The Posthuman Patriarchal Villain as Absolute Future Threat: Winston Duarte (and the hero James Holden) in The Expanse novel series

SPOILERS WARNING: This post deals with the nine Expanse novels and discusses the series’ ending. The Expanse is a series of nine space opera novels—Leviathan Wakes (2011), Caliban’s War (2012), Abaddon’s Gate (2013), Cibola Burn (2014), Nemesis Games (2015), Babylon’s Ashes (2016), Persepolis Rising (2017), Tiamat’s Wrath (2019) and Leviathan Falls (2021)—accompanied by a short […]

POST-APOCALYPSE NOW!: PLAGUES, CLIMATE CHANGE AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (IN MANDEL AND KINGSNORTH)

When I wrote the post ‘Preparing for Disaster: Reading Post-Apocalyptic Fiction‘ in 2015, Covid-19 was still almost five years away into the future (the virus broke out in China’s city of Wuhan in December 2019, hence its name, but it spread worldwide in early 2020, with a three-month state of alarm and lockdown being declared […]

READING A LONG NOVEL SERIES (FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES): THE EXPANSE

I’m returning to James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse, which I discussed two posts ago, this time to reflect on the strategies required to face such a long read for academic purposes.             Whereas mainstream and literary novels are usually published as stand-alone volumes, series abound in genre fiction. They are sometimes bound by the presence […]

STOP DYSTOPIAS: HOPEPUNK, AND A WARNING ABOUT GENERALIZED GRIMDARK

On September 14, the Spanish Ministry of Social Rights and Agenda 2030 led by Ione Belarra, Secretary General of left-wing party Podemos, launched the campaign #BastaDeDistopías [#StopDystopias] to encourage the debate around the current general discouragement, especially among the young. The main piece is a 1-minute video in which various characters are seen in what […]

A PHANTOM GENRE: THE STRANGE CASE OF THE TECHNOTHRILLER

The one who should be writing this post today is my PhD student Pascal Lemaire since he has chosen to deal with the technothriller as his topic of research. However, I am myself curious about some of the points he is raising about this genre, so here I am. Back in 2014 Pascal published in […]