Nordic Speculative Fiction

Theory, Research, Practise

 

Jyrki Korpua, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, Hanna-Riikka Roine, and Marta Mboka Tveit (eds.)

This volume brings together scholarly theories and practices on speculative fiction from the Nordic countries, including Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, that are all rooted in similar values, culture, and history, yet are independent and unique societies. The book exhibits both the convergences and the diversity of the Nordics in fiction and fandom, as well as in research.

It traces the roots of Nordic speculative fiction, how it has developed over time and how the changes in Nordic environments and societies caused by overhanging shared global issues – such as climate change, mass migration, and technological acceleration – find space in speculative practices. The first of its kind, this book allows for deeper insight into the unique characteristics that make Nordic literature and art recognisable and allows for a better understanding of the place of the Nordics within wider global culture systems. The chapters range from literary critiques, film and television studies, creative works by three Nordic poets, transcultural text comparisons and contributions on speculative art, to theoretical and methodological discussions on fandom, worldbuilding and semantics.

Part of the Studies in Global Genre Fiction series, this anthology contributes to connecting Nordic speculative fiction scholarship to the wider global community within the field. It will be of interest to scholars and general enthusiasts of speculative fiction and those with interest in Nordic fiction; film and television studies; literary, culture or media studies; comparative literature; and cultural history or art-based research.

 

Jyrki Korpua, PhD, is a researcher of literature at the University of Oulu, Finland.

Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, PhD, is a poet, freelance writer, teacher of creative writing, and University Researcher at the University of the Arts, Helsinki Research Institute, Finland.

Hanna-Riikka Roine, PhD, docent, works as an Associate Professor in Digital Culture at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Marta Mboka Tveit is a PhD candidate with the CoFUTURES research group at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Table of Contents

Introduction to Nordic Speculative Fiction: Poem

Part I Strategies of Speculation

1. Scenarios of Hope: Engagements with the Possible in Contemporary Finnish Speculative Fiction

2. The Figure in the Magic Carpet: Generic Encyclopedism in Structuralist Criticism of the Literary Fantastic

3. References to the Primary World in Finnish Climate Fiction

4. The Modernity That Wasn’t: On Claës Lundin’s Science-Fiction Novel Oxygen och Aromasia: Bilder från år 2378

Part II Uncanny Impulses and Strange Ecologies

5. The Uncanny in Tove Jansson’s Short Stories. Motifs of the Sublime and the Horror

6. Welcome to the Uncanny Valley! Technology, Ecology and the Human in Danish Speculative Fiction

7. At the Intersection of Experimental and Speculative: Three Novels by Jaakko Yli-Juonikas

8. The Strange Ecologies of the North: Finnish Weird as an Environmental Genre

Part III Border Crossings

9. The Sea as a Site of Contact: A Black Atlantic Reading of Beforeigners

10. Dealing with Immigrant Identity in Fantasy Fiction – Russian Youth in Contemporary Finlandnish Fantasy

11. ‘We are the Bedrock’: Neoextractivism in Blå by M. Lunde and The Satellite Charmer by M. B. Diene Comparatively

12. Redreaming Europe: Dreams and the speculative present in Jani Saxell’s Europe series

Part IV Beyond Fiction

13. What is Finnish in the Finnish Short Speculative Fiction Hall of Fame? Atorox Award and Fandom in 2011–2020

14. Multispecies Entanglements and Human-Nonhuman Hybrids. How science fiction is articulated within Nordic Contemporary Art

15. ‘It’s weird, it’s sci-fi, and the main protagonist has WRINKLES.’ Examining Gameplay, Age, and Gender in Housemarque’s Returnal and its reception

16. Bodies at the End of Time and Space: Disability, Mental Illness, and Hostile Spaces in Swedish Science Fiction Film

Part V

Afterword: Poem

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