Worlds of Wonder: Readings in Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature

Douglas Barbour is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.
He is the author of Lyric/anti-lyric : Essays on Contemporary Poetry,
Breath Takes, and Fragmenting Body Etc.

Worlds of Wonder contains papers delivered at a University of Ottawa
symposium of the same title. As editors Leroux and La Bossiиre
demonstrate, Canadian science fiction and fantasy (SF&F) has matured and
grown sufficiently in the last couple of decades to more than deserve
the kind of critical readings provided by the many contributors to this
volume. Indeed, one of the surest signs of this artistic maturity is the
range of criticism, theory, and evaluations to be found in the volume.

From general overviews of such topics as the apocalyptic imagination in
Canada, “survival” as both a Canadian and a science-fictional theme,
and the ways in which race, gender, and post-colonial concepts play out
in a Canadian science-fictional or fantastic context, to studies of the
works of individual writers, these essays cover a lot of ground and ask
some tough questions.

Veronica Hollinger, an internationally respected critic of SF&F, shows
how William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Douglas Coupland’s Girl in a
Coma provide contrasting versions of apocalypse and how to deal with it.
Sherryl Vint shows how race is often coded in science fiction and argues
that Robert J. Sawyer’s attempt to explore the encounter between race
and the justice system in Illegal Alien falls apart in the smaller
details. Ann Howey offers an intriguing look at how Sean Stewart’s
playing with boundary breakdown in his The Night Watch is an essentially
Canadian narration.

These are but a few of the imaginative and critically intriguing essays
in Worlds of Wonder.