The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms

Taryne Jade Taylor is Advanced Assistant Professor of Science Fiction at Florida Atlantic University. Her research focuses on the politics of representation in speculative fiction, particularly feminist science fiction and diasporic Latinx Futurisms. She firmly believes science fiction and fantasy build paths to a better, inclusive future, which is why her research focuses on diversity, inclusion, and justice as presented in the secondary worlds of the fantastic. Isiah Lavender III is Sterling-Goodman Professor of English at the University of Georgia, where he researches and teaches courses in African American literature and science fiction. He is the author/editor of six books, including Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement (2019) and the interview collection Conversations with Nalo Hopkinson (2023). He is currently completing the first draft of Future Pasts: Race and Speculative Fictions. Finally, he edits for Extrapolation. Grace L. Dillon (Anishinaabe) is Professor in the Indigenous Nations Studies Program at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate course on a range of interests including Native American and Indigenous studies, science fiction, Indigenous cinema, popular culture, race and social justice, and early modern literature. She is the editor of Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (2012) and Hive of Dreams: Contemporary Science Fiction from the Pacific Northwest (2003). Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay is Associate Professor in Global Culture Studies at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo. He is Principal Investigator of the European Research Council project “CoFutures: Pathways to Possible Presents” as well as Principal Investigator of the Norwegian Research Council project “Science Fictionality” in addition to running the Holodeck, a state-of-the-art Games Research Lab at the University of Oslo.

Introduction to CoFuturisms

Taryne Jade Taylor

Part I

Indigenous Futurisms



The Future Imaginary

Jason Edward Lewis



‘Lands of Chemical Death’: Toxic Survivance in Bunky Echo-Hawk’s ‘Gas Masks as Medicine’ and Misha’s Red Spider White Web

Stina Attebery



Water, Fire, Earth: Darcie Little Badger’s "Ku Ko Né Ä" Series

Kristina Andrea Baudemann



Contact, Rationalism, and Indigenous Queer Natures in Ellen Van Neerven’s "Water"

Arlie Alizzi



Wayfinding Pasifikafuturism: An Indigenous Science Fiction Vision of the Ocean in Space

Gina Cole



Creating Collaborative Digital Poetic Worlds in the Video Poetry of Heid Erdrich and Kathy Jetñil-Kiijiner

Kasey Jones-Matrona



Indigenous Young Adult Dystopias

Graham J. Murphy



Centering Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Futurisms

Channette Romero



Blackfella Futurism: Speculative Fiction Grounded in Grassroots Sovereignty Politics

Mykaela Saunders



Anthologizing the Indigenous Environmental Imaginary: Moonshot Volume 3 and Ecocritical Futurisms

Conrad Scott



Speculative Landscapes of Contemporary North American Indigenous Fiction

Julia Siepak



Russell Bates (Kiowa): Eco-SF and Indigenous Futurisms

Patrick Sharp



Welcome to the World of Tomorrow: Terrestrial Sovereignty and Decolonial Apocalypse in Indigenous Futurist Writing

Anne Stewart



Coding Potawatomi Cosmologies: Elements of Bodwéwadmi Futurisms

Blaire Morseau



(Re)writing and (Re)beading: Understanding Indigenous Women’s Roles in the

Creation of Indigenous Futurisms

Emily C. Van Alst



Okinawa Q (an Uckinanchu Futurism): Okinawans Rectify the Unbalanced View of Nature Through Tokusatsu Television and Film

Kenrick H. Kamiya-Yoshida

Part II

Latinx Futurisms



The Economic Migrant and the Specter of Permanence in Why Cybraceros?, The Rag Doll Plagues, and Walk on Water

Catherine S. Ramírez



The Creative Technologists of ADÁL’s Out of Focus Nuyoricans and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

Matthew David Goodwin



Indigenous and Western Sciences in Carlos Hernandez’s The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria

Joy Sanchez-Taylor



Conjurando poderes de existencia: Depictions of Sabidurías in the Latin American Speculative Fiction Series, Siempre Bruja

Vanessa J. Aguilar



Utopic Rage: Transforming the Future Through Narratives of Black Feminine Monstrosity and Rage

Cassandra Scherr



Grounding the Future – Locating Senior’s "Grung" Poetics in Tobias Buckell’s Speculative Fiction

Jacinth Howard



Recursive Origins and Distributed Cognitive Assemblages in Anthony Joseph’s The African Origins of UFOs

Liam Wilby



Alejandro Morales’ The Rag Doll Plagues: Chican@/Latinx Futurism – Between Intra-History and Utopia

Daniel Schreiner



Prosthetic Visions, Bodily Horrors, and Decolonial Options in Madre

Márton Árva



Amazofuturism, Indigenous Futurism, Afrofuturism and Sertãopunk in Brazilian Science Fiction: an Overview

Vítor Castelõs Gama with Alan de Sá and G.G. Diniz



Chicanx Futurist Performances: Guillermo Gómez-Peña and the La Pocha Nostra Territorial Cartographies

Eduardo Barros-Grela



Crossing Merfolk: mermaids and the Middle Passage in African Diasporic Culture

Jalondra A. Davis



Brazilian Afrofuturism as a Social Technology

Patrick Brock



Notes Towards Chicanafuturity / Dispatches from Northern Aztlán

Lysa Rivera



Toward a Mexican American Futurism

David Bowles



Some Kind of Tomorrow

ire’ne lara silva

Part III

Asian, Middle East, and Other Futurisms

Let a hundred sinofuturisms bloom

Virginia L. Conn and Gabriele de Seta



A Daoist Reading of Hao Jingfang’s Vagabonds

Regina Kanyu Wang



"In the future, no one is completely human": Posthuman Poetics in Sun Yung Shin’s Unbearable Splendor and Franny Choi’s Soft Science

Claire Stanford



The New Gods: Merging the Ancient and the Contemporary of Egypt

Omar Houssien and Srđan Tunić



For Different Tomorrows: Speculative Analogy, Korean Futurisms, and Yoon Ha Lee’s "Ghostweight"

Stephen Hong Sohn



Speculating Superintelligent Machines in the Indian Cyberculture

Goutam Karmakar and Somasree Sarkar



Invasian, Takeover, and Disappearance: Post-Cold War Fear in Hong Kong SAR Sci-Fi Film

Kenny K. K. Ng



Confucius No Say: Sino-Fi Fiction, Film, and Period Drama

Sheng-mei Ma



From Sexual Desire to Personal Freedom: The Portrayal of Women and Their Rights in Chen Quifan’s "G Stands for Goddess"

Frederike Schneider-Vielsäcker



Rendezvous with Rama (Rajya): The Golden Past and the Antekaal Thesis in India’s Anglophone Science Fiction

Sami Ahmad Khan



Restart the Play: On Cyclicality and the Indian Woman in the Theatrical Future of C Sharp, C Blunt

Sheetala Bhat



Speculative Hong Kong: Silky Potentials of a Living Science Fiction

Euan Auld and Casper Bruun Jensen



Sophia Al-Maria, Gulf Futurism, and Architectural Temporalities

Shadya Radhi

Part IV

African and African American Futurisms



Waste Time: Bodily Fluids and Afrofuturity

Sofia Samatar



Genres of Resistance toward Revolution beyond the Human in Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You

Rhya Moffitt



Transformative Cyborgs: Unsettling Humanity in Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti, The Book of Phoenix, and Lagoon

Alyssa D. Collins



The African Roots of Nnedi Okorafor’s Aliens and Cyborgs

Dustin Crowley



Futurism(s) and Futuristic Themes in Modern African Poetry

Dike Okoro



"They Say I’m Hopeless": Jane McKeene Talks Back as Black Girls Do—Interlocking Oppressions and Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation

Damaris C. Dunn



"the strength of no separation": A Poethics of Inseparability After the End of the World

Jess A. Goldberg



Africanfuturism as Decolonial Dreamwork and Developmental Rebellion"

Jenna N. Hanchey



"But I’m right here": The Curious Case of Killmonger and the Failures of Utopian Desire in Marvel’s Black Panther

Jasmine Moore



Coming Together, "Free, Whole, Decolonized": Reading Black Feminisms in Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby

P. Alexander Miles



Engaging Second-Person Present – Metafiction and Stereotypes in Violet Allen’s "The Venus Effect"

Päivi Väätänen



"Can You Feel It": Michael Jackson, Afrofuturism, and Building the Jacksonverse Natasha Bailey-Walker



Afrofuturistic Storytelling in Barracoon and Their Eyes Were Watching God"

Piper Kendrix Williams



The Middle Passage to the Anthropocene: Eco-Humanist Futures in Black Women’s Poetry

Marta Werbanowska