Science Fiction From Latin America, With Zombie Dissidents and Aliens in the Amazon

A spaceship lands near a small Amazon town, and the local government is put in control of an alien invasion. Dissidents who disappeared under a military dictatorship return years later as zombies. Physical contact suddenly begins to merge bodies, forcing the Colombians to navigate newly dangerous salsa bars and FARC guerrillas fused with tropical birds.

Across Latin America, shelves labeled “ciencia fiction” (science fiction) have long been filled with translations by H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, and H.G. Wells. It’s here. They may now have to compete with a new wave of Latin American writers who are trying to make the genre their own, rooted in their homeland and history. Away from rolling cornfields and the New York skyline, they set the story against the backdrop of the dense Amazon, the rugged Andean mountains, and the unmistakably sprawling cities of Latin America.

At a time when many readers and writers in Latin America find themselves suffocated by the popular tropes of magic realism and desensitized to realistic depictions of the region’s struggle against violence, seminal science fiction avalanche arrived in a timely manner.

“Latin America was the region of today,” Rodrigo Bastidas said in a telephone interview. He is the co-founder of Vestigio, one of the few small independent publishers of his science fiction in Latin America based in Bogota. “People are too busy living in the present – ​​civil wars, revolutions, dictatorships – to think about the future. So much of our literature has been pragmatic. I had a need.”

The current narrative explosion is shedding a different light on the region, he said. It is liberating, proposing freedom from reused narratives and foreign heroes.

“We are realizing that the future does not have to be borrowed or taken from others,” Bastidas said. “With the help of sci-fi, we can repurpose it.

Written in Spanish and Portuguese, the work is radical and idiosyncratic, brimming with techno-shamanic and futuristic indigenous aesthetics, while also being influenced by the region’s European and African traditions. . Themes such as colonization, the climate crisis, and migration also draw inspiration from a difficult history and the urgency of the present.

Colombian author Luis Carlos Barragán, the pole star of this wave, said, “We are reusing our future and finding ourselves in a forgotten little place in history, where even aliens never come.” We need to stop thinking it’s a place that won’t exist,” he said in a phone interview. His work is a meeting between Douglas Adams and Jonathan Swift, firmly planted on Colombian soil, yet head high into space.

Latin American sci-fi writing dates back more than a century, but it has a low circulation compared to the genre’s English-speaking giants, and is often isolated, with no integrated regional traditions or markets. there was. Labyrinthine export requirements that once made it nearly impossible to sell a book outside the printing nations forced editors and writers to carry their work across borders themselves, dragging suitcases filled with books. I was there.

The political and economic crises in Latin America during the 20th and early 21st centuries repeatedly undermined compensated writing and production. In the days when Philip K. Dick sold reliably, few publishers would risk new or local authors. High paper prices and the devaluation of local currencies made publishing even more difficult.

However, a die-hard fan base supported the cause, distributing the ZINE on floppy disk, copying it, and reading it online. Increased digital access has expanded the space for science fiction readers and writers, and the pandemic has accelerated sharing and discovery in what has become a vast and enthusiastic community.

“We realized we weren’t party weirdos anymore,” Bastidas said. “The same thing was happening everywhere.” Big publishers like Minotauro (publisher of Planeta) are starting to publish more original works, but smaller publishers are still doing this. It’s the lifeblood of the genre. Betting on lesser-known authors and original writings has paid off and sales are increasing.

As the galaxy of local sci-fi communities came into closer contact, they shared ideas and developed tactics. Publishers began seeking investment in the production of his books through platforms such as his Kickstarter, and, boosted by increased book sales, began publishing online or alongside other publications. in the Amazon in this region.

After years of forging their own path, Latin American science fiction writers have won awards across borders such as Spain and the United States, and are gaining academic interest, including in North America. Yale University held its first conference on Latin American science fiction in March.

The writers also incorporated a wide range of tropes and influences, often treated as anarchic, feminist, queer, or even secular, such as noir, fantasy, Lovecraftian New Weird, and Latino-influenced punk styles. – grimy steampunk, urban cyberpunk, virtual reality set in the slums, and pirates flying over the Andes in Zeppelins.

Argentinian writer Michelle Nieva wrote Philip K. Dick’sDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? “

“We leave nothing ‘pure’,” said Cuban author Eric Mota. “We have polluted the excellence, but only by embracing the mixture do we become ourselves and our own. There isn’t a single sci-fi concept that hasn’t been mestizized.”

In the Andean highlands of Peru and Ecuador, neo-indigenous-inspired works proliferate, advancing cosmology and aesthetics, flourishing as space travel, robotics, or virtual reality.

Argentinian and Colombian writers have produced a wave of body-horror-influenced science fiction known as splatterpunk, but few are as gag-inducing as Colombia’s Hank T. Cohen and Argentina’s Agustina Baztelica. do not have. ”) has caused a phenomenon on TikTok.It has been translated into multiple languages ​​and a TV version is in the works.

In Brazil, science fiction inspired by African traditions and culture has exploded and Afrofuturism is on the rise. These works, including those by authors like Ale Santos, are closely related to the growing movement against structural racism in the country. harpercollins brazil.

In Mexico, writers like Gabriela Damian Milavete are using science fiction to confront the country’s prevalence of violence against women. In the English-translated and other award-winning “They Dream in the Garden,” Damien gives his victims a second life, the murdered woman’s mind being digitally captured in a hologram, and the same We build a world where we “live” together in space. park.

Latin America’s experience of otherness and progress, especially the label “developing country”, permeates new writings, rendered meaningless by distant futures and alien invasions. Bastidas’ ironically titled anti-colonial anthology “El Tercel Mundo Despues del Sol”, or “The Third World Seen from the Sun”, is a Spanish science fiction out of Latin America that receives little attention. Published throughout the Spanish-speaking world, including

Barragán’s telescopic satire Tierra Contrafuturo, or Earth and Future, claims that the United States has threatened to invade Colombia to control the arrival of aliens, and that Colombia has failed to do so. . The Intergalactic Council is requesting Earth to apply for membership. The planet does not meet the criteria to be considered a civilization and the application has been denied.

Mota finds uncharted territory in not just reimagining the future, but rewriting the past. “Habana Undergüater” imagines the Soviet Union winning the Cold War and Americans arriving by boat to seek refuge in Cuba and start a new life in the devastated and flooded areas. Going even further back, Mota’s latest novel, El Foso de Mabuya, or Tomb of Mabuya, depicts the destruction of Christopher Columbus’ expedition before it reaches the Americas by the Leviathan. are depicted as united under the indigenous peoples.

“We live in a time when the United States and Europe are rethinking their history of slavery and colonization,” he said. “By writing this sentence, we are able to overcome some old traumas.”

The imminent crisis is the subject of Latin American climate novels, or clifas (speculative works about the environment), including works by Uruguay’s Ramiro Sanchiz, Bolivia’s Edmundo Paz Soldan, and Dominican Republic’s Rita Indiana. Influences sub-genres. English. They weave climate apocalypse, time travel, and virtual reality with psychedelic botanicals inspired by Yoruba mythology, Amazon deforestation, and ayahuasca.

Viral novels born during the coronavirus pandemic are also on the rise. We call it vi-fi. Nieva’s new novel, O Henry Award Winneris a Kafka-esque dengue fable “La Infancia del Mundo” (“Infancy of the World”). And Uruguayan author Fernanda Trias has achieved international acclaim for her visionary novel “Mugle Rosa” (“Pink Slime”), which combines climate change and a pandemic. , has been translated into 7 languages. The story is that the plague comes on red poisonous winds and food. The crisis left humanity with nothing to eat but pink gootouch.

Short stories with sci-fi puns have gained traction in the hands of authors such as Bolivia’s Liliana Colanzi and Argentina’s Samanta Schweblin. Her Schweblin is now widely translated, and her Seven Empty Houses won the National Book Award for Translated Literature last year.

Even Mars is being rewritten. Colanzi’s publisher, as she puts it, “has one foot in the jungle and one on Mars,” and she has stepped on the earth with her latest collection, Ustedes Brillan en lo Oscuro, or You. . Glow in the dark. “

“Mars was already colonized by English-speaking sci-fi,” Colanzi said. What she wanted, she said, was “to have the freedom to actually create my own Mars colony.”

Whether it’s rewriting ancient worlds or envisioning new worlds, Barragan said there’s been an “imaginative explosion” in the region.

“The shadow of English-speaking science fiction has haunted us for a long time,” he says. “But we are rethinking what it is to be Latino.”