Welcome to Starboard Vineyard Tours! Curious what people have thought and written about science fiction? Want some guidance on discovering this area of study - things to read, and ways to read them? In this podcast, Mark and Ben will take you on a tour through the world of science fiction studies. Join us on the beginning of a voyage into the unfamiliar, the estranging, the counterfactual, the speculative, what has not happened but might: science fiction, in all its forms. (And please remember to keep hands, feet, and any other limbs on board the vessel at all times!)
Starboard Vineyard Tours 20: Immortal Monster: The Mythological Evolution of the Fantastic Beast in Modern Fiction and Film, Andriano
For this episode, we read Joseph D. Andriano's Immortal Monster: The Mythological Evolution of the Fantastic Beast in Modern Fiction and Film (1999). Andriano reads his primary texts - an eclectic collection, from Moby Dick to Jaws, King Kong to Grendel (1971) - as the great myth of the immortal monster, transformed over the decades and by different creators' hands. For him this myth speaks to our culture's deeply held beliefs about the boundaries of the human and the animal. We find ourselves perplexed and not especially convinced by this methodology. Still, these many monsters give us plenty to talk about, especially our old friend the white whale.
Topics: monsters, mythology, animals
Next episode we will be reading Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction (2016), by André M. Carrington.
1 Apr 2025
Starboard Vineyard Tours 19: Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right, Carroll
This month's reading is upsettingly timely, as we read Jordan S. Carroll's Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/speculative-whiteness) (2024). Carroll covers both the historical uses of science fiction by the far right, and the current ways white nationalists imagine the future and read the genre. Topics include: fans being slans and the genre of the mutational romance; klan being fans and the "hermeneutics of obtuseness" they need to avoid recognizing anti-racist themes; science fictional mythologies of whiteness. It's an interesting topic, which Carroll discusses both accessibly and in detail, involving a wide variety of the worst people to read science fiction, and we try to keep discussion as light and as biting as mutually possible, given the above.
Topics: whiteness, speculation, fandom
Content warning for discussion of white supremacist ideology and neo-nazis, including discussion of racist claims about human nature, but not any extensive discussions of racist acts of violence.
Next month's episode is currently uncertain! When we know what we're reading, we'll let you know.
2 Mar 2025
Starboard Vineyard Tours 18: New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction, Amis
This month, we read Kingsley Amis's provocatively titled New Maps of Hell (1960) - in which Amis sets forth a his account of the nature and hopes of science fiction at the end of what's often called the Golden Age. New Maps has been often referenced in works we've read so far, and ends up something of an eccentric snapshot of a moment in the genre, a commentary on the state of the genre through Amis's very particular concerns. These include the “comic inferno”, the power and danger of advertising, and the anti-conformist streak in SF, as well as an extended analogy between SF and jazz. Overall, it's an odd book, one that had us asking if Amis even really liked science fiction - or maybe whether he liked that he liked it or not.
Topics: SF history, Golden Age, pulp
Next episode, we will be reading Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/speculative-whiteness) (2024) by Jordan S. Carroll.
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