Zone Theory

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Permissions

PART I Maps

CHAPTER 1
Between Model and Monster

CHAPTER 2
Modalizing Utopia

CHAPTER 3
Six Excursuses on Modal Science Fiction

CHAPTER 4
The Utopian Diagram

PART II Fold

CHAPTER 5
Topologies of Revolutionary Time: Critical Utopia, Critical Dystopia, Heterotopia

Preface

In retrospect, the writing of this book has largely been the attempt to answer two questions: What is utopia? and What is a Zone? The first question has, of course, powered at least one whole field of study in the humanities and captured in its orbit an astounding armada of answers and further questions – many of them useful, some of them generative in fundamental ways. It is a testament to the importance of this question that it continues to challenge artists, scholars and activists to invent new answers and to rethink the old ones in new contexts.

I have felt its power intimately during the course of labouring on this text, the plan for which, like with most academic projects, did not emerge wholesale and was not anything close to fully formed. Bits and pieces that I did for projects inside and outside of academia kept pulling me, like the faint forces at the edges of an attractor basin, towards the not-yet of the book. I imagine that any young scholar of utopia goes through a similar process of initial enthusiasm, having discovered a larger meaning behind the notion of utopia – the idea and image of utopia as process and its promise that a better world is indeed possible; moreover, that the theoretically careful reading of fiction might be an integral part of this process. Such powerful momentum could easily lead the reader on a campaign to establish his or her object of study as somehow superior, especially in the crowded field of cultural products we currently exist in. SF and academic communities are especially vulnerable to boundary-generating processes of this kind, having to compete, externally and internally, for seemingly scarce quantities of cultural capital. One would expect that the intersection of the two would be among the first victims of this weakness that the economic system mercilessly exploits. But the question of utopia, in a marvellous display of dialectical judo, reframes the whole playing field and shows you, should you stick with it, that forms are not inherently better or worse, that in fact they work best when combined in surprising ways rather than when compartmentalized and in competition, and that the question of what a better world is constitutes perhaps not merely one of the many possible questions posed by SF but rather its chief method for formulating them in the first place.

Utopia, or the imagining and dramatic inhabitation of a better world, is always, by implication, the creation of a different world, one that does not yet exist, a no-world. Utopia is then SF, and SF is utopia, only from different perspectives. SF worlds are defined by their difference, graspable via some kind of plausible mental logic, which makes possible the reconstruction of the process of differentiation. Any SF text thus must make the reader wonder whether its world is better or worse, for whom it is better or worse and why it makes sense at all to make these comparisons. To not wonder, at least at the back of your mind, as you read, means to not engage with the text from a point of view that is in some sense not entirely your own. Ultimately, it means not reading the text as fiction but as if its world is identical with your own; as all worlds must be. Taking this argument to the extreme, as others have done, would identify all fiction as necessarily utopian, meaning that perhaps all fiction is SF? As always, the devil is in the details: SF is defined not just by its object, the worlds it creates, but also by its instruments and by the subject positions those instruments make possible. So no, not all fiction is SF, but the utopian operation, which is latent in all fiction, is turned by SF into one of its most important instruments. It multiplies subject positions, makes visible new objects, foregrounds the processes of production of the subject–object distinction. In short, it dramatizes the very possibility of creating new worlds, revealing a philosophical core within SF, or rather its philosophical skin – the envelope that is always in contact with the unsocialized forces of the outside, the part of the real that is not yet in a world but might be one day.

This book tries to trace this skin, or maybe to draw a tattoo on it, so that it can fix its outline in a shape graspable by the imagination. Its project is in a way itself science-fictional as it hypothesizes the existence of utopia not merely as a literary and sociological idea but as a philosophical image active in the heart of being. An image whose shifting contours are best traced through the affordances of SF. At this point, the young researcher might do well to temper the passion of enthusiasm with an amount of care – for the subjects and objects he or she reads about and studies, but also for the world- and theory-making instruments themselves. At no point of writing the book did I feel confident that I was careful enough, nor am I now after having written it, but I think this feeling might be an inextricable part of care. So we can never know for certain, we can only keep trying, as the subjects of utopias do. Being careful when reading SF requires attentiveness to subjects, objects and instruments that are available now, in the baseline world where our SF logics are tethered, but to the possible ones as well, waiting dormant in potentia. In other words: in power, in force. The utopian operation outlines clashing forces and perspectives, all of which are world-making. Attending to all possible forces would obviously be an illusory enterprise, one that assumes these possibilities are predictable and finite, or at least finitely infinite. Being careful, I think, means the opposite thing here: delimiting that space of possibilities in the most generous way that you can imagine, then setting about exploring it with the clear knowledge that any map you draw would be just that, a map.

Maps are objects produced by particular subjects using particular instruments and can themselves become subject- and object-producing instruments. What delimits the space of exploration of this book are those two questions with which I started my prefatory statement. The first one introduces the possibility of bringing different worlds into existence – better or worse, if these distinctions make sense at all. The second one – What is a Zone? – marks the other limit of that space; it has challenged me to think about the impossibility of worlding. It is a question formulated best by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, to whose Roadside Picnic my book obviously owes its name, but I believe it has been around in different forms for somewhat longer than that. The current project is not a genealogy of Zones but a theoretical study that takes Zones as the necessary extremum of the utopian operation. In between these two poles, or surfaces of the utopian skin, I deploy many instruments – taking some from theory, others from fiction itself, refusing to make an airtight distinction between the two. I think this is the right thing to do because the texts I have used do it themselves – theory insisting that it should be in some ways like fiction, and fiction mimicking theory. A tendency to diffract instruments with one another is therefore the overarching methodology of the book, if there is one. Within its conceptual space, tools from structuralist semiotics are diffracted through dialectical thought, then through utopian SF, then through posthumanist and ecological philosophy, and on the theory-fiction spiral goes, limning the utopian diagram as the signified slides continually underneath its signifier.

In the end, this is a map, nothing more, nothing less. I hope the journey it delineates is a useful one, maybe even more so because of the gaps it leaves. I do not provide a dedicated introduction to its methods and structure, to the topics it encounters, because it seems to me that the surprising transformations of the diffractive process are more important than a synoptic outline of the procedure. Here at the doorstep, I leave the reader with these two extreme points between which the journey unfolds: Utopia and the Zone. Hopefully, this book might serve as a useful vessel for fellow travellers curious to discover what lies between them.

Mihalkovo, Bulgaria
July 2022

Acknowledgements

My mother is the person who first handed me an SFF novel; I think she must have regretted that for a while, but, for better or worse, it was a life-changing event. Thanks, Mum! And thank you to you and Dad for giving us a pretty much utopian childhood, given the circumstances. Huge thanks are due to all friends and colleagues, past and present, behind ShadowDance, the SFF magazine where I have felt at home for almost twenty years now. I could not possibly count all the ideas discussed here that have their roots in writing and thinking for ShadowDance. If I have ever known a truly utopian project, that must be it. Particular thanks to Simeon Tsanev, who invited me in, and to Joro Penchev, a partner in so many bold, crazy projects. My students in science fiction and utopian studies at Sofia University have been a great influence over the past few years by making it possible to have all those long and enthusiastic discussions, the results of which have surely found their way into the present text. Vladimir Poleganov and Emanuil Tomov have been the best possible companions in teaching SF, which, I can confidently say, is not just a thing one does but also a utopian moment, a place of becoming. A big thank you to all colleagues at the Department of English and American Studies for the support and for the things they have taught me. Thanks to Konstantin Georgiev and Anastasia Ilieva for the comradely labour in discovering dialectical materialism, and for so much more. At least two of the chapters in this book would not exist had it not been for them. Other colleagues to whom I am grateful for the help, the discussions, the editing, the texts they have shared, in no particular order: Katherina Kokinova, Bogdana Paskaleva, Neda Genova, Shawn Edrei, Orin Posner, Elana Gomel, Grace Michaeli, Ralitsa Gerasimova, Katie Stone, Eliza Rose, Miglena Nikolchina, Kerry Dodd, Sinéad Murphy, Francis Gene-Rowe, Alison Sperling, Darin Tenev, Enyo Stoyanov, Lubomir Terziev, Alexandra Glavanakova, Nikolai Genov, Iva Stefanova, Philip Stoilov, Alexander Kiossev, Chavdar Parushev, Kamelia Spassova, Boyan Manchev, Marek Oziewicz, Brian Attebery, Tereza Dedinová, Michael Paulsen, jan jagodzinski and Shé M. Hawke. Thanks to all colleagues at the Center for Advanced Study Sofia for the opportunities to think about and discuss related ideas. Keeping reading an activity that can sometimes just be fun on its own terms is a difficult thing when one does it increasingly in professional contexts. The Greenwich SFF Book Club and its offshoot, the Sofia SF Movie Club, were very important in this regard, and now the torch is carried by the New Crobuzon Book Club, born in the depths of Discord amidst the pandemic. To all involved: thank you for making life easier and more fun. A deep thank you to Ali, who refuses to take outer space seriously but has taught me so much about all kinds of inner space. Darin Tenev has taught me the most when it comes to theory – in the classroom, on discussion panels, informally and through his texts; I hope I have used his teaching well. Last but definitely not least, out of all the SF authors whose work I discuss here, Kim Stanley Robinson has certainly had the deepest influence on this book. Thank you for initiating me as a utopian traveller!