First Contact by Zac Zimmer

First Contact by Zac Zimmer

Examining the power of speculative fiction to reimagine historical accounts of the conquest of the Americas

The historical conquest of the Americas resides at the core of all first-contact narratives, which stage colonization and resistance in the generic guise of speculative fiction. Starting from this axiom, First Contact: Speculative Visions of the Conquest of the Americas moves through a corpus of Mexican novels, Andean visual arts practices, and other cultural artifacts that have dramatized counterfactual narratives. Reimagining the early colonial period's historiography from a south-to-north directionality while inventing parallel realities, these texts, which are concerned with limit cases, alterities, and alternative temporalities, refuse any reliance on the imperial ontologies of European expansion. Zac Zimmer examines these works to explore the slippage that exists between science fiction as the exemplary genre of the modern, colonial reality and literary speculation as an aesthetic tool that can be used to imagine other possible worlds. First Contact thus poses a foundational question: Can we understand the conquest as an originary world-historical event without eclipsing the other cosmologies that existed, and continue to exist, within the contact zone? Can we decolonize the speculative imagination itself?

"A broadly interdisciplinary project that examines the impact of contact, conquest, and colonization while exploring the histories and legacies of cultural encounterExtremely well researched, First Contact makes a significant contribution to the fields of Latin American studies and science fiction studies and will have lasting merit for scholars and students alike." - Rachel Haywood, Iowa State University

"This original book dares to propose a fruitful dialogue between colonial and speculative fiction studies by taking the reader through the analysis of a wide variety of cultural artifacts, including colonial documents, literary texts, artworks, and maps. Throughout this intellectual journey, Zimmer's provocative piece of research opens new paths for understanding the potential of speculative fiction and art to contribute to the struggles against, and to imagine a future without, colonialism." - Gustavo Verdesio, University of Michigan

Zac Zimmer is an associate professor of literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780810148185
ISBN 10	0810148188
Title	First Contact
Author	Zac Zimmer
Series	Flashpoints
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Northwestern University Press
Year published	2025-03-15
Number of pages	280
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.