Back to the Future: The Expanding Field of Latin-American Science Fiction

This article examines the exponential growth of the field of Latin American science fiction in recent years, first through an evaluation of a series of critical/historical studies of the genre, and then by tracing the textual histories of a number of the region's earliest works of sf. The contemporary interest in identifying, retrolabeling, and republishing the works that form the local roots of Latin American science fiction is indicative of the growing maturity of the genre there, as it stems from a desire to understand the nature and extent of participation in this global yet Northern-centered genre in areas heretofore viewed as periphery. These recent trends mean that writing, reading, teaching, or researching in the field of Latin American science fiction is now a vastly different experience from even a few years ago.