Short-Form Criticism

Essays, Articles, and Reviews (91)

Review of The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, Volume 2, edited by James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle, Valancourt, 2022. World Literature Today, vol. 96, no. 2, Mar. 2022, pp. 56-57.

Review of Civilizations, by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021. Strange Horizons, 31 Jan. 2022.

“You Want to Work in Academic Publishing: What Next?” Feeding the Elephant, 19 Jan. 2022.

This is a tl;dr version of a post on my blog by the same name.

“Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park Is a Terrible Masterpiece.” Tor.com, 11 Jan. 2022.

Review of Whisper, by Chang Yu-Ko, Honford Star, 2021. World Literature Today, vol. 96, no. 1, Jan. 2022, p. 71.

Review of Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement, by Isiah Lavender III, The Ohio State University Press, 2019. Science Fiction Studies, vol. 48, no. 1, 2021, pp. 151-155.

“Tehanu: Le Guin’s Return to Earthsea—and Her Best Novel.” Tor.com, 24 Feb. 2021. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 22.

“The Beginning Place: Le Guin’s Portal Fantasy in Search of the Ain Country.” Tor.com, 13 Jan. 2021. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 21.

Review of The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones, Saga, 2020. Strange Horizons, 3 Feb. 2021.

Review of The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, Volume 1, edited by James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle, Valancourt, 2020. World Literature Today, vol. 95, no. 1, Winter 2021, pp. 87-89.

“The Language of the Night: Le Guin’s Essays on Why We Shouldn’t Fear Dragons.” Tor.com, 9 Dec. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 20.

Review of The Broken Heavens (Worldbreaker Saga 3), by Kameron Hurley, Angry Robot, 2020. Strange Horizons, 7 Dec. 2020.

“Malafrena: Le Guin’s Dry Fanfic of Europe’s Liberal Revolutions.” Tor.com, 18 Nov. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 19.

“Apocalypse Always: On Matthew Wolf-Meyer’s Theory for the World to Come.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 7 Nov. 2020.

“The Eye of the Heron: Le Guin’s Introduction to Feminism and Ode to Nonviolence.” Tor.com, 28 Oct. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 18.

“Introduction: Screening Utopia in Dystopian Times.” With Leimar Garcia-Siino. Screening Utopia in Dystopian Times, edited by Leimar Garcia-Siino and Sean Guynes, special issue of Science Fiction Film and Television, vol. 13, no. 3, 2020, pp. 317-321.

“Orsinian Tales: Le Guin’s Melancholic Stroll Through an Imaginary Central Europe.” Tor.com, 14 Oct. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 17.

Review of Scarlet Odyssey, by C.T. Rwizi, 47North, 2020. World Literature Today, vol. 94, no. 4, Autumn 2020, pp. 101-102.

“Very Far Away from Anywhere Else: Le Guin’s Thoughtful, Mundane YA Novel of Companioship in an Isolating World.” Tor.com, 9 Sep. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 16.

“The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Part II: Le Guin’s Psychomyths and Those Who Walk Away.” Tor.com, 26 Aug. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 15.

“The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Part I: Le Guin’s Early Stories and Germinative Tales.” Tor.com, 12 Aug. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 14.

Eppu Jensen writes about this article.

“The Word for World Is Forest: Ecology, Colonialism, and the Protest Movement.” Tor.com, 5 Aug. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 13.

“The Lathe of Heaven: Le Guin’s Trippy Local SF Novel about Reality.” Tor.com, 15 July 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 12.

“City of Illusions: Language and Trust on Space Opera’s Margin.” Tor.com, 1 July 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 11.

Review of Wûf, by Kemal Varol, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2020. World Literature Today, vol. 94, no. 3, Summer 2020, pp. 96-97.

“Planet of Exile: Anthropological Speculations on Cultural Difference and Loss.” Tor.com, 17 June 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 10.

“Rocannon’s World: Where the Hainish Cycle Begins.” Tor.com, 10 June 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 9.

“The Farthest Shore: The Return of the King.” Tor.com, 5 May 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 8.

“The Tombs of Atuan: Power, Ideology, and Becoming Uneaten.” Tor.com, 29 Apr. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 7.

“A Wizard of Earthsea: The Unsung Song of the Shadow.” Tor.com, 8 Apr. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 6.

“The Dispossessed, Part II: May You Get Reborn on Anarres!” Tor.com, 25 Mar. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 5.

“The Dispossessed, Part I: A Woman in Every Table Top.” Tor.com, 4 Mar. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 4.

“Dystopia Fatigue Doesn’t Cut It, Or, Blade Runner 2049’s Utopian Longings.” Reconsidering the Blade Runner Legacy, edited by Sarah Hamblin and Hugh C. O’Connell, special issue of Science Fiction Film and Television, vol. 13, no. 1, Feb. 2020, pp. 143-148.

“The Left Hand of Darkness, Part II: Love on the Ice.” Tor.com, 19 Feb. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 3.

“The Left Hand of Darkness, Part I: Cold and Only Just Now Getting to War.” Tor.com, 5 Feb. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 2.

“The Matter of America: On Michael Swanwick’s The Iron Dragon’s Daughter.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 25 Jan. 2020.

See Swanwick’s response.

“Introducing the Ursula K. Le Guin Reread.” Tor.com, 22 Jan. 2020. The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread 1.

Review of Out of Darkness, Shining Light, Petina Gappah, Scribner, 2019. World Literature Today, vol. 94, no. 1, Winter 2020, pp. 92-93.

Review of The Old Drift, by Namwali Serpell, Hogarth, 2019. Strange Horizons, 25 Nov. 2019.

Review of Catching Teller Crow (AUS/UK) / The Things She’s Seen (US), by Ambellin Kwaymullina and Ezekiel Kwaymullina, Alfred A. Knopf, 2018. American Book Review, vol. 41, no. 1, Nov/Dec. 2019, p. 6.

Review of Racial Worldmaking: The Power of Popular Fiction, by Mark Jerng, Fordham UP, 2017. Science Fiction Film and Television, vol. 12, no. 3, Oct. 2019, pp. 398-402.

“Worlds Will Live, Worlds Will Die: Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Anxieties and Calamities of the Comic-Book Event.” Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, vol. 3, no. 3, Fall 2019, pp. 171-190.

This article is discussed in Miriam Kent’s excellent video essay, “Gender, Genre, and ’90s Nostalgia in Captain Marvel”

Review of Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice, ECW Press, 2018. Strange Horizons, 22 July 2019.

Review of The Bird King, by G. Willow Wilson, Grove Press, 2019. World Literature Today, vol. 93, no. 3, Summer 2019, p. 83.

Review of Mars: Stories, by Asja Bakić, Feminist Press, 2019. Strange Horizons, 27 May 2019.

“Of Botany, Hacking, Biosurveillance, and Boredom; Or, Pola Oloixarac’s Dark Constellations.” PopMatters, 6 May 2019.

“The Long, Troubled, Redemptive History of Latinx Superheroes.” PopMatters, 12 Apr. 2019.

Review of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, directed by Gareth Edwards, Walt Disney Studios, 2016. Science Fiction Film and Television, vol. 12, no. 1, Feb. 2019, pp. 161-165.

“Selling Afghan Authenticity: Jamil Jan Kochai’s 99 Night in Logar.” PopMatters, 28 Mar. 2019.

Review of Black Leopard, Red Wolf, by Marlon James, Riverhead Books, 2019. World Literature Today, vol. 93, no. 2, Spring 2019, pp. 80-81.

“Motherhood and Soviet Life in Nora Ikstena’s Latvian Novel Soviet Milk.” PopMatters, 15 Mar. 2019.

“Afrofuturism’s Specter: Alternate History, Racial Capitalism, and Nisi Shawl’s Everfair.” SFRA Review, vol. 327, Winter 2019, pp. 48-51.

Review of Migrant Futures: Decolonizing Speculation in Financial Times, by Aimee Bahng, Duke UP, 2018. ASAP/J, 21 Feb. 2019.

“Inventing the Alien in Early Science Fiction.” Aliens in Popular Culture: A Guide to Visitors from Outer Space, edited by Michael M. Levy and Farah Mendlesohn, Greenwood Press, 2019, pp. 3-8.

“Terryl Whitlatch.” Aliens in Popular Culture: A Guide to Visitors from Outer Space, edited by Michael M. Levy and Farah Mendlesohn, Greenwood Press, 2019, pp. 301-303.

“Academic-Led Publishing and the Necessity of Open Access; Or, Remembering Aaron Swartz.” Michigan Publishing News, 1 Feb. 2019.

“The Art of Typography and Design in Science Fiction Film.” PopMatters, 30 Jan. 2019.

“On the Queer Millennial Greenlandic Novel.” PopMatters, 22 Jan. 2019.

“Fracturing to Survive in Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth.” PopMatters, 17 Jan. 2019.

“We’re All Dürt Würkers: Grady Hendrix’s Heavy Metal Horror.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 9 Jan. 2019.

“She Would Be King, An Afrofuturist Novel of Nation-Making in Liberia.” PopMatters, 8 Jan. 2019.

Review of Monsters in the Machine: Science Fiction Film and the Militarization of America after World War II, by Steffen Hantke, UP of Mississippi, 2016. Extrapolation, vol. 59, no. 3, 2018, pp. 307-310.

“The Zombie and Its Metaphors.” American Quarterly, vol. 70, no. 4, Dec. 2018, pp. 903-912.

“Saving Acid Communism: 800 Pages of the Essential Leftist Critic Mark Fisher.” PopMatters, 4 Dec. 2018.

“The One About the One About Friends.” PopMatters, 30 Nov. 2018.

“The Book about Geek Triumph You Probably Don’t Need.” PopMatters, 26 Nov. 2018.

Review of Mecha Samurai Empire, by Peter Tieryas, Ace, 2018. Strange Horizons, 19 Nov. 2018.

“Alyson Hagy’s Scribe Is Gloriously Artful, but Something Is Missing.” PopMatters, 15 Nov. 2018.

“When Sexually Frustrated Angry White Men (Mis)Read the Classics.” PopMatters, 9 Nov. 2018.

Review of Twenty-First-Century Popular Fiction, edited by Bernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson, Edinburgh UP, 2018. Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2018, pp. 66-68.

Review of Unholy Land, by Lavie Tidhar, Tachyon, 2018. World Literature Today, vol. 92, no. 6, Nov. 2018, pp. 69-70.

“‘I’ve Waited for Him’: How Halloween (2018) Turns the Tables on the Slasher.” We Are the Mutants, 31 Oct. 2018.

“Audrey Schulman in the Gutter of Genre.” World Literature Today Blog, 18 Sep. 2018.

Review of Ball Lightning, by Cixin Liu, Tor, 2018. Featured review. World Literature Today, vol. 92, no. 5, Sep. 2018, pp. 66-67.

“The Cursed Frontier: Ismail Kadare’s Theory of the State.” PopMatters, 7 Aug. 2018.

“Mame Bougouma Diene and the Promise of African Horror.” World Literature Today Blog, 24 July 2018.

Review of Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler, edited by Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal, Twelfth Planet Press, 2017. Utopian Studies, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 280-284.

Review of Condomnauts, by Yoss, Restless Books, 2018. World Literature Today, vol. 92, no. 4, July 2018, forthcoming.

“Colonial Hottie: Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman, and Brand Israel.” The Middle Spaces, 5 June 2018.

Review of Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico, by David Bowles, Cinco Puntos Press, 2018. World Literature Today, vol. 92, no. 3, May 2018, pp. 89-90.

“Introduction: On Punking Speculative Fiction.” Punking Speculative Fiction, edited by Sean Guynes, special issue of Deletion, vol. 14, May 2018.

“Mutate or Die: Eighty Years of the Futurians’ Vision.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 14 Apr. 2018.

Review of Essays on World Literature: Aeschylus • Dante • Shakespeare, by Ismail Kadare, translated by Ani Kokobobo, Restless Books, 2018. World Literature Today, vol. 92, no. 2, Mar. 2018, pp. 89-90.

Review of A Girl in Exile: Requiem for Linda B., by Ismail Kadare, translated by John Hodgson, Counterpoint, 2018. World Literature Today, vol. 92, no. 1, Jan. 2018, p. 66.

Review of Her Body and Other Parties: Stories, by Carmen Maria Machado, Graywolf Press, 2017. World Literature Today, vol. 91, no. 6, Nov. 2017, pp. 69-70.

Review of Mapping the Interior, by Stephen Graham Jones, Tor, 2017. World Literature Today, vol. 91, no. 5, Sep. 2017, pp. 70-71.

Quoted in Tobias Carroll, “At the Literary Intersection of Climate Disaster, Apocalypse, and Folk Horror,” Literary Hub, 6 Jan. 2020

Review of The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics, by Ramzi Fawaz (New York UP, 2016). Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 27, no. 3, Sep. 2017, pp. 532-535.

Review of Happily Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture, by Catherine M. Roach (Indiana UP, 2016). The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 50, no. 4, Aug. 2017, pp. 898-901.

Review of Dissolving Classroom, by Junji Ito (Vertical Comics, 2017). World Literature Today, vol. 91, no. 3-4, May-August 2017, pp. 99-100.

Review of The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales: The Evolution of Modern Fantasy and Horror, edited by Justin Everett and Jeffrey H. Shanks (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 27, no. 2, Mar. 2017, pp. 332-334.

“Fatal Attractions: AIDS and American Superhero Comics, 1988-1994.” International Journal of Comic Art, vol. 17, no. 2, Fall/Winter 2015, pp. 177-216.

Cited in Olivia Cieri, “Looking Back at the Mistreatment of Marvel’s First Gay Comic Superhero,” Hyperallergic, 28 June 2021
Discussed in William Richard Avila, Representation of HIV/AIDS in Popular American Comic Books, 1981-1996 (Dissertation, 2021)

Book Chapters (8)

“Novels.” The Routledge Handbook to Star Trek, edited by Leimar Garcia-Siino, Sabrina Mittermeier, Stefan Rabitsch, Routledge, 2022, 176-184.

“Lowbrow.” Keywords for Comics Studies, edited by Ramzi Fawaz, Shelley Streeby, and Deborah Whaley, New York UP, 2021, 144-148.

“Not to Interpret, but to Abolish: Whiteness Studies and American Superhero Comics.” With Martin Lund. Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics, edited by Sean Guynes and Martin Lund, The Ohio State UP, 2020, 1-16.

“White Plasticity and Black Possibility in Darwyn Cooke’s DC: The New Frontier.” Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics, edited by Sean Guynes and Martin Lund, The Ohio State UP, 2020, pp. 174-190.

“Candy and Drugs for Dinner: Rat Queens, Genre, and Our Aesthetic Categories.” The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama, Oxford UP, 2020, pp. 573-588. Online: Mar. 2019 (doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190917944.013.29).

“‘Am I Doing the Right Thing?’: Milestone Comics, Black Nationalism, and the Cosmopolitics of Static.” Comics Studies: Here and Now, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama, Routledge, 2018, pp. 298-316.

“Introduction: ‘What Is This Strange World We’ve Come to?’” With Dan Hassler-Forest. Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, edited by Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest, Amsterdam UP, 2017, pp. 11-13.

“Publishing the New Jedi Order: Media Industries Collaboration and the Franchise Novel.” Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, edited by Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest, Amsterdam UP, 2017, pp. 143-154.

A great response to this chapter raises some interesting questions about who decides popularity among franchise audiences/consumers, with a look at SF fanzines of the 1990s; the response was posted to a course website created to accompany Andrew Goldstone‘s course on SF and Cultural Capital at Rutgers University, where the chapter was an assigned reading