Edging into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation ed. by Veronica Hollinger, Joan Gordon (review)

humanities 365 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 victories at the centre may not change social practices in local areas. While Pride Day in Toronto attracts thousands and is promoted by the city as part of its tourism strategy, the issue of declaring Pride Day in towns such as Fredericton and Kelowna had to be taken before human rights tribunals after their mayors refused to proclaim it. By exploring smaller towns and cities as well as rural and northern Canada, Warner is the first to offer a picture of lesbian and gay political issues and organizing in these communities . Furthermore, Warner also documents the history of queer organizing among people of colour and Two-Spirited People. This is an important corrective to other accounts of lesbian and gay organizing (such as my own) which neglected to consider the ways in which queer organizing has been racialized. While Warner shows the progress that has been made over the last thirty years by LGBT people in this country, he also shows how social mores and practices across the range of Canadian social institutions continue to stigmatize and discriminate against LGBT people. The sections on recent developments in social, education, and health policy show how such policies are made without regard to and without any knowledge of LGBT interests or perspectives. In the city of Toronto, for example, the combination of welfare and education cuts has dramatically increased the vulnerability of street-involved queer youth. As Warner documents, extensive organizing is now underway in queer communities around health issues. This book is required reading for all those interested in LGBT politics in Canada. Further, this book should be used in the Canadian education system as part of a progressive pedagogy which would empower both queer and straight youth with knowledge about the history of and struggles against heterosexism in Canadian society. (MIRIAM SMITH) Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon, editors. Edging into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation University of Pennsylvania Press. viii, 280. US $22.50 For many years science fiction authors and critics have complained about the lack of serious attention paid to the genre. But in the past two or three decades a number of book-length studies and three major journals in the field have appeared. The rise of cyberpunk and feminist science fiction in the 1980s inspired the greatest outburst of critical interest, primarily because works by authors like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Octavia Butler, and Gwyneth Jones feature themes and techniques paralleling those of mainstream postmodernists. With their emphasis on fluid individual and gender identities, their blurring of genre boundaries, and their incorporation of popular culture intertexts, these works lend themselves easily to analysis in the light of the broader postmodern movement and recent 366 letters in canada 2002 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 critical theory. Edging into the Future is a collection of essays reflecting this interest in recent science fiction and the suitability of structuralist, poststructuralist, and feminist approaches to its study. Most of the essays deal with fiction of the 1980s and 1990s and provide illuminating insights into how writers like Gibson, Butler, and Melissa Scott challenge cultural and gender power structures. Two essays focus on film, and three are by authors discussing their own work. Gary K. Wolfe begins the collection with >Evaporating Genre: Strategies of Dissolution in the Postmodern Fantastic,= a historical overview of science fiction=s perennially fluid boundaries. Wolfe argues that SF has long been infiltrated by, and has more recently infiltrated, other genres like the thriller and horror fiction. Jenny Wolmark=s >Staying with the Body: Narratives of the Posthuman in Contemporary Science Fiction= and Wendy Pearson=s >Sex/uality and the Figure of the Hermaphrodite in Science Fiction; or, the Revenge of Herculine Barbin= focus on the way science fiction challenges concepts of the >normative= body, and, by extension, the role of biology in shaping identity. Wolmark argues for a >queered feminist reading= of such texts as the films GATTACA and The Matrix and Kathleen Ann Goonan=s novel Queen City Jazz. The function of the alien to highlight our insistence on projecting our own views...