Latin American Science
Fiction
The Case of Brazil
M. Elizabeth Ginway
Dept. Spanish and Portuguese Studies
Recommended Reading
 Literary Criticism:
 M. Elizabeth Ginway, Brazilian Science
Fiction (Bucknell UP, 2004)
J. Andrew Brown, Cyborgs in Latin
America (Palgrave, 2010)
Films
Brazil:
The Fifth Power (1962) Alberto Pieralisi
Isle of Flowers (1989) (short) Basic Sanitation (2007) Jorge
Furtado
Mexico:
The Aztec Mummy vs. the Human Robot (1957) Rafael Portillo
Chronos (1993) Guillermo Toro
Argentina:
Man Facing Southeast (1987) Eliseo Subiela
Moebius (1996) Gustavo Mosquera
US: Sleep Dealer (2007), Alex Rivera
Fiction in Translation
 Stories: Cosmos Latinos: Anthology of SF from Latin America
and Spain ed. Bell and Molina-Gavilán (Wesleyan, 2003)
 Novels: Turing’s Delirium, Edmundo Paz-Soldán (Houghton
Mifflin, (2007)
 Through the Arc of the Rainforest, Karen Tei Yamashita
(Coffeehouse, 1990)

And Still the Earth, Ignacio Loyola Brandão(Avon, 1982)
Dystopias
 Brazil’s Military Dictatorship (1964-1985)
“Economic Development”
 Foreign capital, extract “surplus”from low
wages paid to workers
 Mainstream writers use dystopia to avoid
censorship
 Models Huxley and Orwell
 And Still the Earth (Não verás país nenhum)
 Americanization
 Authoritarianism
 Recourse to Myths of National Identity
Brazil’s Myths of Identity
National Myths vs. Modernization
 Green and Fertile Paradise [industrialization]
 Non-violent, sensual people [women]
 Racial Democracy [continued inequality]
 Potential for greatness, landmass and
natural resources [Third World status]
 Ecofeminism to deconstruct myths of
women/nature; essentialism, atavistic desire
to return to a pre-industrial paradise
 Novel: The Fruit of Thy Womb (1976)
Herberto Sales (available in English)
SF as a Barometer for
Modernization
 Pre-dictatorship SF (1958-64), Golden
Age, influenced by Ray Bradbury
 Iconography by Gary K. Wolfe
 The Known and Unknown in SF (1979)
 Humanity: robot, alien [monsters]
 Environment: spaceship, city,
wasteland
 “Brazilianization of icons”
Post Dictatorship SF (1985Hard SF (dictatorship, race, gender)
Cyberpunk, tupinipunk (international conspiracies)
Robots, computers, cyborgs (AIDS, gender issues)
Alternate histories (re-think social inequality)
Women SF writers (reappropriate, mock machismo)
Postmodern mixing of genres, fantasy, horror,
intertexuality (cultural legitimacy)
Consciously Brazilian,SF Manifesto, decolonialize SF
parody of 1928 Modernist “Cannibalist Manifesto”
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“Third Wave”
 1960s GRD (First Wave) “Golden Age”
 1970s Mainstream Writers, Dystopia
 1980s, 90s Brazilian SF (Second Wave)
Anti-colonialist, Brazilian themes
 2006 “Anti-Brazilitis” (Third Wave)
 International or Cosmopolitan Perspective
 New Generation, internet, fantasy
Global Genre
Latin America Writes Back:
Critical and Theoretical Articles
Cyberpunk, SF and the Canon, Graphic
novels, Film and Gaming in Latin
America
ed. Andrew Brown, Elizabeth Ginway
Latin America Writes Back: Science Fiction and
the Global Era

Authors, filmmakers and critics from around the world converged at
UF on October 27-29, 2005 a symposium reflecting the growing
interest in the science fiction of Latin America.
 George Yudice, Edmundo Paz-Soldán, Alberto
Fuguet, screening of Moebius (1996),dir. Gustavo
Mosquera
 Visit
www.clas.ufl.edu/events/writesbac
“Alien Vision” post BSF
translation into Portuguese
 12 essays on Brazilian SF/F 2010