Scotland as Science Fiction

By (author) Caroline McCracken-Flesher

Publication date:

03 November 2011

Length of book:

208 pages

Publisher

Bucknell University Press

ISBN-13: 9781611483741

Out of the mainstream but ahead of the tide, that is Scottish Science Fiction. Science Fiction emphasizes “progress” through technology, advanced mental states, or future times. How does Scotland, often considered a land of the past, lead in Science Fiction? “Left behind” by international politics, Scots have cultivated alternate places and different times as sites of identity so that Scotland can seem a futuristic fiction itself.

This book explores the tensions between science and a particular society that produce an innovative science fiction. Essays consider Scottish thermodynamics, Celtic myth, the rigors of religious “conversion,” Scotland’s fractured politics yet civil society, its languages of alterity (Scots, Gaelic, allegory, poetry), and the lure of the future. From Peter Pan and Dr. Jekyll to the poetry of Edwin Morgan and the worlds of Muriel Spark, Ken Macleod, or Iain M. Banks, Scotland’s creative complex yields a literature that models the future for Science Fiction.

Chapter 1 Acknowledgments
Chapter 2 Introduction
Chapter 3 Scotland's Fantastic Physics: Energy Transformation in MacDonald, Stevenson, Barrie, and Spark
Chapter 4 The Other Otherworld: Didactic Fantasy from MacDonald and Lindsay to J. Leslie Mitchell
Chapter 5 Allegory and Cruelty: Gray's Lanark and Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus
Chapter 6 Speculative Nationality: "Stands Scotland Where it Did?" in the Culture of Iain M. Banks
Chapter 7 Between Enlightenment and the End of History: Ken MacLeod's Engines of Light
Chapter 8 The Cosmic (Cosmo)Polis in Naomi Mitchison's Science Fiction Novels
Chapter 9 Non-Violence, Gender, and Ecology: Margaret Elphinstone's The Incomer and A Sparrow's Flight
Chapter 10 Past and Future Language: Matthew Fitt and Iain M. Banks
Chapter 11 Scottish Poetry as Science Fiction: Geddes, MacDiarmid, and Morgan's "A Home in Space"
Chapter 12 Brave New Scotland: Science Fiction without Stereotypes in Fitt and Crumey
Chapter 13 Alba Newton and Alasdair Gray
Chapter 14 Bibliography
Chapter 15 Notes on Contributors
Chapter 16 Index

Scottish writers' concern with fantastic otherworlds goes back to Celtic mythology. The Scottish philosophers of the 18th century and the scientists and inventors of the 19th century were worlds ahead of their time. Today this tiny country survives in the shadow of nuclear subs, Trident missiles, and nuclear reactors, all the stuff of contemporary science fiction. This interesting study, which was born out of an MLA conference, includes work by seven Scotland-based senior scholars and three Americans in addition to McCracken-Flesher (Univ. of Wyoming). Two of the top Scottish sci-fi authors (Iain M. Banks and Matthew Fitt) receive two chapters each; Robert Louis Stevenson, J. M. Barrie, Muriel Spark, Alasdair Gray, Naomi Mitchison, et al. are also treated. Edwin Morgan even managed to write Scottish poetry as sci fi in "A Home in Space." The problem with studying this speculative genre is how to reconcile science fiction with a regional culture and an obsolescent Scots language. This provocative study meets the challenge head-on. With a mixture of science and fantasy, myth and technology, the land of Dolly the cloned sheep has created a "brave new Scotland" in rewriting the genre of science fiction. Good bibliography and notes (devalued by tiny print). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers.