The new issue of Science Fiction Studies came out this month. I’m calling attention to it for two reasons:

First, it’s a special issue focused on nostalgia in SF, a topic near to my heart and mind. Guest editors Aris Mousoutzanis and Yugin Teo do a splendid job of gathering a range of papers on Octavia Butler, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Jack Womack and others. They cover the theoretical high points (Svetlana Boym, Fredric Jameson, et al.) and keep a nostalgia-positive goal “to challenge the assumption that nostalgia is especially about the past and thus out of place within a genre conventionally associated with the future” (Mousoutzanis & Teo1). As the editors note, “nostalgia becomes a source of hope… rather than being a regression to an idealized past…” (2).

If you care about the future-that-never-happened or steampunk or how critical investigations of the past can help form a better future, it is well worth your time.

Also, this issue features a review of The Cambridge History of Science Fiction, Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link’s tremendous undertaking that features a chapter I wrote on Edisonades (called “terrific” by reviewer Carol McGuirk).