Launching into a Brown Future

doi:10.1017/9781009314091.012

Chapter 9 - Launching into a Brown Future

Latinx Science Fiction Narratives

from Part II - Transforming Genres

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 June 2025

Cathryn J. Merla-Watson

Edited by

William Orchard

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William Orchard: Affiliation:
Queens College, CUNY

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Summary

This chapter traces and contingently periodizes the development of Latinx science fiction from the early 1990s to the present, and charts its historical, political, and cultural contexts. While noting the complex genealogies of the genre, the chapter begins with a survey of Latinx dystopian and post/apocalyptic works responding to the nightmarish aftermath of the passing of NAFTA. The chapter then shifts to examine how Latinx science fiction following 9/11 foregrounds how Latinxs have never been safe in our own ostensible homeland. The remainder of the chapter maps how the genre proliferates in an unprecedented manner following the turn of the millennium, diversifying in terms of ethno-racial identity, subgenres, tropes, and subject matter that demand hemispheric approaches. The diverse narratives comprising Latinx science fiction reengage the post/apocalyptic, cyberpunk, and dystopian/utopian to excavate and linger in the past so as to radically restructure both the present and future. This chapter explores how Latinx science fiction narratives – differential, dissensual, and generative – collectively envision brown temporalities and futures of being-in-common.

Keywords

Chicanafuturism Latinxfuturism science fiction cyberpunk dystopia apocalypse posthumanism Anthropocene environmentalism zombie

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Type: Chapter
Information: Latinx Literature in Transition, 1992–2020 , pp. 167 - 184

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009314091.012 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2025

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