Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy Malo Hopkinson & Uppinder Mehan, Editors, Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver, 270 Pages, 2004
Now, so long we ‘ve been ripped off that it's time we fantasized back and ripped off some of the emperor's togas. What do you say?
Nalo Hopkinson, in the opening forward to this anthology of “postcolonial science fiction” says, “What you hold in your hand is the result; stories that take the meme of colonizing the natives and, from the experience of the colonizee, critique it, pervert it, fuck with it, with irony, with anger, with humour, and also, with love and respect for the genre of science fiction that makes it possible to think about new ways of doing things. ”
I have never drowned myself in the Star Wars and Star Trek theological mythology (much of which is a blatant and unabashed rip-off of vedic and zen warrior mythology). In fact, I often mix the two up, to the complete disgust of my progeny and then I need to concentrate on who belongs where, carefully. In fact, I just detest and have little patience for fantasy and science fiction, in general. Ms. Hopkinson, in the introduction, says much of the folklore we've been brought up on is European. Well, not true of those of us who have come from countries in South Asia. But, nevertheless, she makes the important point that the worshipping of the European construction of literature, folklore, fantasy and fictionalising has been at the core of story-writing for years, until the likes of Mulk Raj Anand (who just passed on this month), Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy and a whole heap of others, writing in the English language came along and pretty much buggered up all these well-preserved sanctities. But they have all written stories about the times we live in. Albeit, post-independence in most cases. Not really in the genre of science-fantasy. So this is a first.
Here in this anthology, though, is another strike back by the “colonizee.” Nineteen science fiction stories, carefully selected and truly representative of a wide spectrum of fantasy fiction, grabs you conclusively. Listen up!
Divided up into a tapestry that covers the futurization of the Body, from the downloaded lovemaking and transgendering of Nisi Sawl to the Mayan fantasy of Serai editor, Maya Khankhoje in the Re-Imagining the Past section, here is a wealth of deep involvement in re-creating a new way of fantasizing in the future and the past. Andreas Hairston carves out extraordinarily descriptive notions of mingling animals, slugs, blown-up huskies and worms (with camera heads), around her in a duel to death for new experiences from “deep time.” Living outside the body. “Body historians, griots of the galaxy, we didn't diddle ourselves in jungle paradises, we inhabited flesh to gather a genealogy of life.”
We have revived and kept alive the communal memory.
Nearly apocalyptic could be the best way to describe The Earth section. Terminal Avenue by Eden Robinson, written in a two-month period while purportedly taking a bus on Vancouver's Commercial Avenue, reflects on the future negative world of first nations already apartheid-ized existence. Peace Officers that project an alien, sexless, faceless tyranny. Solving the “Indian problem” once and for all with a club. Rendering mothers into tarts for pleasure, fathers to fish “illegally” and the family in a boat say goodbye to a momentary vision of setting up potlatch on a beach, salmon cooked the old fashioned way, splayed like a butterfly, while the juice runs into the fire and makes the hiss so memorable.
The nineteen fantasizers include well-known and up and coming writers like Ven Begamudre, Larissa Lai, poet Wayde Compton, Devorah Major and of course Montreal's Maya Khankhoje.
Maya Khankhoje talks about exiting the real world of the void and then starting the journey through a world of illusions, set in a Mayan (or maybe the illusory realm as the Vedas would describe the word, Maya) context. As most of us who are familiar with Maya's works would know, she can combine her background (growing up in Mexico and India of Belgian-Indian parents) and living in the US and Canada and having travelled practically everywhere there is to travel in the world, her selection of names, myths, emotions, political refinement and folklore infuse every short story with an extraordinary sense of worldly presence. Now, with a science fiction fantasy, she has transcended all this and taken it to another world. There is an infusion of names, rituals and cultural invocation that spreads an aroma of awareness through her pieces along with a warm sexual breeze.
This anthology beats the drift of “postcolonial” collections towards nothingness and redefines and brings it back on terra firma.