So the big thing this year was receiving the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Lifetime Achievement Award for Critical Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy. I am still a little freaked out by it.
Other honours this year included being asked to join the advisory board of the soon-to-be-launched Miskatonic Journal of Horror Studies and being invited to give three keynotes and a couple of research papers/talks:
- ‘The Afrocyberpunk City’, The City of the Future symposium, Universität Hamburg, Germany 29–30 January 2016
- ‘Afrofuturism Archive Accrue Artefact’, King’s Fantastic Talks series, King’s College, London, 27 February 2016
- ‘Robots on the Streets, Icebergs in the Skies: London, Austerity, Anthropocene’, Fantasies of Contemporary Culture, Cardiff University/Prifysgol Caerdydd, 23 May 2016
- ‘Afrofuturism, Archive, Anthropocene’, Global Fantastika, University of Lancaster, 4–5 July 2016
- ‘Things Above, and Beyond: the Anthropocene Unconscious of Miéville’s ‘Polynia’ and Llansó’s Crumbs’, Fantastic Material(s): Things and the Workings of the Non-Real, Institute of English Cultures and Literatures, Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach, Poland 7–8 July 2016
Good times were had in Germany, Wales, England and especially Poland – though clearly I am getting old as I was forced to retire sick at the end of the first day of Global Fantastika, which I still feel guilty about. I also examined 4 PhDs: two in the UK, one in Australia (though they never fly you down there) and one in Sweden – where a good time was also had.
[In Katowice, where Karolina, knowing I don’t really like having my photo taken, ensured I existed only in fragments. More on Poland here, here, here, here, here and here. {More on Sweden here, here, here and here.}]
There was also the launch of the monograph series Studies in Global Science Fiction, for Palgrave, which I am coediting with Anindita Bannerjee and Rachel Heywood Ferreira. Our first volume, Ritch Calvin’s Feminist Science Fiction and Feminist Epistemology: Four Modes, is already out. Send proposals.
The nearest I got this year to publishing an article in a refereed journal were an immensely long interview:
- ‘Not Just the Viggo Mortensen of Desolated Left Politics: An Interview with China Miéville’, Paradoxa 28: Global Weirding (2016), edited by Gerry Canavan and Andrew Hageman. The introduction to the issue is here; the other interview, between Andrew, Timothy Morton and Jeff VanderMeer is here; and the contents page from which China and I are mysteriously missing – I assume it is a complex metafictional gag that will make sense when you read the interview – is here
and a chapter in an edited collection:
- ‘Paying Freedom Dues: Marxism, Black Radicalism, and Blaxploitation Sf’ in Ewa Mazierska and Alfredo Suppia, eds, Red Alert: Marxist Approaches to Science Fiction Cinema (Wayne State UP 2016), 72–97
But I did manage some essays, reviews and blogs:
- ‘From Afrofuturism to AfroSF’, Fabrikzeitung (2016)
- ‘Rian Johnson’ in John Berra, ed., Directory of American Independent Cinema, volume 3 (Intellect/ Chicago UP 2016)
- ‘Ti West’ in John Berra, ed., Directory of American Independent Cinema, volume 3 (Intellect/ Chicago UP 2016)
- ‘Some Theses on Monsters; occasioned by reading, and in place of a review of, Margrét Helgadóttir and Jo Thomas, eds, African Monsters (Fox Spirits Books, 2015)’, Salvage online (14 April 2016)
- ‘AfroSF Now: a snapshot, seven novels and a film’, Mithila Review 2 (2016),
- ‘Quentin Meillassoux, Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction’, Radical Philosophy 196 (2016), 45–8
- Short reviews of Crumbs, Hard to Be a God and The Signal for ‘Best Films of 2015’, Vector 283 (2016), 9–16
I also gave a talk on ‘Why Are So Many Robots Female?’ for the We, Robot event at the Being Human festival, finished an article on Afrofuturism, Robots of Brixton and Crumbs, wrote four book chapters (on cult sf movies, dystopian sf movies, sf between the wars, and afrofuturism in the 1960s and 1970s, all but one of which still need revising and polishing), a review essay and two book reviews.
I am knackered.
Mark Bould 