Featured on the 2021 Locus Recommended Reading List
For over 50 years, Darko Suvin has set the agenda for science fiction studies through his innovative linking of scifi to utopian studies, formalist and leftist critical theory, and his broader engagement with what he terms "political epistemology." Disputing the Deluge joins a rapidly growing renewal of critical interest in Suvin's work on scifi and utopianism by bringing together in a single volume 24 of Suvin's most significant interventions in the field from the 21st century, with an Introduction by editor Hugh O'Connell and a new preface by the author.
Beginning with writings from the early 2000s that investigate the function of literary genres and reconsider the relationship between science fiction and fantasy, the essays collected here--each a brilliant example of engaged thought--highlight the value of scifi for grappling with the key events and transformations of recent years. Suvin's interrogations show how speculative fiction has responded to 9/11, the global war on terror, the 2008 economic collapse, and the rise of conservative populism, along with contemporary critical utopian analyses of the Capitalocene, the climate crisis, COVID-19, and the decline of democracy. By bringing together Suvin's essays all in one place, this collection allows new generations of students and scholars to engage directly with his work and its continuing importance and timeliness.
With so many scales of crisis simultaneously unfolding around us, we need today more than ever militant, engaged, and hopeful scholarship that brushes against the grain of the 'new modesties' in critical thought and provides signposts for navigating the increasingly perilous terrain of contemporary planetary life. A disputation in the truest sense of the word--a refusal of the complacencies of the status quo and a willingness to seek truth wherever it may lead--this scintillating collection of Darko Suvin's most significant interventions published in the first two decades of our millennium offers an exemplary case of just such a necessary scholarship. This timely collection should be of tremendous import not only to students of science fiction and Utopian studies, but to anyone interested in a sobering and clear-eyed assessment of our contemporary 'dark times' and an inspiring call-to-arms for developing the strategies necessary if we are to 'emerge from the flood' of our once again grim but still hope-filled present.
