John Rieder, professor emeritus of English at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, is the author of Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction (Wesleyan University Press, 2008), Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System (Wesleyan UP, 2017), Speculative Epistemologies: An Eccentric Account of SF from the 1960s to the Present (Liverpool UP, 2021), and, forthcoming in 2026 from Bloomsbury, Truth, Lies, and Speculative Fiction: Confronting Dogmatism, Demagoguery, and Disinformation. He received the Science Fiction Research Association’s Award for Lifetime Contributions to SF Scholarship in 2019.
John Rieder
Articles
Challenging the Myth of Firstness
John Rieder explores Zac Zimmer’s “First Contact: Speculative Visions of the Conquest of the Americas.”
The Impossible Future of the Futures Market
A special issue of “New Centennial Review” tackles the metastases of finance capitalism.
The Warmth of “New Suns”
John Rieder reviews "New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color," edited by Nisi Shawl.
An Image of Africa From the Sky: Jules Verne’s “Five Weeks in a Balloon”
Sanguine as Verne is about the progress of science, he is no mere apologist for European colonialism or industrial capitalism.
Spaces Where Maps Fail
Carroll is interested in an endemic and unavoidable failure of cartography.
Secret Histories
aviator’s goggles, Victorian waistcoats, top hats, bustle skirts, leather corsets, bizarre, mechanical accessories
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