Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy Through 1945: Immigrants in the Golden Age by Valerie Estelle Frankel (review)

“Creatures of the Light” (1930), for example, provides an intriguing example of early female-authored sf concerned with issues of the human. Thanks to his approach, which shows wide reading and deep understanding, Connolly provides a history of the human and its challenges in sf literature that is complementary, if not crucial, to contemporary engagements with sf from a critical posthumanist perspective. There is some ongoing debate about the role of posthumanism: is this a philosophical field concerned with the posthuman as a figure, a speculative idea for the subject that might come after the human? Or is the emphasis to be on posthumanism, a philosophical position critical of humanism, that can even be described as a practice of reading and interpretation? Connolly begins to move from one position to the other over the course of this monograph, finally arguing that “the ‘human’ ... comprises not a coherent figure in the history of SF, nor even a number of coherent figures, but rather a discursive site upon which may be projected any number of hopes and fears regarding the nature of human society ... and the future of embodied subjectivity in all its various guises” (200). This monograph gives a valuable starting point for considering the developments of human figures in science fiction before posthumanism had been articulated and it contributes productively to current conversations about reading such texts retroactively as engagements with the posthuman and posthumanism.—Anna McFarlane, University of Leeds