Vampires, Werewolves and Strong Women: Alternate Histories Or the Re-Writing of Race and Gender in Brazilian History (Critical Essay‪)‬

As Andrea Bell has noted, Brazil's contemporary generation of science fiction writers have attained a high level of sophistication by writing in every genre and subgenre of science fiction (442). Familiar with Anglo-American classics and in contact through the Internet with international science fiction, they offer a broad range of outlooks and approaches to science fiction. The principal authors of this generation exemplify distinct ideological lines, among them: a universalist stance characteristic of hard science fiction (Jorge Luiz Calife), a literary approach borrowing from the tradition of fantasy (Braulio Tavares), the cultivation of strictly nationalist themes and a straightforward prose style (Roberto de Sousa Canso), the formal experimentation characteristic of the Brazilian modernist movement of the 1920s (Ivan Carlos Regina), and finally, the promotion of literary nationalism via the subgenre of alternate histories (Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro). Having spent most of their lives in modern Brazil where technology and industrialization are part of dally experience, these authors often criticize modernization, without resorting to the Edenic tropical landscape that is part of Brazilian identity. In fact, Brazil's myths of identity constitute an excellent point of departure for analyzing Brazilian science fiction because, as we shall see, they are often satirized by contemporary science fiction writers. An initial list of the most recurrent myths would include: Brazil as a tropical paradise, Brazil as a racial democracy, Brazilians as a sensual and docile people, and Brazil as a country with potential for national greatness or grandeza. (1) Whether in literary or popular form, these myths offer a sense of continuity and serve as the basis of what Benedict Anderson has called a nation's "imagined community."