Starboard Vineyard Tours 12: Toward a Science-Fictional Interpretational Method: Reading Three Borges Stories, O'Krent

This episode, we read an article from the most recent issue of Science Fiction Studies, one that touches on topics near and dear to our hearts. With “Toward a Science-Fictional Interpretational Method: Reading Three Borges Stories” by Michael O'Krent, we get to engage both with science-fictional reading and the work of Jorge Luis Borges. O'Krent proposes a way to define science fiction around a Delany-derived practice of “reading for worlds”, then applies it to three classic Borges stories. In reading the article, we discuss Borges (of course), genre history, and articles that start with “toward a”. On the way we get into our respective childhood feelings on the finitude of possible human thought and experience, get a bit punchy, and talk about Tlön more than a little.Topics: Science-fictional reading, SFS, cognitive estrangementNext time, we'll be looking at JD Fulloon’s “Shadows of the Empire/A New Hope: A Dialectical Critique of Gender Historicization and Utopian Desire in Isabel Fall’s ‘Helicopter Story’” (2024).