Disputing the Deluge

Darko Suvin is Emeritus Professor of English at McGill University, Canada, and has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, since 1986. He is author of 25 books, including the foundational study in science fiction Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (1979, 2016), Victorian Science Fiction in the U. K.: The Discourses of Knowledge and of Power (1983), Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction (1988), and In Leviathan’s Belly: Essays for a Counter-Revolutionary Time (2012). Hugh C. O'Connell is Assistant Professor of English at University of Massachusetts-Boston, USA. He is editor of Legacies of Blade Runner, special issue of Science Fiction Film and Television (2020; with Sarah Hamblin); Speculative Finance/Speculative Fiction, special issue of CR: The New Centennial Review (2019; with David M. Higgins); and The British SF Boom, special issue of CR: The New Centennial Review (2013).

An excellent reminder of how and why [Suvin] gained...the well-earned reputation as the field’s premier Marxist critic and historian can be found in the 24 pieces that make up Disputing the Deluge... It is a reminder that, for all his reputation as a fiercely rigorous (and sometimes rigid) theorist, Suvin has never been less than an activist, and never less than passionate.

• AcknowledgmentsEditor’s Preface: There Is No Alternative: Non-Reading Suvin, Anti-Antiutopianism, Science Fiction, and CommunismAuthor’s Introduction: Words, Shapes, and Our Common World1. Kick-Off: An Introduction to Narrative Genres, with a View to SF (2007, 2020) 2. Fantasy as Critique and Cognition: Marx’s Black Metamorphoses of Living Labour (1999-2003) 3. A Note on Fascism as Well-Meaning Utopia (2000) 4. Considering the Sense of "Fantasy" or "Fantastic Fiction": On Ahistorical Alternate Worlds (1999-2001) 5. Going into a New Century: Sociopolitical Prospects for Utopia (2000) 6. A Colloquium with Darko Suvin: Interview with Science Fiction Magazine, Australia (2000-02) 7. Poems of Old Age I (2000-04) 8. Circumstances and Stances: A Retrospect (2004) 9. Of Starship Troopers and Refuseniks: War and Militarism in US Science Fiction (An Overview) (2005) 10. To Remember Stanislaw Lem (2006) 11. On U.K. Le Guin’s "Second Earthsea Trilogy" and Its Cognitions: A Commentary (2006) 12. Poems of Old Age II (2006-10) 13. Literature, Politics, Brecht, Science Fiction vs. Fantasy: Interview with Maria Xilouri (2008) 14. Darwinism, Left and Right: And Some S-F Probes (2010) 15. Ideologies and Criticism: An Interview with Andrés Lomeña (2011) 16. On Climbing the Mountain of Life (2011) 17. Some Grateful Memories of Fred Pohl (2014) 18. A Note on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Declaration of the Arts’ Independence from Capitalism (2015) 19. Cognition Is the Esthetic Measure of Estranged Genres: An Interview with Zorica Ðergovic-Joksimovic (2016) 20. On Splitting Notions: Communism, Science Fiction (The Blagoevgrad Theses, 2018) 21. Poems of Old Age III (2014-20) 22. Orwell and 1984 Today: Genius and Tunnel Vision (2019) 23. Utopia or Bust: Capitalocene and Our Existential Antiutopia (2019) 24. Antiutopia in Coronisation Times: Capitalocene and Death (2020) Appendix: D. Suvin: Publications after 2000 on SF and Utopia/nism Index