Human Evolution And Fantastic Victorian Fiction

Following the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Victorian anthropology made two apparently contradictory claims: it distinguished "civilized man" from animals and "primitive" humans and it linked them though descent. Paradoxically, it was by placing human history in a deep past shaped by minute, incremental changes (rather than at the apex of Providential order) that evolutionary anthropology could assert a new form of human exceptionalism and define civilized humanity against both human and nonhuman savagery. This book shows how fantastic Victorian and early Edwardian fictions—utopias, dystopias, nonsense literature, gothic horror, and children’s fables—untether human and nonhuman animal agency from this increasingly orthodox account of the deep past. As they imagine worlds that lift the evolutionary constraints on development and as they collapse evolution into lived time, these stories reveal (and even occupy) dynamic landscapes of cognitive descent that contest prevailing anthropological ideas about race, culture, and species difference.

Embark on a thrilling journey through time with Wells' iconic "The Time Machine." This science fiction masterpiece delves into speculative fiction, exploring the possibilities and perils of time travel. Set in the 1890s, the novel is a testament to Wells' visionary imagination and his ability to craft narratives that transcend time.

As the first book-length study of emergent Pakistani speculative fiction written in English, this critical work explores the ways in which contemporary Pakistani authors extend the genre in new directions by challenging the cognitive majoritarianism (usually Western) in this field. Responding to the recent Afro science fiction movement that has spurred non-Western writers to seek a democratization of the broader genre of speculative fiction, Pakistani writers have incorporated elements from djinn mythology, Qur'anic eschatology, "Desi" (South Asian) traditions, local folklore, and Islamic feminisms in their narratives to encourage familiarity with alternative world views. In five chapters, this book analyzes fiction by several established Pakistani authors as well as emerging writers to highlight the literary value of these contemporary works in reconciling competing cognitive approaches, blurring the dividing line between "possibilities" and "impossibilities" in envisioning humanity’s collective future, and anticipating the future of human rights in these envisioned worlds.

Dystopia in Arabic Speculative Fiction: A Poetics of Distress unpacks the nuanced Arabic contribution to speculative fiction. Part of a larger project by Elmeligi to formulate a poetics of literary theory to read Arabic literature, this book examines Arabic dystopian fiction from the lens of social causes of psychological distress. The selected novels combine works by authors already established in studies by Western scholars and many that have not been translated before or have not received enough scholarly attention, yet. The novels represent an array of Arab countries, including Algerian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Kuwaiti, Mauritanian, Syrian, and Tunisian authors. It also highlights the contribution of women authors to Arabic speculative fiction. This book enriches the conversation about what is quite possibly a significant speculative fiction turn in the Arabic novel, as well as provides a new theoretical approach to read such complex and innovative literature.

This book proposes that Ballard’s novels extrapolate the formation of a posthuman subjectivity that is centred around an affirmative understanding of what a human body can do. This new subjectivity transforms constraints and prescribed desires into creative openings in a hyper-mediated control society that conditions docile bodies through technology and consumerism. Set in surrealist predicaments in postwar affluent Western societies, Ballard’s novels remind us of the fragile veneer of order in the familiar every day. In these moments of crisis, complacent characters are compelled to undergo a process of defamiliarisation and transformation of their understanding of the self and the body. The ability to form new relationships with the unfamiliar is imperative to survival in a hostile environment. Ballard delineates both the possibilities and obstacles of forming these relationships. In particular, the author attributes the failure to do so to the irreconcilable contradictions of late capitalism.

Dominated by Darwinism and the numerous guises it assumed, evolutionary theory was a source of opportunities and difficulties for late Victorian novelists. Texts produced by Wells, Hardy, Stoker, and Conrad are exemplary in reflecting and participating in these challenges. Not only do they contend with evolutionary complications, John Glendening argues, but the complexities and entanglements of evolutionary theory, interacting with multiple cultural influences, thoroughly permeate the narrative, descriptive, and thematic fabric of each. All the books Glendening examines, from The Island of Doctor Moreau and Dracula to Heart of Darkness, address the interrelationship between order and chaos revealed and promoted by evolutionary thinking of the period. Glendening's particular focus is on how Darwinism informs novels in relation to a late Victorian culture that encouraged authors to stress, not objective truths illuminated by Darwinism, but rather the contingencies, uncertainties, and confusions generated by it and other forms of evolutionary theory.

This book explains the elimination of maternal characters in American, British, French, and German literature before 1890 by examining motherless creations: Pygmalion’s statue, Frankenstein’s creature, homunculi, automata, androids, golems, and steam men. These beings typify what is now called artificial life, living systems made through manufactured means. Fantasies about creating life ex-utero were built upon misconceptions about how life began, sustaining pseudoscientific beliefs about the birthing body. Physicians, inventors, and authors of literature imagined generating life without women to control the process of reproduction and generate perfect progeny. Thus, some speculative fiction before 1890 belongs to the literary genealogy of transhumanism, the belief that technology will someday transform some humans into superior, immortal beings. Female motherless creations tend to operate as sexual companions. Male ones often emerge as subaltern figures analogous to enslaved beings, illustrating that reproductive rights inform readers’ sense of who counts as human in fictions of artificial life.

Lovecraft in the 21st Century assembles reflections from a wide range of perspectives on the significance of Lovecraft’s influence in contemporary times. Building on a focus centered on the Anthropocene, adaptation, and visual media, the chapters in this collection focus on the following topics: Adaptation of Lovecraft’s legacy in theater, television, film, graphic narratives, video games and game artwork The connection between the writer’s legacy and his life Reading Lovecraft in light of contemporary criticism about capitalism, the posthuman, and the Anthropocene How contemporary authors have worked through the implicit racial and sexual politics in Lovecraft’s fiction Reading Lovecraft’s fiction in light of contemporary approaches to gender and sexuality