Ann Leckie’s "Ancillary Justice"

David M. Higgins is a Senior Editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books, and he is the Chair of the English Department at Inver Hills College in Minnesota, where he teaches classes on science fiction, graphic novels, American literature, and composition. He is the author of Reverse Colonization: Science Fiction, Imperial Fantasy, and Alt-Victimhood, which won the 2021 Science Fiction Research Association Book Award.

“I am a huge fan of Leckie’s IMPERIAL RADCH trilogy and I found Higgins’s Companion an excellent read … for its parallel introduction to critical postcolonial questions about the workings of empire in the twenty-first century.” (Veronica Hollinger, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 50, 2023)

• 1.Introduction.- 2.“She Was Probably Male” Gender and Embodiment.- 3. “Luxury Always Comes at Someone Else’s Expense” The Economics of Empire.- 4.“You Have to be Human to be Radchaai” Race, Citizenship, and Imperial Personhood.- 5.“Save it for When it will Make a Difference” Cynical Reason, Agency, and the Politics of Revolution.- 6.Conclusion: Mercy, or the Sword?