Brazilian Science Fiction

Brazilian Science Fiction
Author: M. Elizabeth Ginway
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2004
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780838755648

Science fiction, because of its links to science and technology, is the consummate literary vehicle for examining the perception and cultural impact of the modernization process in Brazil. Because of the centrality of the role played by the military dictatorship (1964-85) in imposing industrialization and economic development policies on Brazil, this book examines the genre in the periods before, during, and after the dictatorship, encompassing the years 1960-2000. The analysis shows that a reading of Brazilian science fiction based on its use of paradigms of Anglo-American science fiction and myths of Brazilian nationhood provides a unique look into Brazil's modern metamorphosis as it finds itself on the periphery of the globalized world.

Brazilian Science Fiction Film

Brazilian Science Fiction Film
Author: Alfredo Suppia
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2024-12-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

This book offers a pioneering critical history of Brazilian science fiction (SF) cinema, from its first appearances in the mid-twentieth century to the present. Though frequently overlooked by scholars, SF cinema from the Global South has reinvigorated the genre in recent decades. In this comprehensive study—the first of its kind in either English or Portuguese—Alfredo Suppia draws out the unique features and universal resonance of SF film in Brazil, a country that has fittingly been called "the land of the future." In Suppia's analysis, Brazilian SF stems from and responds to a long history of inequality in which everyday reality has often resembled a movie-like dystopia. Analyzing both short and feature films in the context of social, political, and economic transformations, Suppia rethinks SF film in general from a southern perspective.

The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction

The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction
Author: Rachel Haywood Ferreira
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2011-07-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0819570834

A fantastic voyage through the early science fiction of Latin America Early science fiction has often been associated almost exclusively with Northern industrialized nations. In this groundbreaking exploration of the science fiction written in Latin America prior to 1920, Rachel Haywood Ferreira argues that science fiction has always been a global genre. She traces how and why the genre quickly reached Latin America and analyzes how writers in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico adapted science fiction to reflect their own realities. Among the texts discussed are one of the first defenses of Darwinism in Latin America, a tale of a time-traveling history book, and a Latin American Frankenstein. Latin American science fiction writers have long been active participants in the sf literary tradition, expanding the limits of the genre and deepening our perception of the role of science and technology in the Latin American imagination. The book includes a chronological bibliography of science fiction published from 1775 to 1920 in all Latin American countries.

Brasyl

Brasyl
Author: Ian McDonald
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2010-01-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1591028221

Think Bladerunner in the tropics... Be seduced, amazed, and shocked by one of the world’s greatest and strangest nations. Past, present, and future Brazil, with all its color, passion, and shifting realities, come together in a novel that is part SF, part history, part mystery, and entirely enthralling. Three separate stories follow three main characters: Edson is a self-made talent impresario one step up from the slums in a near future São Paulo of astonishing riches and poverty. A chance encounter draws Edson into the dangerous world of illegal quantum computing, but where can you run in a total surveillance society where every move, face, and centavo is constantly tracked? Marcelina is an ambitious Rio TV producer looking for that big reality TV hit to make her name. When her hot idea leads her on the track of a disgraced World Cup soccer goalkeeper, she becomes enmeshed in an ancient conspiracy that threatens not just her life, but her very soul. Father Luis is a Jesuit missionary sent into the maelstrom of 18th-century Brazil to locate and punish a rogue priest who has strayed beyond the articles of his faith and set up a vast empire in the hinterland. In the company of a French geographer and spy, what he finds in the backwaters of the Amazon tries both his faith and the nature of reality itself to the breaking point. Three characters, three stories, three Brazils, all linked together across time, space, and reality in a hugely ambitious story that will challenge the way you think about everything.

Latin American Science Fiction

Latin American Science Fiction
Author: M. Ginway
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2012-12-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1137312777

Combining work by critics from Latin America, the USA, and Europe, Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice is the first anthology of articles in English to examine science fiction in all of Latin America, from Mexico and the Caribbean to Brazil and the Southern Cone. Using a variety of sophisticated theoretical approaches, the book explores not merely the development of a science fiction tradition in the region, but more importantly, the intricate ways in which this tradition has engaged with the most important cultural and literary debates of recent year.

Cyborgs, Sexuality, and the Undead

Cyborgs, Sexuality, and the Undead
Author: M. Elizabeth Ginway
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2020-12-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0826501192

Writers in Brazil and Mexico discovered early on that speculative fiction provides an ideal platform for addressing the complex issues of modernity, yet the study of speculative fictions rarely strays from the United States and England. Cyborgs, Sexuality, and the Undead expands the traditional purview of speculative fiction in all its incarnations (science fiction, fantasy, horror) beyond the traditional Anglo-American context to focus on work produced in Mexico and Brazil across a historical overview from 1870 to the present. The book portrays the effects—and ravages—of modernity in these two nations, addressing its technological, cultural, and social consequences and their implications for the human body. In Cyborgs, Sexuality, and the Undead, M. Elizabeth Ginway examines all these issues from a number of theoretical perspectives, most importantly through the lens of Bolívar Echeverría’s “baroque ethos,” which emphasizes the strategies that subaltern populations may adopt in order to survive and prosper in the face of massive historical and structural disadvantages. Foucault’s concept of biopolitics is developed in discussion with Roberto Esposito’s concept of immunity and Giorgio Agamben’s distinction between “political life” and “bare life.” This book will be of interest to scholars of speculative fiction, as well as Mexicanists and Brazilianists in history, literary studies, and critical theory.

Perfect Days

Perfect Days
Author: Raphael Montes
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2016-02-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0143196480

A twisted young medical student kidnaps the girl of his dreams and embarks on a road trip across Brazil in the English-language debut of one of Brazil's most celebrated young crime writers Teo Avelar is a loner. He lives with his paraplegic mother and her dog in Rio de Janeiro, he doesn't have many friends, and the only time he feels honest human emotion is in the presence of his medical school cadaver--that is, until he meets Clarice. She's almost his exact opposite: exotic, spontaneous, unafraid to speak her mind. She's working on a screenplay called Perfect Days about three friends who go on a road trip across Brazil in search of romance. Teo begins to stalk her, first following to her university, then to her home, and when she ultimately rejects him, Teo kidnaps her, and they embark upon their very own twisted odyssey across Brazil, tracing the same route outlined in her screenplay. Through it all, Teo is certain that time is all he needs to prove to Clarice that they are made for each other, that time is all he needs to make her fall in love with him. But as the journey progresses, he keeps digging himself deeper, stopping at nothing to ensure that no one gets in the way of their life together. Both tense and lurid, and brimming with suspense from the very first page, Perfect Days is a psychological thriller in the vein of The Talented Mr. Ripley--a chilling journey in the passenger seat with a psychopath and the English-language debut of one of Brazil's most deliciously dark young writers.