection between Colonialism and the existence of Sci Fi as a genre in the first place.
February 7, 2022
If you do not have a background in academia and some familiarity with critical theory this is not a book you will enjoy.
May 1, 2020
This was a somewhat dense academic-style text, but despite that it was engaging and kept my interest. I had not read or watched a majority of the sci-fi media referenced by the author as most of it was very early sci-fi. Despite that, the concepts were still illustrated very well and if anything it made me want to track down the referenced sources and watch/read them.
Read
April 22, 2012Read selectively but intensively for school. A useful though somewhat dry history of the emergence of science fiction as a genre in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and its intertwining with colonialism.
May 10, 2012
Two stars is probably an unfair rating, but only its introduction and some of its general ideas therein are useful for my dissertation work.
The rest? Eh. I know it is an academic work, but I read lots of that and trust me, it doesn't have to be so dull.
The rest? Eh. I know it is an academic work, but I read lots of that and trust me, it doesn't have to be so dull.
February 16, 2023
This a very thoughtful and provoking analysis of the formation of the genre from a social science perspective.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews