Beauty as a trait has always had problematic influences on the representation of female characters in popular culture. Terry Pratchett, who recognizes the strong presence of stereotypes and patriarchal narratives in what he calls the consensus fantasy universe, subverts such detrimental narratives of beauty within his Witches novels. This essay analyses Terry Pratchett's nuanced approach to the representation of beauty within the context of Discworld tropes such as Narrative Causality and Headology, which foreground metafictional discussions of narratives of beauty in his Witches novels.
It is difficult to give thought to the stars when the ground is swallowing you up. (Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate)This paper analyzes the science fiction subgenre hopepunk and its academic potential, specifically when considered as a form of low theory in the sense that Jack Halberstam describes in The Queer Art of Failure. I argue that considering hopepunk as low theory represents a discursive way out of the theoretical dispute between queer futurity and the queer death drive. After establishing hopepunk as a low theory of queer temporality, I examine the way that affect functions in the subgenre as a sort of 'empathy trojan horse.' Throughout this essay I refer to To Be Taught, If Fortunate and The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, whose work is considered the epitome of hopepunk. In referencing Chambers I hope to demonstrate that this work is in fact theory (even if it must be considered the low sort), despite its intention for a non-academic audience.
In Leni Zumas's Red Clocks (2018) and Sophie Mackintosh's Blue Ticket (2020), the featured state either designates women as un/worthy of motherhood or forces motherhood upon women, which seeds resentment and division. Division among women diminishes the possibility of resistance through community building. In the wake of such state-sanctioned cruelty targeting women's freedom and bodily autonomy, anger and anxiety can be harnessed to form communities of fate, or communities formed through duress. As critical dystopias, Red Clocks and Blue Ticket show the power of centering resistance, activism, and justice, thus demonstrating the productive capacities of community formation.
Philip K. Dick's Ubik (1969) has often been interpreted through a theological or ontological lens, with scholars reading the titular substance as a benevolent force akin to the Gnostic god-a stabilizing presence amid entropic decay. However, from the perspective of Bill Brown's "material unconscious," Ubik does not function as a redemptive agent but rather as an extension of decay itself, an instrument of planned obsolescence. This essay repositions Ubik within the logic of material accumulation, arguing that discarded and obsolete objects do not simply vanish but instead form an assemblage that exceeds human perception. In this way, Ubik emerges not as a salvific force but as a capitalist mechanism sustaining the cycle of production, consumption, and waste, ensuring that obsolescence remains structurally necessary. As these discarded objects persist, they exert agency, resisting disappearance and reconfiguring the material landscape in ways that challenge traditional subject-object hierarchies.
This article aims to challenge the dominant readings of Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) that are reliant on Le Guin's interests in their approach. Focusing on Jungian readings, it uses queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's framework of paranoid and reparative reading to diagnose both the dominant critical approaches and to read the novel itself. Consequently, it will read A Wizard of Earthsea as a text oriented around the escape of a dominant episteme, establishing a position where an individual can repair their relationship not only to themselves but also to the surrounding culture. This analysis will ultimately provide insight into fantasy's potential as a reparative mode.
