https://fafnir.journal.fi/issue/feed Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research 2025-01-21T23:11:58+02:00 Fafnir Editors-in-Chief submissions@finfar.org Open Journal Systems <p><em><span lang="EN-US">Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research</span></em><span lang="EN-US"> is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary academic journal published online twice yearly by the <a href="http://finfar.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Finnish Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy Research</a> (Suomen science fiction- ja fantasiatutkimuksen seura ry) beginning in 2014. </span></p> https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155817 Conference Report: SFRA 2024 2025-01-08T11:52:30+02:00 Essi Varis <p>Report on the SFRA 2024: Transitions conference.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Essi Varis https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155825 Interview with Nicolas Lietzau 2025-01-08T12:08:58+02:00 Evgenia Amey Garrett Moore <p>Interview with game developer and writer Nicolas Lietzau.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Evgenia Amey, Garrett “Wereyoi” Moore https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155865 Technonaturalist Speculative Fiction and Literary Affordance 2025-01-08T18:26:11+02:00 Esko Suoranta <p><em>Lectio praecursoria</em>: Technonaturalist Speculative Fiction and Literary Affordance</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Esko Suoranta https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/156057 Call for Papers: Fafnir 2/2025 2025-01-10T15:49:59+02:00 Fafnir <p>Call for papers for <em>Fafnir</em> issue 2/2025</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Fafnir https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/156305 Science Fiction, The Future, and Now 2025-01-17T20:09:29+02:00 Susan Mandala <p>Prefatory by Susan Mandala.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Susan Mandala https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155595 Review of Space(s) of the Fantastic – A 21st Century Manifesto 2025-01-05T11:00:04+02:00 Karl Bell <p>Punter, David and C. Bruna Mancini, editors. <em data-stringify-type="italic">Space(s) of the Fantastic – A 21st Century Manifesto</em>. Routledge Press, 2021. ISBN: 9780367681692.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Karl Bell https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155596 Review of Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction 2025-01-05T11:10:13+02:00 Jeremy Brett <p>Yoshinaga, Ida, Sean Guynes, and Gerry Canavan, editors. <em>Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction</em>. The MIT Press, 2022. ISBN: 978-0262543941.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Jeremy Brett https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155597 Review of The Evolution of African Fantasy and Science Fiction 2025-01-05T11:20:44+02:00 Ananya Buragohain Lakshminath Kagyung <p>Barbini, Francesca T., editor. <em>The Evolution of African Fantasy and Science Fiction</em>. Luna Press Publishing, 2018. ISBN- 978-1-911143-51-2.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Ananya Buragohain, Lakshminath Kagyung https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155598 Review of The Rise of the Cyberzines 2025-01-05T11:34:12+02:00 Sabina Fazli <p>Ashley, Mike. <em>The Rise of the Cyberzines: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1991 to 2020</em>. The History of the Science-Fiction Magazines Volume V. 2022. 444 pages. ISBN 978-180085648.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Sabina Fazli https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155738 Review of Tolkien, Enchantment, and Loss: Steps on the Developmental Journey 2025-01-07T16:26:59+02:00 Carol Franko <p>Rosegrant, John. <em>Tolkien, Enchantment, and Loss: Steps on the Developmental Journey</em>. The Kent State UP, 2022. ISBN 978-1-60635-435-3.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Carol Franko https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155599 Review of Science Fiction Cinema in the Twenty-First Century 2025-01-05T11:46:20+02:00 Aino-Kaisa Koistinen <p>Gómez-Muñoz, Pablo. <em>Science Fiction Cinema in the Twenty-First Century: Transnational Futures, Cosmopolitan Concerns</em>. Routledge, 2023. ISBN: 9780367759063.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Aino-Kaisa Koistinen https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155600 Review of Gendered Defenders: Marvel’s Heroines in Transmedia Spaces 2025-01-05T12:06:25+02:00 C. Palmer-Patel <p>Carr, Bryan J. and Meta G. Carstarphen, editors. <em>Gendered Defenders: Marvel’s Heroines in Transmedia Spaces</em>. Ohio State University Press, 2022. ISBN: 978-0-8142-5852-1.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 C. Palmer-Patel https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155813 Review of Vision, Technology, and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature 2025-01-08T11:33:49+02:00 Michael Pitts <p>Tobin, Stephen C. <em>Vision, Technology, and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature</em>. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. ISBN 978-3-031-31155-0.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Michael Pitts https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155601 Review of Ancient Greece and Rome in Modern Science Fiction: Amazing Antiquity 2025-01-05T12:14:35+02:00 Noah Slowik <p>Clare, Ross. <em>Ancient Greece and Rome in Modern Science Fiction: Amazing Antiquity</em>. Liverpool UP, 2022. ISBN: 978-180085-631-8.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Noah Slowik https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155605 Review of Self-Reflective Fiction and 4E Cognition 2025-01-05T16:22:23+02:00 Essi Varis <p>Polvinen, Merja. <em>Self-Reflective Fiction and 4E Cognition</em>. Routledge, 2023. ISBN 9781032263748.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Essi Varis https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155824 From Middle-earth to Duckburg, Worlds of Fantastic Mythmaking and Mythbreaking 2025-01-08T12:05:07+02:00 Jyrki Korpua <p class="Abstract"><span lang="EN-US">Guest of Honour Speech, Finncon 2024. Jyväskylä, Finland. July 6, 2024. Keynote to Finncon Academic Track: “Worlds”.</span></p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Jyrki Korpua https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155861 Ant Similes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – an Analysis of Literary Technologies 2025-01-08T18:21:27+02:00 Juha-Pekka Alarauhio <p>This article investigates the use of similes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing as literary-technological design that partakes in traditional means for narrative meaning-making repurposed for his fantasy in <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>. I argue that by focusing intensely on these features in Tolkien’s textual design, it is possible to support ongoing scholarship on the literary influences and sources of Tolkien’s legendarium with a less directly comparative method. This approach can illuminate, on one hand, Tolkien’s strategies in deploying traditional literary technologies, and on the other hand, the purposive redesign of these technologies for the specific storytelling needs of his fantasy writing. My analysis focuses on a series of similes in <em>The Lord of the Rings</em> that compare orcs to ants, showing that the similes are applied with a consistent overall strategy that highlights an important thematic strand in Tolkien’s legendarium. Through this analysis, I demonstrate how the adaptive use of similes exemplifies the idea of purposive design. On a more interpretive level, I explore the functional envelope of the simile as a narrative technology, and its implications for meaning-making within Tolkien’s storyworld and beyond.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Juha-Pekka Alarauhio https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155675 SF Estrangement in Literary Translation 2025-01-06T20:29:52+02:00 Suvi Korpi <p>This study analyzes the translation of neologies in the literary translation of the science fiction (SF) novel <em>Dune</em> (1965). As one of the most important linguistic elements in SF, neologies contribute to the worldbuilding of SF and create the estrangement from reality that is characteristic of the SF genre. Evaluating the translation of neologies is hence used as a tool to evaluate the transfer of the source text’s (ST) estranging properties to the target text (TT). When the ST’s neological estrangement is retained as a genre-specific feature of SF in the TT, the ST estrangement becomes accessible also for the TT reader. The study reveals that the translation has predominantly retained neologies, thus retaining the neological estrangement of the ST in the TT. The material of the study consists of the neologies in Frank Herbert’s <em>Dune</em> and its Finnish translation <em>Dyyni</em> (2021 [1982]), which were analyzed to determine whether they retain or recreate SF estrangement.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Suvi Korpi https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/156064 Ice and Ecotrauma in Isaac Asimov’s “The Martian Way” 2025-01-10T16:01:51+02:00 Faeze Rezaii <p class="Abstract"><span lang="EN-US">This article examines Isaac Asimov’s novella “The Martian Way” (1952) as a work that exposes the entanglements of the trauma of the environment with the ecological trauma of the humans. The narrative re-envisions the Cold War energy crisis for a future era and visualizes the pursuit of hydropower as the appropriation of one of the ice fragments of Saturn’s rings. In doing so, it problematizes space mining and the traumatization of the environment. I examine the infliction of varied forms of violence on ice in “The Martian Way” and underscore human blindness to nonliving or inorganic matter. This analysis of the novella also focuses on how human characters suffer the consequences of their own violence on the environment they transform. Mobilizing the concept of ecotrauma, I demonstrate that the ice in “The Martian’s Way” agentially responds to anthropogenic violence. This article contributes to ecocritical discussions on the ethical mattering of inorganic matter such as water. My analysis encourages thinking beyond a singular species and necessitates a critical environmental perspective that includes nonliving entities within the domain of ethical mattering and thus moves beyond life-centered environmental worldviews.</span></p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Faeze Rezaii https://fafnir.journal.fi/article/view/155979 Editorial 1–2/2024 2025-01-10T13:08:24+02:00 Elizabeth Oakes Merve Tabur Elise Kraatila Jari Käkelä <p>Editorial for issue 1–2/2024.</p> 2025-01-21T00:00:00+02:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Elizabeth Oakes, Merve Tabur, Elise Kraatila, Jari Käkelä