Just another one of ‘those’ years. In a replay of 2021, I found myself returning to work in January after an extended spell of ‘Post-Exertional Malaise’ (PEM). I struggled through to Easter, started to feel better in May and June. Got Covid in July. Hence more post-viral fatigue. Recovered gradually until by the end of November, I was feeling as good as I have done since originally contracting Covid in March 2020. Then had two viruses in succession, including another ‘cold from hell’, which led to costochondritis, and a spell on strong painkillers/anti-inflammatories. Then, I just about recovered enough from that to do some shopping in the week before Christmas. So, overall, somewhat better than the previous two years but still wildly uneven and punctuated by periods of being unable to do pretty much anything (other than read and fulfil minor household duties). The whole unpredictability of all this makes it difficult to plan or carry out any bigger projects because I can’t produce the same sustained periods of work as I used to take for granted. Every time I feel good and dare to give someone a time for when I’ll have something done, something goes wrong and throws me off the schedule (e.g. I react badly to the flu vaccine and lose a week or something similar). Therefore, I’m having to find a new way to work and plan and, while I’m making some progress in this direction, it is difficult because it’s like trying to become a different person in some respects. On the other hand, despite having Covid yet again, at least I haven’t experienced a lengthy bout of PEM this year. So, the trajectory overall is upwards from last year.
My highlight of the year was completing my second year in succession as a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and attending the ceremony at the Science Museum on Wednesday 26 October, which I reflected on here. I also have a chapter on the Clarke, ‘Thirty Years is Ample Time: The Clarke Award and Literary Science Fiction’ in Andrew M. Butler and Paul March-Russell’s edited collection, Rendezvous with Arthur C. Clarke: Centenary Essays, which has just been published by Gylphi, and is available to buy here and no doubt elsewhere. I am hoping to write more on the Clarke during 2023. I have had several other academic publications this year: a chapter on 2000AD for The Routledge Companion to the British and North American Literary Magazine, edited by Tim Lanzendörfer, and a chapter, ‘“Class Lives”: Spatial Awareness and Political Consciousness in British Mining Novels of the 1930s’, in Simon Lee’s edited collection, Locating Classed Subjectivities: Intersections of Space and Working-Class Life in 19th, 20th, and 21st-century British Writing (Routledge). Best of all of these was my article, ‘The Woolfian Century: Modernism as Science Fiction, 1929-2029’, which was published on Modernism/Modernity’s online open access ‘print plus’ platform in May as part of a special cluster on ‘Modernism and Science Fiction’. This is one of the surviving traces of a book project, The Science Fiction Futures of Modernism: From Virginia Woolf to Feminist Speculative Fiction of the 21st Century, which I had to abandon because of my long covid/postviral fatigue problems; other remnants are floating around in ongoing work on Gwyneth Jones and a chapter on Naomi Mitchison which is coming out in 2023. If at all possible, I would have completed the book, but I also lost faith in the premise. I no longer think I can bring myself to privilege modernism in that way even though my intention with the title was to be provocative (in the way that the title of my 2017 book, The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question, was provocative and clearly needled some people). There is also the problem that there is no such thing as Modernism or Science Fiction or (even) English Literature.
In terms of events, I attended Eastercon in person, where I spoke on the panel ‘Where are the Workers: Class and Caste in SFF’, which I wrote about here, and taught a Science Fiction Foundation ‘mini-masterclass’ on Joanna Russ’s ‘When It Changed’, which I discussed here. I spoke on two online panels at the Chicago Worldcon, which I reflected on in this post, ‘Notes from Chicon8’. Finally, at the beginning of December, I gave a paper, ‘And I didn’t sign up for a war, I thought I signed up for a revolution’: Jones/Russ’, at the online conference ‘When it Changed: Women in SF/F since 1972’, organised by the Science Fiction Foundation in conjunction with the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow. I was fortunate with the latter that I gave the paper early in the conference because by the Sunday I was really ill with the cold that led to the costochondritis. Although, this has prevented me from writing some follow-up posts that I have in mind, which will now appear in the new year.
In both my 2021 and 2020 roundups, I expressed the resolution to see more films and watch more TV. This year I managed two films at the cinema: Emily, which I enjoyed despite it being a highly fictionalised life, and the new Avatar film, which confirmed my impressions of how American patriarchy causes unnecessary problems for father-son relations. I did slightly better with TV and really enjoyed both The House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power, without feeling any need to write anything about either. I’m really not sure why so many felt obliged to vent critical opprobrium over the latter (although, who knows, maybe it’s another patriarchy thing). I loved Kleo, but far and away the best series I watched was The English. I saw the Science Fiction exhibition at the Science Museum while attending the Clarke ceremony. It was good but I think the accompanying book was even better – I’ve reviewed it for the current issue of BSFA Review and will probably post that review on here in due course. I’ve also seen a couple of really great exhibitions at Aberystwyth Arts centre: ‘We’re not just passing through …’, an exhibition on African and Caribbean communities in the UK, featuring photos by Vanley Burke and Glenn Edwards and ‘Refugees from National Socialism in Wales: Learning from the Past for the Future’, which was co-curated by my partner, Andrea Hammel, and Morris Brodie, together with refugees (see the excellent project website here). Andrea’s book, Finding Refuge: Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Fled to Wales to Escape the Nazis, was published by Honno in November – launched at the opening night of the exhibition – and selected as one of the Welsh Books Council Books of the Month for December, which was very exciting. So, all in all, not such a bad year despite the long covid.
Prospective Cultures 