Tag Archives: Science fiction

History and SFF Storytelling: A New Monthly Column

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On October 15, 2019, Tor.com published the following post, announcing the launch of  the column I will be writing for them. I am really excited about this column. Not only because it’s about history and the historian’s craft, but because I have been wanting to work with Tor.com for a long time.

Enjoy!

History and SFF Storytelling: A New Monthly Column.

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Welcome to Tor.com’s new column on History and SFF!

My name is Erika Harlitz-Kern, and I will be your guide during the coming months in discussing the ways that history is used in fantasy and science fiction. But don’t worry—I won’t be dissecting your favorite story digging for historical inaccuracies and judging its entertainment value based on what I find… The purpose of this column is to take a look at how authors of SFF novels and novellas—with a focus on more recent works, published after the year 2000—use the tools of the trade of historians to tell their stories.

When any scholar does research, they use a set of discipline-specific tools to make…

Click here to read the post in its entirety.

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.

I’m on Goodreads

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Last year I took the plunge and joined Goodreads. I’ve been searching for a way to keep track of my readings as well as writing short reviews, since I’ve noticed that doing both of these things helps me retain what I read to a higher degree. I’ve tried keeping book journals, writing about books here on The Boomerang, tweeting about books I’ve read, but nothing seemed to work out in the long run.

I joined Goodreads in July last year, and so far, it seems to be working out well. If you’d like to follow me on Goodreads, you can find me there under my full name.

Here’s a sample of the books I’ve read and reviewed on Goodreads. Hopefully it will help you find some new books and authors to read. Either way, I hope you enjoy the reviews.

Nnedi Okorafor, Binti: Home.

Eric Idle, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. A Sortabiography.

Brian McClellan, Promise of Blood.

Aeschylus, Oresteia.

J.Y. Yang, The Black Tides of Heaven.

Eve MacDonald, Hannibal. A Hellenistic Life.

Myke Cole, The Queen of Crows.

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.

15 of the Best Alien Books: Invasion Stories, Encounters, and Beyond

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On August 14, 2018, I published the following post on Book Riot.

15 of the Best Alien Books: Invasion Stories, Encounters, and Beyond.

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Are we alone? Human beings have been searching for this answer arguably from the very beginning of our species. When science fiction came into its own as a genre around the turn of the 20th century, books about aliens and space exploration became an immediate genre staple. With the dawn of the Space Age in the 1950s, the urgency of the question of whether we are the only ones inhabiting this vast space only increased. The more we learn about our universe, the less we seem to know.

Here are books that we at Book Riot consider the 15 best alien books.

If you would like to read the post in its entirety, please click here.

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.

We Think These Are the Best Science Fiction Authors

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On June 26, 2018, I published the following post on Book Riot.

We Think These Are the Best Science Fiction Authors

best-science-fiction-authors | Book Riot | The Boomerang

In this post, I name eight authors as the best science fiction authors for the past 150 years. Curious to see who they are, and if you agree with me?

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.

Wesley Chu’s THE LIVES OF TAO and the Spanish Inquisition

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Wesley Chu’s novel The Lives of Tao is the first part of a trilogy that tells the story of the Quasing, an alien race who crashed on Earth and who need to live inside a host to survive. By merging science fiction with alternate history, Chu takes us through the history of the Quasing on Earth, explaining how the alien species split into factions—the Genjix and the Prophus. When Chu introduces us to the Quasing in the twenty-first century, these factions are at war with one another.

Tao of the novel’s title is the Quasing Tao of the Prophus faction, who merges with slacker Roen Tan when Tao’s previous host Edward is killed in a confrontation with the Genjix. In an effort to get to know the alien who now resides within him, Roen asks Tao to tell him about his previous hosts, which enables Chu to roll out an alternate history of the world of epic proportions.

This alternate take on history is interesting for several reasons, e.g., it is revealed that every major event in Western European history has been caused by the Quasing, such as the Mongol invasion under Genghis Khan (1162–1227), the Black Death (1347–1350), the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), and even World Wars I (1914–1918) and II (1939–1945).

The one part of Tao’s life story that I found particularly troubling, and therefore would like to discuss here, is the Spanish Inquisition. According to Tao, he and his friend Chyiva felt disillusioned regarding the Quasing’s approach to humans. Together, Tao and Chyiva decided to work for this approach to change. Soon, they attracted a following among other Quasing. The backlash against these betrayers was the Spanish Inquisition. According to Tao, the Spanish Inquisition came about in the following way.

The Council did not tolerate our dissension, and in retaliation called for a cleansing. The Spanish Inquisition spread across Europe, a cover for the Council to rid itself of the hosts of renegade Quasing. They called us Prophus, betrayers. They referred to themselves as Genjix, the old order. (Wesley Chu, The Lives of Tao, p. 274)

There are several problems with Tao’s relation of events. First, let’s take a closer look at what the Spanish Inquisition really was.

Within the Catholic Church of medieval Europe there was a need to stamp out what was considered heresy and instead enforce Church doctrine upon the population. The judicial process through which this was achieved was called an inquisition, from the Latin verb inquiro. In other words, the Spanish Inquisition was preceded by several other inquisitions,  arguably the most famous ones being the inquisition that eventually led to the destruction of the Knights Templar, as well as the persecution of the Cathars in southern France, both taking place during the thirteenth century.

The Spanish Inquisition was established through the issuing of a Papal bull in 1478 by request of Spanish king and queen Ferdinand and Isabella. The Spanish Inquisition was different from previous inquisitions in that it was the most organized. It has been argued that unlike other inquisitions, the Spanish Inquisition took the step from being a judicial process to being a judicial institution.

The Spanish Inquisition according to Monty Python

The Spanish Inquisition according to Monty Python.

Another reason why the Spanish Inquisition was different is because unlike previous inquisitions, the Spanish Inquisition did not target fellow Christians who failed to follow Church doctrine. No, the Spanish Inquisition was created to target Jews, in particular so-called conversos, i.e., Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity to avoid persecution.

The purpose of the forced conversion of Spanish Jews was to eradicate them as the political and religious threat they were considered to be towards Ferdinand and Isabella. The only problem was that once enough Jews had succumbed under pressure and converted, the conversos were deemed an even greater threat. Indeed, they were suspected of continuing to practice Judaism in secrecy. Enter the Inquisition and its infamous methods to extract confessions and conversions through the use of torture.

The most famous of the Grand Inquisitors of the Spanish Inquisition is Tómas de Torquemada (1420–1498), who is believed to have been personally responsible for the torture and execution of at least 2,000 Spanish Jews. In the history of European Jewry, the Spanish Inquisition and the actions of Torquemada, which culminated in the expulsion of all Jews from Spain in 1492, is a wound that has never healed.

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The Spanish Inquisition according to Mel Brooks.

Moreover, Spain itself is grappling to come to terms with the atrocities committed against the Jewish population of Spain by the Inquisition. On June 11, 2015, a new law was passed granting citizenship to more than 4,000 descendants of the Jews who were expelled in 1492.

With this knowledge of the Spanish Inquisition in mind, Chu’s decision to include the Spanish Inquisition in the war between the Prophus and the Genjix becomes most unfortunate. This sentence is particularly problematic.

The Spanish Inquisition spread across Europe, a cover for the Council to rid itself of the hosts of renegade Quasing. (ibid.)

In other words, according to Chu’s alternate history, the Spanish Inquisition was a cover-up for an internal conflict within an alien species, not a systematic persecution of Spanish Jews that cost over 2,000 people their lives and an estimated 160,000 people their homes. Or perhaps we are to believe that the Jewish victims were mere collateral damage that need not be mentioned?

Overall, The Lives of Tao is a highly entertaining read and I do recommend that you read it. As an historian, I support all inclusion of history in fiction, be it in the form of historical fiction, alternate history, or speculative history. However, as I have stated several times before here on The Boomerang, it is of utmost importance that an author is aware of the many complicating aspects of the historical process he or she decides to include in their story.

Sources
Wesley Chu, The Lives of Tao (Angry Robot, 2013)
Britannica Online, “Inquisition.”
Britannica Online, “Spanish Inquisition.”
Britannica Online, “Tómas de Torquemada.”

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.

 

In Search of the First Science Fiction Novel

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On August 18, 2015, I published the following post at Quirk Books.

In Search of the First Science Fiction Novel

Sci-Fi Beginnings HeaderName-checking of early science fiction authors usually includes Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, and Jules Verne who all wrote during the nineteenth century. But could the origins of Science Fiction go much further back than that? And how far back? We take a look at the various titles that may have a claim to being the first Science Fiction novel.

If you would like to read the rest of the article, please click here.

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.

Hanya Yanagihara’s A LITTLE LIFE and the Perpetual Present-Day

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A Little LifeHanya Yanagihara’s second novel, A Little Life, is a wonderfully written, heart-wrenching novel about four friends—J.B., Malcolm, Willem, and Jude—who form a life-long friendship while being roommates in college. More than 700 pages long, I finished the novel in less than five days, on more than one occasion staying up reading until three in the morning. While reading A Little Life, I found myself wondering during what time period the story is supposed to take place. The story has the feeling of a tale of the twenty-first century, but it follows the lives of J.B., Malcolm, Willem, and Jude for approximately forty years. It is as if the story is suspended in some kind of perpetual present-day.

One of the reasons why I wanted to find out during what time period the novel takes place is because there are certain aspects of Willem’s Scandinavian heritage that puzzle me. To be able to understand what Yanagihara might have been thinking when creating his backstory I needed to know what year Willem was born. In trying to figure out his year of birth, I discovered that Yanagihara is a sophisticated manipulator of time, who has written a novel of speculative fiction in the guise of literary fiction.

Yanagihara creates the feeling of a perpetual present-day by not mentioning any years or dates. Moreover, she makes no mention of any political or cultural events that can help anchor the story in time. However, she does mention the birthdays of the four friends and what age they have reached at that particular time.

At first I assumed that the novel, like most novels of literary fiction that span several decades, ends at the point in time when Yanagihara stopped writing, presumably in 2013 or 2014. Towards the end of the book, we are told that J.B. is sixty-one years old. If the story ends in 2014, that would mean that J.B., Malcolm, and Willem were born in 1953 and Jude, who is two years younger, was born in 1955.

But that doesn’t make sense when reading the novel. The friendships formed and the relationships entered into could only happen in the twenty-first century. Moreover, throughout the story, there are references to e-mails, cell phones, text messages, and digital photos.

What is going on?

The clue can be found in a brief mention of an art exhibit at the very beginning of the novel. The art exhibit consists of dioramas depicting Asians in America during each decade from the 1890s until the present-day. Through J.B., Yanagihara tells us that the artist has already completed the diorama for the two-thousands, i.e. the decade that lasted between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2009. From this brief mention, we can conclude that A Little Life does not end in 2014; it is more likely that it begins in 2014.

Through Malcolm, Yanagihara lets us know that at the time of the art exhibit, he is twenty-seven years old. Consequently, J.B. and Willem are also twenty-seven years old while Jude is twenty-five. If the novel indeed begins in 2014, this would mean that our friends were born in 1987 and 1989, respectively.

Therefore, if the four men were born in 1987 and 1989, and J.B. at the end of the novel is sixty-one years old, the story told in A Little Life in actual fact ends in the year 2048. The story of the friendship between J.B., Malcolm, Willem, and Jude takes place entirely in the future.

Stories about the future is considered to belong to the realm of science fiction, where technological advances has transformed the world into something very different from the one in which we live today.

Personally, I believe that Yanagihara’s vision of our future is a more accurate prediction of what is to come. Our little lives take place in a perpetual present-day which does not change much over the decades. Yes, forty years ago we didn’t have the internet and today, one single smart phone is a more powerful machine than all the computers that brought us to the moon combined. But forty years into the future we will still live in houses, drive cars, and speak on the phone. We will still find love and make friends. And we will still read fantastic novels like Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life.

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.