Imagining the Unimaginable: Speculative Fiction and the Holocaust

(Paperback)

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Imagining the Unimaginable examines popular fictions treatment of the Holocaust in the dystopian and alternate history genres of speculative fiction, analyzing the effectiveness of the genre's major works as a lens through which to view the most prominent historical trauma of the 20th century. It surveys a range of British and American authors, from science fiction pulp to Pulitzer Prize winners, building on scholarship across disciplines, including Holocaust studies, trauma studies, and science fiction studies. The conventional discourse around the Holocaust is one of the unapproachable, unknowable, and the unimaginable. The Holocaust has been compared to an earthquake, another planet, another universe, a void. It has been said to be beyond language, or else have its own incomprehensible language, beyond art, and beyond thought. The 'othering' of the event has spurred the phenomenon of non-realist Holocaust literature, engaging with speculative fiction and its history of the uncanny, the grotesque, and the inhuman. This book examines the most common forms of nonmimetic Holocaust fiction, the dystopia and the alternate history, while firmly positioning these forms within a broader pattern of non-realist engagements with the Holocaust.

Reviews

Morgans remarkable achievement with Imagining the Unimaginable has been to show that SF Holocaust fiction is not only a real possibility, but a rich subgenre of speculative literature ... a valuable project indeed: the Holocaust is an event that demands repeated evaluation and attempts to make sense of it. * Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) *
A thorough and well-written work of scholarship that turns the myth of silence into a resounding yell and should be a core text for courses that teach SF ... If the Holocaust is impossible to understand except through direct experience, Morgans book is a timely intervention to remind us that, not only should it be understood in this post-survivor age, but we have a readily available library of texts to set us on the proper path. * Fafnir: The Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy *
Readers will find this a thoughtful work, full of valuable insights about the texts discussed and a stimulus for thinking about how valuable the tools of science fiction are for imagining the unimaginable. * Science Fiction Studies *
This is a compact and useful volume that will be of interest to anyone interested in the complexities of Holocaust fiction. * Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction *
At once theoretically sophisticated and readable, Glyn Morgans study makes a notable contribution to the field of Holocaust literature by showing how Anglo-American speculative fiction a genre encompassing science fiction, fantasy, and alternate history has reflected, as well as shaped, the evolving memory of the Holocaust. * Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, Professor of History, Fairfield University, USA *
Expanding the canon and extending the debate about representation, this thoughtful, wide-ranging and critically-aware book charts new territory in our understanding both of the Holocaust and of speculative fiction. * Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK *

Author Bio

Glyn Morgan is a research fellow at the University of Liverpool, UK, and Project Curator at the Science Museum, London.