After Engulfment: Cosmicism and Neocosmicism in H.P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, and Frank Herbert by Ellen J. Greenham (review)

Abstract

ASF’s perspective. Second, Odumboni’s article is USA-centric. He appears to locate the “European incursion” (59) in Africa in 1619, a date commonly used to designate the possible start of slavery in the USA. Yet the Portuguese had entered the African slave trade over a century earlier. USA-centrism also inflects his argument when he writes that “the geographical rootedness of Black Panther aligns it with Okorafor’s conceptualization of Africanfuturism” (65). While Okorafor emphasizes the importance of Africa as a setting for Africanfuturism, Black Panther is her main example of what is not Africanbut rather Afrofuturism. Of course, one is free to redefine Africanfuturism to include Black Panther. Yet bending Okorafor’s concept without engaging the arguments does a disservice to ASF authors’ attempts to be considered on African terms as peoples with a distinct history, lived experience, and literature and film. Third, Osuji’s attempt to read Achebe’s work as speculative fiction is potentially provocative because some have understood ASF as a challenge to Achebe’s realism, which to their understandable dissatisfaction continues to set the “standard for contemporary African writing” (16). If Achebe’s work were shown to be speculative, it would necessitate a revision of ASF’s status in the African literary canon and of African realism as such. An obvious way of doing so is to see Things Fall Apart as an “‘alien’ invasion” novel, as Rodriques does in her essay (30). Osuji, however, follows the template of MR articles (which Ezeiyoke criticizes), but now understands the supernatural not as magical but as speculative. This makes the two synonymous and raises the question of what we gain by calling works ASF at all. Nevertheless, even these weak points are important because they highlight what questions must be asked, including the question of what we gain by rereading certain works as speculative fiction. It makes ALT 39 a beneficial intervention and informative reading for those who are new to ASF and for those who have been engaged in these debates for longer.—Peter J. Maurits, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany