Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (626 page)

The texts discussed so far suggest that there are two basic “types” of postcolonial science fiction: 1) science fiction created by postcolonial artists, as in the
So Long Been Dreaming
anthology; and 2) science fiction in which postcolonial concerns are an integral part of the plot and theme of the narrative. In the former type, postcolonial issues may or may not be integrated into the narrative; in the latter, postcolonial artists as well as non-postcolonial artists may use science fiction as the medium through which postcolonial concerns are addressed. “The Ice Age Cometh” by noted Indian SF writer Jayant Narlikar, is set in Bombay, which is experiencing a blizzard brought about by a sudden ice age. An Indian scientist had long warned of the event, and it is this scientist to whom the superpowers of the world turn for a solution. This story is actually an example of both basic types of postcolonial science fiction: a science fiction story produced by a postcolonial writer, and a science fiction story in which challenges to Western intellectual and scientific superiority is presented in the form of an Indian scientist who saves the day and the planet. Similarly, in Amitav Ghosh’s 1995 novel The Calcutta Chromosome the superiority of Western science is once again under fire: The discovery of malarial transmission no longer belongs to Nobel Prize winner Ronald Ross, but to the work of the Indians who guided him throughout the process.

Finally, the 2009 film
District 9
provides another clear example of postcolonial science fiction. A group of aliens, derogatorily referred to as “prawns” because of their resemblance to large shrimp, are stranded in a shanty town in Johannesburg, South Africa, after their ship breaks down in the skies above. For twenty years the skyline of Johannesburg has been dominated by the aliens’ ship, and below, the refugees struggle to survive in makeshift shelters. The refugees are to be relocated to another camp outside of the city; the human residents have grown increasingly wary of the aliens’ presence, despite the fact that the violence to be found in District 9 is primarily the work of an opportunistic Nigerian warlord. A government representative, Wikus van de Merwe is given the task of relocating the aliens, and in his attempts to do so, he is exposed to an alien substance that begins to reshape his DNA, turning him into another “prawn.” His firsthand experience of the deprivation, brutality, and indifference experienced by the aliens eventually leads him to defend and identify with the aliens: indeed, he has no other choice, and must rely on one of the aliens, “Christopher,” who has repaired the ship, to return in several years’ time with a cure that will restore Wikus to his human state.

The film is directly inspired by South Africa’s history of apartheid, and in particular events that transpired in District Six, in Cape Town. In that regard, then,
District 9
is a science fiction allegory of apartheid. It also combines specific elements of postcolonial analysis, namely hybridity and subalternity, into focus. Wikus’s transformation has turned him into a physical hybrid: a “prawn” on the outside, but still human within. The concept of hybridity focuses especially on what Michelle Reid describes as “cross cultural fertilization,” which emphasizes the cultural changes wrought upon the culture and identity of the colonized, creating a third, “hybrid” identity. The prawns themselves are subaltern figures: marginalized both physically and socially, the aliens are given no voice in their relocation, nor are those who supposedly “represent” them, including Wikus at the beginning, truly interested in the aliens’ interests and needs.

What this final reading points out is that science fiction itself is ripe for postcolonial analysis; in other words, postcolonial tools, such as hybridity, mimicry, Orientalism, and the subaltern, to name a few, provide useful ways for analyzing science fiction’s relationship with imperialism and those touched by it. Postcolonial science fiction goes even further by giving postcolonial writers the opportunity to rewrite an entire genre still haunted by its own colonial collusion, while also providing a rich imaginative space for these writers to explore the very nature of identity, power, and representation.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. “And the Moon Be Still as Bright.”
The Martian Chronicles.
Grand Master Editions. New York: Bantam, 1979. 48-72.

Ghosh, Amitav.
The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery
. New York: Harper Perennial, 2001.

Hopkinson, Nalo. “Introduction.”
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy
. Eds. Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004. 7-9.

Kerslake, Patricia.
Science Fiction and Empire
. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2007.

Kessel, John. “Invaders.”
The Norton Book of Science Fiction
. Ursula K. LeGuin and Brian Attebery, eds. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. 830–850.

Loomba, Ania.
Colonialism/Postcolonialism
. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Murphy, Pat. “His Vegetable Wife.”
The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960–1990.
Ursula LeGuin and Brian Attebery, eds. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993. 628–632.

Narlikar, Jayant V. “The Ice Age Cometh.”
It Happened Tomorrow: A Collection of 19 Select Science Fiction Stories from Various Indian Languages
. Ed. Bal Phondke. Delhi: National Book Trust, 1993. 1–20.

Reid, Michelle. “Postcolonialism.”
The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction
. Eds. Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts, and Sheryl Vint. New York: Routledge, 2009. 256–66.

Rieder, John.
Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction
. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008.

Shohat, Ella. “Notes on the Postcolonial.”
Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader
. Ed. Padmini Mongia. London: Arnold, 1996. 321–34.

Spurr, David.
The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration
. Post-Contemporary Interventions Series. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993.

Notes

It is important here to define not just “imperialism,” but “colonialism,” a related, but distinct term. John Rieder, in Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, defines colonialism as “the entire process by which European economy and culture penetrated and transformed the non-European world over the last five centuries, including exploration, extraction of resources, expropriation and settlement of the land, imperial administration and competition, and [later] postcolonial renegotiation of the distribution of power and wealth among the former colonizers and colonized” (25). Imperialism is defined as the “rule by proxy governments or bureaucratic administrations (the British in Australia versus the British in India)” (25). While Rieder separates “imperialism” from “colonialism” by use of the word “proxy,” and, as seen in the definition of colonialism, Rieder situates imperialism as a practice of colonialism, it is important to note that “rule by proxy governments” oftentimes entailed similar practices of resource extraction, land resettlement, and the forcible suppression of “native” resistance to “imperial administration.” Both imperialism and colonialism are rooted in similar beliefs: namely, the superiority of Western culture, and the implicit inferiority, even barbarity, of non-Western cultures and peoples. Only through the “intervention” of the West, then, can a colony, such as India, for example, be brought to the light of civilization and progress. This sort of rhetoric helped to justify the truth of colonial practice and imperial interest: land, resources, wealth, power. “Imperialism” as it is being used here, then, is as a “catch-all” term for what Rieder has identified regarding both terms: the “entire process” of cultural penetration and transformation of other cultures and peoples, Terran and otherwise, whether that occurs through direct interaction or by proxy.

* * * *

Ericka Hoagland
is an assistant professor of English at Stephen F. Austin State University where she teaches classes on world literature, travel writing, science fiction, and postcolonial literature and theory. She co-edited, with Reema Sarwal, the 2010 anthology of critical essays
Science Fiction, Imperialism, and the Third World published by McFarland, and has contributed pieces to Greenwood’s Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy (2008), and Gender and Sexuality in African Literature and Film (Africa World Press 2007).

(1969– )

I suppose it says something about the eclecticism of the SF field that Mary Robinette Kowal isn’t the only professional puppeteer I know who works in the field. (The other is editor Kathleen David, who is married to writer Peter David…as you may have gathered, SF publishing is a tightly woven community). A veteran of Atlanta’s Center for Puppetry Arts and the children’s TV show
LazyTown
, Kowal has her own puppeteering company, Other Hand Productions, and remains just as active in puppetry as she is in publishing.

Kowal first broke into SF publishing with “Portrait of Ari” (2006), and won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2008. Since then she’s had a Nebula nomination (for her first novel,
Shades of Milk and Honey
) and two Hugo nominations, including for the following short-short story.

First published in
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume 2
, February 2008

Sliding his hands over the clay, Sly relished the moisture oozing around his fingers. The clay matted down the hair on the back of his hands making them look almost human. He turned the potter’s wheel with his prehensile feet as he shaped the vase. Pinching the clay between his fingers he lifted the wall of the vase, spinning it higher.

Someone banged on the window of his pen. Sly jumped and then screamed as the vase collapsed under its own weight. He spun and hurled it at the picture window like feces. The clay spattered against the Plexiglas, sliding down the window.

In the courtyard beyond the glass, a group of school kids leapt back, laughing. One of them swung his arms aping Sly crudely. Sly bared his teeth, knowing these people would take it as a grin, but he meant it as a threat. Swinging down from his stool, he crossed his room in three long strides and pressed his dirty hand against the window. Still grinning, he wrote SSA. Outside, the letters would be reversed.

The student’s teacher flushed as red as a female in heat and called the children away from the window. She looked back once as she led them out of the courtyard, so Sly grabbed himself and showed her what he would do if she came into his pen.

Her naked face turned brighter red and she hurried away. When they were gone, Sly rested his head against the glass. The metal in his skull thunked against the window. It wouldn’t be long now, before a handler came to talk to him.

Damn.

He just wanted to make pottery. He loped back to the wheel and sat down again with his back to the window. Kicking the wheel into movement, Sly dropped a new ball of clay in the center and tried to lose himself.

In the corner of his vision, the door to his room snicked open. Sly let the wheel spin to a halt, crumpling the latest vase.

Vern poked his head through. He signed, “You okay?”

Sly shook his head emphatically and pointed at the window.

“Sorry.” Vern’s hands danced. “We should have warned you that they were coming.”

“You should have told them that I was not an animal.”

Vern looked down in submission. “I did. They’re kids.”

“And I’m a chimp. I know.” Sly buried his fingers in the clay to silence his thoughts.

“It was Delilah. She thought you wouldn’t mind because the other chimps didn’t.”

Sly scowled and yanked his hands free. “I’m not like the other chimps.” He pointed to the implant in his head. “Maybe Delilah should have one of these. Seems like she needs help thinking.”

“I’m sorry.” Vern knelt in front of Sly, closer than anyone else would come when he wasn’t sedated. It would be so easy to reach out and snap his neck. “It was a lousy thing to do.”

Sly pushed the clay around on the wheel. Vern was better than the others. He seemed to understand the hellish limbo where Sly lived—too smart to be with other chimps, but too much of an animal to be with humans. Vern was the one who had brought Sly the potter’s wheel which, by the Earth and Trees, Sly loved. Sly looked up and raised his eyebrows. “So what did they think of my show?”

Vern covered his mouth, masking his smile. The man had manners. “The teacher was upset about the ‘evil robot monkey.’”

Sly threw his head back and hooted. Served her right.

“But Delilah thinks you should be disciplined.” Vern, still so close that Sly could reach out and break him, stayed very still. “She wants me to take the clay away since you used it for an anger display.”

Sly’s lips drew back in a grimace built of anger and fear. Rage threatened to blind him, but he held on, clutching the wheel. If he lost it with Vern—rational thought danced out of his reach. Panting, he spun the wheel trying to push his anger into the clay.

The wheel spun. Clay slid between his fingers. Soft. Firm and smooth. The smell of earth lived in his nostrils. He held the world in his hands. Turning, turning, the walls rose around a kernel of anger, subsuming it.

His heart slowed with the wheel and Sly blinked, becoming aware again as if he were slipping out of sleep. The vase on the wheel still seemed to dance with life. Its walls held the shape of the world within them. He passed a finger across the rim.

Vern’s eyes were moist. “Do you want me to put that in the kiln for you?”

Sly nodded.

“I have to take the clay. You understand that, don’t you.”

Sly nodded again staring at his vase. It was beautiful.

Vern scowled. “The woman makes me want to hurl feces.”

Sly snorted at the image, then sobered. “How long before I get it back?”

Vern picked up the bucket of clay next to the wheel. “I don’t know.” He stopped at the door and looked past Sly to the window. “I’m not cleaning your mess. Do you understand me?”

For a moment, rage crawled on his spine, but Vern did not meet his eyes and kept staring at the window. Sly turned.

The vase he had thrown lay on the floor in a pile of clay.

Clay.

“I understand.” He waited until the door closed, then loped over and scooped the clay up. It was not much, but it was enough for now.

Sly sat down at his wheel and began to turn.

* * * *

Copyright © 2008 by Mary Robinette Kowal.