The temporal remoteness, the lack of rigorous historical research and the little diffusion that Cuban science fiction written in the 1990s had at the time have led to the partial oblivion of this period and sometimes even to a distorted understanding of it, by well-intentioned people who were not participants in the movement of those years, and whose analyses subject this decade to a rather summary treatment, which overlooks some important details of what was happening in the national science fiction scene. As a consequence, some of the most important processes and events are forgotten or attributed to a later stage.
This paper deals with problems of history and periodization of the literary process. One of my objectives is to examine the 1990s not only as a period in the evolution of Cuban science fiction (something that already has been done)[1] but to understand it as the scenario for the emergence of a new generation that was the protagonist of the radical changes experienced by Cuban science fiction in those years. I call this authorial movement New Cuban Science Fiction. I clarify that this description is not simplistically evaluative, that is, I do not consider that what was written by authors of previous generations during this period (and later) lacks literary relevance or should not be taken into account, but what interests me in these pages above all is to study the new type of science fiction that begins to be cultivated in Cuba in this decade or, in other words, what are the novelties that emerge in this period. Several works have tried to describe the characteristics of this relatively little-known period (usually within the framework of attempts to periodize the evolution of our science fiction). I could cite the texts by Nelson Román, Yoss, Fabricio González, Juan Carlos Toledano, Leonardo Gala, and Erick Mota, with whose ideas sometimes I agree and sometimes disagree, on occasion significantly.
There is a tendency to describe this period exclusively in terms of publishing production. Literary history, needless to say, is based on the study of published works, but to understand the 1990s this approach is not enough and can even become a limitation. For this reason, another of the things I propose to do in the following pages is to establish the corpus of what was actually written during the nineties, even though it may have seen the light of day, in several cases, at the beginning of the following century. If we did not proceed in this way, the production of this decade would be almost simultaneous with the publications of the following generation, which is incongruous from the point of view of literary evolution.
For several decades, science fiction in our country had a markedly discontinuous development—a fact that has been pointed out for a long time—which has been due more than anything else to extra-literary circumstances. But the nature of these hiatuses or evolutionary leaps has been different. The two main “mass extinctions” affected the genre in the 1970s and after 1990.
The difficulties of Cuban science fiction in the 1990s, however, had very different causes from those of the equivalent gap in the 1970s. At the beginning of the latter decade, a dismantling of the cultural model that had dominated during the sixties, criticized from dogmatic and neo-Stalinist positions, took place. This model, which included fantastic literature (which at that time included science fiction), was harshly challenged and non-realistic or non-mimetic literature was explicitly attacked during the so-called grey years, although the first examples of criticism of this type of literature date back to 1968, according to the research of Cuban scholar José Miguel Sardiñas. Concerning this, in his indispensable 2008 book El cuento fantástico cubano, Sardiñas pointed out that: “After 1968 and during the following decade, this literary modality or even the related variants frequently associated with it were the object of official rejection. […] An example of this attitude can be found in the article dedicated to the short story in the Dictionary of Cuban Literature.”[2]
To tell the truth, what the aforementioned Dictionary literally said on page 263 (volume I) was even more explicit in its attack on science fiction and it is worth quoting it verbatim:
It is worth noting the boom that in the early years of the Revolution had the storytelling of the so-called ‘scientific fiction’ or that of mere fantasy, storytelling that—in general—had as common denominator the detachment of the immediate circumstance and in particular of the revolutionary process by its authors.[3]
Although a book as important for Cuban fantastic literature as Eliseo Diego’s Noticias de la quimera appeared in 1975, it was an exceptional event within a publishing panorama that privileged and encouraged a production akin to socialist realism, nationally, and critical and social realism internationally (the thesis of the “superiority of the realist method”). When, as of 1978—that is, after the high point of the grey years—the publication of science fiction is resumed, it will have a very different character from the production of the previous period, a testimony that the cultural policy applied in those years had profoundly disrupted the foundations of literary production and even the very concept of what was understood as literature. This is the period, as I said, of undisputed predominance and promotion of realist forms in literature and art. Socialist realism was being advanced from the top as a valid model for Cuban art and literature, while, for non-socialist countries, nineteenth-century critical realism was extolled as the ideal and unsurpassed method for what was called, to employ the rhetoric of the time, ”the artistic reflection of reality.”
The nineties are something completely different. If the seventies were a time of eclipse and withdrawal, the nineties were a time of rupture with the obstacles that limited the development of national literature and art. It was the moment when literature finally freed itself from the ballast of the conceptions imposed during the grey years, and opened up to postmodern formal experimentation, as well as to the unrestricted analysis of the real problems of Cuban society, leaving behind the idealizations and sweetened visions typical of the socialist realism model or its Creole equivalents.
These changes also reached science fiction, only that, as was to be expected, they were assimilated better and faster by the new generation of authors than by the previous ones. In the 1990s, even in its first and most difficult half, science fiction, along with the rest of Cuban culture, was opening up to the world. New books, new trends, new authors, and new ideas were gradually beginning to circulate and spread; Cubans were living in an era of openness and expansion of horizons.[4] Western science fiction books and magazines began to arrive in Cuba to an extent that was unprecedented since the 1960s when a relatively appreciable amount of literature of this genre made its way into public libraries. All this was a preparation for the changes that were to follow.
Now, even taking into account the formidable obstacle posed by the so-called “paper crisis” from about September 1990 to 1996, which drastically cut back publishing activity (though without completely suppressing it), and affected all literary production, it must be admitted that the decline of science fiction in the 1990s exceeded the average level for other genres. For example, science fiction did not benefit (or hardly benefited) from the successive calls for the Pinos Nuevos awards, or from the modest editorial opening that the collections Cemí, of Letras Cubanas, and La Rueda Dentada, of Ediciones Unión, meant at the time. Yoss published a book of short stories in the Cemí collection in 1997, but not science fiction.[5]
To understand this. we must take into account some factors. One circumstance that explains to a large extent what happened to Cuban science fiction in the 1990s is the well-known fact that most of its main authors either emigrated or stopped cultivating it, a considerable adversity for a genre that could not yet be considered as definitely established among us and that did not exactly have too many practitioners. Most of the authors of the eighties had begun their literary career in that same decade—or almost—, and it could be assumed that, under normal conditions, they would have developed and consolidated it during the following decade. Therefore, the first problem for Cuban science fiction in the early 1990s was that it had not prepared a younger generation—with the probable exception of Yoss, who was still just a promising author anyway—to fill the void left by those writers.
And there is another problem to which perhaps not enough attention has been paid. In leaving (or in turning away from writing science fiction), those authors already established or with a relative degree of renown, also took with them their contacts with publishers and their influence in the cultural milieu. Thus, to cite just one example, Daína Chaviano was a member of the editorial board of La Gaceta de Cuba, the leading literary magazine of the late 1980s, and could publish her collaborations in the most important magazines. She had also achieved the status of a regular contributor to the Gente Nueva publishing house, and it was thanks to her initiative, for example, that we were able to enjoy the Cuban editions of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. She also collaborated with the publishing house Arte y Literatura, for which she prepared in the late eighties a great anthology of Anglo-American science fiction entitled “Science Fiction: The New Wave”, with a prologue, notes, and translations by her, which, unfortunately, never saw the light of day.
On the other hand, of the new authors arriving in the field in the nineties, the only one with a certain degree of notoriety—but not comparable to that of Daína, Agustín de Rojas, Chely Lima, F. Mond, and Ángel Arango—was the aforementioned Yoss, thanks to his winning the David Award for science fiction for Timshel, a book that constituted a small literary event at the end of the eighties, thanks to the novelty of its treatment of science fiction—which already announced the new literary norm of the nineties—, and had also appeared in the iconic anthology Los últimos serán los primeros by Salvador Redonet.
I list other differences between the seventies and the nineties. In the nineties, there was no ideological campaign against non-realist literature. And at no point throughout the decade, did science fiction writing stop, since the authors hoped to see their works published someday, if not in Cuba, at least abroad (a goal that, incidentally, some of them finally achieved). It is easy to verify this by looking at the writing dates of the stories, but there are also direct testimonies that attest to this. And these works, although they did not were published at the time, circulated from hand to hand, and awakened the interest in writing among other young people. As Vladimir Hernandez expressed in the prologue to his 1999 anthology Horizontes probables: “During the nineties, as a consequence of the paper crisis, nothing is known about the young authors of science fiction. However, the creators are there, in anonymity; the stories, boxed up; the ideas, brilliant or aggressive, covering themselves in dust, unpublished until today.”[6]
In the nineties, moreover, partly as a response to the publishing crisis, there was an advance in the forms of self-organization of authors and fans. The activity of literary workshops is not particularly remarkable, but instead theoretical events and others similar to science fiction conventions (such as the Cubaficción of 1994, 96, 97, and 98 organized by Bruno Henríquez, the Cuásar-Dragón of 1995 [organized by Yoss] and the Ciencia Ficción Habana of 1999).[7] Also appear, in fact, the first informal groups and gatherings of genre lovers. The best known is the group I+real, founded in 1991 by Bruno, Nelson Román, Roberto Estrada, and other writers, which also published the first ezine of the genre in Cuba, and which had an organizational structure. Nelson Román included information about the activities and characteristics of this group in his book Universo de la ciencia ficción cubana.[8] But there was also a second group, nucleated around the fanzine Nexus, and composed mainly of writers Yoss, Vladimir Hernández, Fabricio González, Ariel Cruz, and Michel Encinosa Fú, as well as illustrator and designer José Antonio Caparó. Yoss met Fabricio around 1988 and Vladimir in 1989 at the Oscar Hurtado workshop,[9] while Fabricio and Vladimir met in late 1991 or early 1992. The rest were added in the course of the nineties, with 1994 as the deadline. The first issue of Nexus must have appeared in 1994 or 1995 and the second not before 1997.[10] Although less known and active (apparently), the Nexus group, however, was actually the most important for the evolution of Cuban science fiction, being the bearer of the new literary standard, and the one that can be considered with full right as the spokesman of a new generation. This group not only limited itself to keeping alive the interest in science fiction or popularizing it but also introduced changes that advanced the genre beyond what had been achieved in the previous decade in Cuba. This is the story that I am interested in telling here.[11]
The transformations in Cuban society and culture, and the national and international repercussions of the fall of the Berlin Wall (and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union), were so great that it was simply not possible to continue writing science fiction as in the 1980s. But if this was easy to understand and almost self-evident, it was still necessary to transform this understanding into concrete literary facts. That is to say, a new face for Cuban science fiction was inevitable, but what would it look like? It was a matter of definitions and these were to be formulated by a group of new authors, most of them unknown until then.
From the point of view of literary theory, and especially that part of it that deals with the problem of periodization, the sign that distinguishes the beginning of a different period is the appearance of a new literary norm. The norms include new styles, new themes, and new ideological approaches. Not all fiction produced in a given period carries the new norm, because authors often continue to write within the preceding norm. There may also be transitional works, which straddle two different norms (during the period when the new norm is being formed). Therefore, when I speak here of the “science fiction of the 1990s” or New Cuban Science Fiction, I am referring exclusively to the works that introduced the new norm within national science fiction and to the movement to which this production gave rise, not to all the works that were published or written within the time frame considered. Since this stage saw a radical mutation in the entire field of Cuban culture, this new norm was not only different from that of the previous period (the 1980s) but also openly transgressive. The new authors did not simply want to do something different from their predecessors: they wanted to subvert the way science fiction was written in Cuba. Hence, their attitudes were also markedly iconoclastic.
The change took place relatively quickly. To appreciate this, I repeat, it is necessary to stick to the dates of writing, not to those of publication, which are misleading. Thus, the dystopian approach in Cuban science fiction appeared already in the early 1990s: in the cyberpunk story “Déjà Vu” (whose first version is from 1992, although this is not the one that would finally be known),[12] by Vladimir Hernández, and in 1993 in the first three stories of Yoss’ fix-up Se alquila un planeta: “Trabajadora social” (“Social Worker”), “El equipo campeón” (“The Winning Team”) and “El performance de la muerte” (“The Performance of Death”).[13] Vladimir’s next stories, “Mar de locura” (“Sea of Madness”, 1992 or 1993) and “Maniobra de evasion” (“Evasion Maneuver”, 1994), also already exhibit a style markedly different from that of 1980s science fiction. “Maniobra de evasión” is interesting, moreover, because it contains the first scene in virtual reality of Cuban science fiction. It should not be forgotten, however, that the new norm of the nineties was already announced in the volume Timshel (1988), by Yoss, which contains a story, “Historia de gladiadores”, that the Spanish researcher Juan Carlos Toledano has related to the poetics of cyberpunk.[14]
One of the most important novelties of the new science fiction of the 1990s is the introduction of styles that until then had not been cultivated in Cuba, either because they were relatively recent, such as cyberpunk, or because they had been victims of ideological or aesthetic prejudices (or both), such as space opera. The initiator and main promoter of the cyberpunk current in Cuba was Vladimir, soon followed by Fabricio Gonzalez, Yoss, Ariel Cruz, Michel Encinosa (his books Niños de neón and Veredas date from the second half of the nineties, although the latter suffered a certain degree of rewriting), and Juan Alexander Padrón. In the case of Yoss, although he was interested in cyberpunk, his preferences were always more towards space opera—combined with some touches of hard and cyberpunk—, of which he can be considered the introducer in Cuba, a subgenre within which his stories mentioned above—and in fact the whole cycle of Se alquila un planeta—are framed, as well as novels like El advenimiento and Al final de la senda (both written in 1998, the first one still unpublished). It would not be fair to overlook the work promoting cyberpunk and cyberculture done by Raúl Aguiar, an author close enough to the concerns of this group to consider him part of the 1990s movement, and who in 1996 had published the pamphlet Realidad virtual y cultura ciberpunk, which contributed to the movement of ideas around the subject.[15] But the most important part of this work he did it later, from 2005 onwards, when he started publishing the ezine Qubit, although his interest in cyberpunk goes back also, as in the other authors cited, to the early 1990s.
Almost all the critical attention has been focused on cyberpunk to the detriment of the other novelty: space opera (an interesting topic in itself, but one I can’t deal with at the moment). Now, what is the real history of Cuban cyberpunk? This is another area where confusion reigns, again due to the lack of investigative rigor and the dissemination of gratuitous hypotheses. In an unpublished interview, Vladimir Hernandez—as I said, the main promoter of the cyberpunk current in Cuba in that decade—explains that he discovered this movement around 1990 thanks to a friend who told him about the emergence of “a new type of social science fiction, with more emphasis on the near future, sort of like Blade Runner, deeply rooted in the fusion between pop and technology.” Reading some short stories in English and several magazine articles on the subject led him to write the first version of the story “Déjà Vu” in 1992 (years later it was substantially revised and turned into “Semiótica para lobos”). Vladimir explains in the aforementioned interview:
Fabricio loved the story “influenced” by the new current (“Déjà Vu”) and soon after Yoss wrote “Líder de la red” and Fabricio “Sobre la extraña muerte de Matteo Habba.” By 1994, Ariel was already reading Schismatrix and was immersed in cyberpunk exercises. And then Michel and Juan Alexander Padrón began to collaborate in the Ophidia Universe and so the fire was half spread.
In 1993 (December 1993, more precisely), Fabricio González Neira received from Mexico the novels Neuromancer, by William Gibson, and Cat’s Paw, by Joan D. Vinge, sent by Paco Ignacio Taibo II (a friend of his father). These were apparently the first two cyberpunk novels in Spanish to reach Cuba (although Vinge’s, now forgotten, was an example of the epigonal cyberpunk that flourished in the late 1980s in the wake of Gibson’s and Sterling’s works). Sterling’s short story collection Crystal Express, published by Ultramar, arrived some time later, as did the celebrated anthology Mirrorshades, with a programmatic foreword by Bruce Sterling. Fabricio, for his part, in personal communication, mentions among his first cyberpunk readings, in addition to the aforementioned Neuromancer, a story by William Gibson published in the Spanish magazine Muy Interesante in the early nineties. In the case of Michel Encinosa Fú (also according to personal testimony), his first readings were Neuromancer and the collection Burning Chrome (read directly in English), around 1994. Another possible additional source was the issues of the digital magazine Axxón from that same period. So, the thesis that cyberpunk came to Cuba “through the Internet” should no longer be repeated: in those years Cuba was not even connected to the “network of networks.” This opinion, however, is interesting, because it shows how ignorance of history leads to “postdating” the events of the 1990s, thus in fact producing an erasure of history.
Why was the new science fiction so attracted to cyberpunk (although, strictly speaking, not everything was reduced to cyberpunk, far from it)? First, I think that being the most recent trend on the horizon at the time, it allowed the new authors to mark their difference from the previous generation more easily; in Vladimir Hernández, for example, the influence of Bruce Sterling’s iconoclastic rhetoric is visible in his prologue to Onda de choque. The second reason is explained by Vladimir himself in the aforementioned interview: “Cyberpunk, quite simply, was a type of social science fiction more in tune with the global reality we were experiencing—or, at least, from the perspective of the Third World,” an idea with which, independently, Ariel Cruz also agrees (personal communication with the author). Some cyberpunk ideas could be extrapolated almost unchanged to the Cuban reality, such as, for example, the theme of urban decay in contrast to the existence of isolated enclaves of technological development (although in the case of Cuba, it would be better to say: enclaves that allow the possibility of accessing to imported goods, where the currency in circulation was the U.S. dollar): “She stood at the edge of the platform, among piles of industrial waste wrapped in faded green plastic covers and huge polystyrene panels impregnated by a patina of grayish dust, and contemplated the track in both directions” (Vladimir Hernández, “Déjà vu”). This is already a typical cyberpunk description. As Claire Sponsler wrote years ago in a 1990s article dedicated to cyberpunk:
Cyberpunk transforms the negative space of the external environment into a positive zone. Still ruined, it is now converted into a site where interesting things happen and where humans flourish, as the throbbing vitality of Gibson’s Sprawl and Chiba City demonstrate. The decayed urban zone provides cyberpunk with a playground where outlaws and outsiders can seize the main chance, adapting and surviving in a ruined cityscape, ultimately discovering an escape to the most important zone of possibility—the new frontier of cyberspace.[16]
Cuban science fiction of the 1990s—to put it somehow—reintroduces “pessimism” in the genre. This trait was not present in the previous stage, since, as Yoss has explained, the social satire component was banished from science fiction, since it spoke of the future, which was supposed to represent the culmination of a utopian social ideal. This pessimism did not necessarily have to be a philosophical position but constituted one of the resources of such social satire.
Another of the main concerns of the generation of the nineties was the updating in the field of readings, references, or models for writing and the level of information on the genre.[17] Previous generations of authors and readers had been formed by reading writers of the Golden Age. In that sense, the main references in the early 1990s were still names like Bradbury, Asimov, Pohl, Sturgeon, and Clarke (and the odd author, known for a few isolated stories, like Sheckley), plus, of course, several Soviet science fiction works and authors, who had been widely read in Cuba. The new wave science fiction of the sixties was not well known (at least, it was not identified as a movement by that name), nor were authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, J. G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, and others. Hence Daína Chaviano prepared a whole anthology devoted to this movement in the late 1980s (which, as I said, was never published), while still a decade later, in the aforementioned prologue to Horizontes probables, Vladimir Hernández felt compelled to offer a succinct characterization of the new wave. Even what some consider to be the most important work of contemporary science fiction, the novel Dune, had been little read. One of the battlefronts of the New Cuban science fiction was therefore that of updating, renewing, and expanding the universe of readings, of instilling the idea that the days of the old classic science fiction were behind us and that the models for writing in Cuba in an authentically contemporary manner had to be sought elsewhere. Thus, the nineties vindicated a new group of authors: Gibson, Sterling, and Rudy Rucker, but also Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein,[18] Alfred Bester, Samuel R. Delany, Orson Scott Card, Dan Simmons, and so on.[19] The acceptance of their new literary proposal depended, then, on their ability to convince others of something that today may seem obvious, but which in those “distant” times was not at all; quite the contrary, especially if we take into account that a whole series of authors had been published (and were still publishing) and had based their careers on the cultivation of that old style.
That is why the conflict and controversy regarding the science fiction of the eighties is one of the most accentuated features of this generation. And I think we should be more tolerant of this since the development and consolidation of the New Cuban science fiction depended on the criticism and subversion of the hitherto dominant styles, that is, on the criticism of the Cuban science fiction establishment. This epochal context is no longer perceived today, but it is what explains, for example, the belligerent tone of the two Nexus editorials. As Yoss wrote in the second editorial of the fanzine: “The first issue of Nexus was published with great circumspection and precautions. […] A few eyebrows were raised [by the introductory words] for being aggressive and smug, even after passing through the triple sieve of collective prudence.” But, to tell the truth, it was not exactly prudence that characterized Nexus editors at this time. Only three paragraphs later Yoss returns to the charge: “Because with Nexus we want to provoke.” And this need to provoke can only be explained as a reaction to a situation of complacent stagnation with the literary norm.
Did cyberpunk arrive late in Cuba? Certainly, Cuban science fiction was surpassed by Mexican science fiction in the adoption of the new current (La primera calle de la soledad, a cyberpunk novel by Gerardo Horacio Porcayo, was published in 1993), but at the international level the process of cyberpunk reception was still in full swing in the mid-1990s. And even the first Mexican cyberpunk anthology (Silicio en la memoria) dates from 1997, that is, two years before Vladimir Hernández had his ready, while the first edition in Spain of a book as emblematic as Mirrorshades dates from 1998 (!). Considering the state of Cuban science fiction in the 1980s, the introduction of cyberpunk in the following decade can be seen, on the contrary, as a daring leap forward. On the other hand, cyberpunk is both a movement and a type of science fiction, and Sterling’s decree declaring cyberpunk “dead” did not prevent this variety from continuing to flourish in both literature and film, especially in Japanese anime, where it established itself as one of its canonical subgenres.[20]
But it was not only literature that influenced the young authors of the 1990s. Yoss’ interesting article “Los inicios del juego de rol en Cuba” not only takes us back to that time, but also suggests the possibility that a role-playing game may have played an important role in defining the style of several writers. The role-playing game Traveller, in which Yoss, Vladimir, Michel, Fabricio and others participated in 1994, “left an almost indelible mark on the style and vocabulary when writing Sci-Fi of almost all of us who had literary concerns related to the genre.”
The end of the nineties generation as a group and the closure of this stage came furtively. The third issue of the Nexus fanzine never materialized, mainly for reasons of financing, although Caparó left seven excellent covers ready for successive future issues of the fanzine. In 2000 Vladimir won a mention in the UPC Award with his novella “Signos de guerra” and left for Spain, where he took up residence, leaving behind his anthology of Cuban cyberpunk Onda de choque (delivered in 2000 to the publisher, but only published five years later). He has not returned since, although he is still linked to the Cuban science fiction movement. In 2000 itself Yoss left for Italy (after founding Taller Espiral with Vladimir) and, in his own words: “between 2000 and 2004 I spent more time in Italy than in Cuba.”[21] Fabricio got his degree in Literature, started teaching at the university in 2001, and gradually moved away from the science fiction milieu, although not before writing two excellent essays dedicated to the genre; then, in 2005, he also settled in Spain. Caparó moved to Colombia and, later, to Canada, where he developed a brilliant career as a science fiction and fantasy illustrator. Thus, the most active nucleus of the generation—the Nexus editors—was disintegrated. An era had ended, although we were not yet aware of it. Around 2004, the Grupo de Creación Espiral was founded (having as a precedent the Taller Espiral, created in 2000), and a new generation of writers, promoters, and fans entered the field of science fiction (although let’s be clear that not all of them were members of the workshop). This is the generation of Juan Pablo Noroña, Erick Mota, Anabel Enríquez, Javier de la Torre, Leonardo Gala, Sheila Padrón, Jeffrey López Dueñas, and Gonzalo Morán, among others.[22] By that time, new computer technologies, and in particular the emergence of websites like El Guaicán and ezines like MiNatura,[23] Disparo en Red, Onírica, and Estronia opened new possibilities for the dissemination of science fiction literature in Cuba, as well as the criticism and essays linked to it. The history of Cuban science fiction in the 1990s began to be forgotten and it is possible that some younger authors, without being aware of it, took for granted that it all began around the year 2000 or at most a little earlier.
A pending problem remains. If we accept the division of the history of Cuban science fiction into three periods, in what year should we place the beginning of the third one? For the first and second periods, we have chosen—although not always—the year in which the publishing activity began: 1964 for the science fiction of the sixties, and 1978 for that of the eighties. If we follow the same criteria, we would have to date the beginning of the third period in 1999, the year in which the anthologies Reino eterno and Horizontes probables appear, as well as the books De los pecios y los náufragos (Yoss) and Nova de cuarzo (Vladimir). But this runs the risk of forgetting all the work that had been going on for several years. In his article “Marcianos en el platanal de Bartolo” (2000), Yoss avoids the issue of dating (although it is most likely that at that time it was not yet perceptible or relevant) and, instead of proposing a date, he talks about the events of the nineties.
Now, is it necessary to date exactly the beginning of a period or literary movement? In what year did romanticism begin? When did it end?[24] Unfortunately (if there is anything to regret) there is in international science fiction a tradition of dating the beginning of periods: 1926, the beginning of the genre (according to some); 1926-1939: the era of the pulp magazines; 1939-1950, the Golden Age; 1964-1974, the New Wave. However, there is no shortage of exceptions here either. For example, it is not very clear when the new space opera began and who its first author was. Even the date when the cyberpunk movement began is not really clearly defined, nor in what year it ended (it is a current of the eighties, that is enough to characterize it). This temporal imprecision is even more evident in the case of steampunk, of which there are already early examples going back even to the fifties (Bring the Jubilee, for example), although the awareness of the subgenre does not occur until the end of the eighties. In the aforementioned article, Yoss does not hesitate to speak of the existence of a “literary scene” of Cuban science fiction in the 1990s, although he immediately adds: “almost totally unpublished.” The situation of this decade is atypical in the evolution of Cuban science fiction: the movement, the “literary scene,” existed, and the authors and their works—as Vladimir Hernandez wrote—were there, but they were not published. It was a movement associated with small gatherings of friends and acquaintances, “survivors’ gatherings,” as Yoss called them.[25] Therefore, I think it is wiser to dispense with exact dating since there is no reason to assume that we can describe all periods based on uniform criteria, and simply postulate, as Michel Encinosa (personal communication) proposes, that the New Cuban Science Fiction emerges around 1993-1994. By 1998 the movement had already reached a certain critical mass and the works would begin to be known from the following year. In this process we cannot forget the cardinal importance of the Luis Rogelio Nogueras contest organized in 1998 by Ediciones Extramuros, where the award was given to Yoss’ De los pecios y los náufragos, and the following received mentions: Nova de cuarzo (Vladimir Hernández), El druida (Gina Picart), Los viajes de Nicanor (Eduardo del Llano) and Bosque (Roberto Estrada). But there can be no doubt that in the nineties a new Cuban generation of science fiction authors emerged, with well-marked characteristics, and that their activity precedes by several years the date when their stories and novels began to be published by the publishing houses.[26]
Far from being a lost decade, the 1990s were a turning point in the development of Cuban science fiction. As Yoss wrote in the aforementioned Nexus editorial when defining the objectives of the publication: “Not to make the reader feel like an uninformed fool, but […] to show him that information, that science fiction, that literature he never heard of, exists and is magnificent, and to provoke him to leave no stone unturned if necessary. Or how do you think we’ve been able to read so much over the years?” These words force us to put the events of the 1990s once again in perspective. This decade represents a turning point in the evolution of science fiction in Cuba when a paradigmatic change takes place that allows us to move from the previous norm to the new type that will begin to be cultivated in the future. This would not have been possible had it not been for the previous work of clearing the ground that corresponded to a small group of young authors of those years. In conclusion, we can affirm that during the 1990s a process of renovation and reconstruction of Cuban science fiction was carried out, which could not necessarily bear abundant fruit immediately, but laid the foundations for the subsequent evolution of the genre on the island. This process was already fundamentally concluded by the end of the decade, coinciding with the moment when the spaces for the publication of science fiction in Cuba began to recover—albeit precariously at first—hence, for some authors, it appears as a sudden renaissance at the beginning of the new millennium. But what is actually observed is—as I have tried to show—the final result of a maturation process that spanned almost the entire decade.
As can be seen, there is still a lot to be said about the history of national science fiction in the nineties. Cuban artistic and literary culture of the last decades suffers from a notable lack of historical research. And, without this, it is very easy for misconceptions to arise about periods that, shrouded by the mist of the past, are evaluated based on preconceived ideas.
2014-2017
Appendix. Works of the New Cuban Science Fiction of the 1990s.
The actual date of writing is indicated in brackets. Science fiction publishing resumed in Cuba in 1999 by the publishers Extramuros and Letras Cubanas. In the bibliographic entries, the date recorded is the one that appears in the publisher’s imprint, not the date the book was presented or when it began to circulate.
- Bruno Henríquez (sel.): Polvo en el viento, Ediciones Instituto Movilizador de Fondos Cooperativos, [Buenos Aires], 1999. Includes stories by Yoss, Michel Encinosa, and Raúl Aguiar.
- Vladimir Hernández (sel. and foreword.): Horizontes probables. Antología, Lectorum, Mexico City, 1999.
- Vladimir Hernández: Nova de cuarzo, Extramuros, 1999.
- Yoss (sel. and pref.): Reino eterno. Cuentos de fantasía y ciencia ficción, Letras Cubanas, Havana, 1999.
- Nexus. Fanzine. Editors: Vladimir Hernández, Yoss and Fabricio González. Two issues (1994-1997).
Books written in the nineties, but published after 2000
- Yoss: De los pecios y los náufragos. Extramuros, Havana, 1999 [probable date of writing: 1998].
- Yoss: Se alquila un planeta, Equipo Sirius, Madrid, 2001 [1993-1998].
- Michel Encinosa Fú: Sol negro [high fantasy], Extramuros, Havana, 2000 [the copyright, from 2001, disagrees with the imprint, which is, however, the one that should be used for the bibliographic entry].
- Vladimir Hernández (sel. and prol.) Onda de choque, Extramuros, Havana, 2005. [Anthology of cyberpunk of the nineties delivered to the publishing house in 2000].
- Yoss: Al final de la senda, Letras Cubanas, Havana, 2002 [1997].
- Michel Encinosa Fú: Niños de neón, Letras Cubanas, Havana, 2001.
- Yoss: Pluma de león, Letras Cubanas, Havana, 2008 [1998].
- Michel Encinosa Fú: Veredas, Extramuros, Havana, 2006 [last revision: 2000; written around 1997].
Unpublished
- Yoss: “El advenimiento” [novel, 1998].
- Juan Alexander Padrón: “El guardián de estrellas” [short stories, 1996-2004].
- Vladimir Hernández: “Signos de guerra” [novelette] (1999).
Periodization scheme of Cuban science fiction history
- Sixties (1963-1969). In 1963 La Gaceta de Cuba publishes “Cósmicas” by José Hernández Artigas and excerpts of La ciudad muerta de Korad, by O. Hurtado. From this point on, there is a continuity in science fiction publications until 1969.
- Eighties (1978-1990).
- The 1990s or New Cuban Science Fiction (1993-2000).
- Grupo de Creación Espiral (2000-2009). The starting date corresponds to the founding of the Guaicán website in 2000, which could serve as a conventional milestone for the beginning of a new stage.
- Taller Espacio Abierto o Generación de Espacio Abierto: 2010-present.
Notes:
[1] Among others, see Yoss: “Marcianos en el platanar de Bartolo. Un análisis de la historia y perspectivas de la ciencia ficción en Cuba al final del segundo milenio,” La quinta dimensión de la literatura. Reflexiones sobre la ciencia ficción en Cuba y el mundo, Editorial Letras Cubanas, Havana, 2012, pp. 61-80.
[2] Jose Miguel Sardiñas: El cuento fantástico cubano y otros estudios, Editorial Letras Cubanas, Havana, 2008, p. 43.
[3] Instituto de Literatura y Lingüística: Diccionario de la literatura cubana, Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1980, t. 1, p. 263.
[4] Strictly speaking, this process of relative openness had already begun towards the end of the 1980s, and the case of Daína Chaviano is paradigmatic in this sense, but only in the 1990s did it become a general trend.
[5] The book W, which had received the Pinos Nuevos Award in 1996.
[6] Vladimir Hernández: “Prólogo a la antología Horizontes probables,” Horizontes probables, Lectorum, Mexico D. F., 1999, p. 12.
[7] Personal communication to the author in 2014.
[8] See Nelson Román: Universo de la ciencia ficción cubana, Ediciones Extramuros, La Habana, 2005, pp. 53-54.
[9] Interview with Yoss, November 2017.
[10] The date of edition of the first Nexus is difficult to establish because there were two versions of the first issue (personal communication of Fabricio González). The first, with an inferior design, was discarded. The second, which was the one I got to know, had a cover by Yailín Pérez, and layout and internal design by Caparó.
[11] Issue 2 of Nexus was scanned by Sheila Padrón and can be consulted in Cubaliteraria’s CD El mundo de la ciencia ficción (2015), section Revistas digitales. A copy of issue 1 could not be found so far.
[12] According to Fabricio González’s testimony, the first version of the story was not yet stylistically cyberpunk. Fabricio considers that “it must be, at the earliest, from the second half of ‘92.” The title of the story was inspired by songs from Iron Maiden’s album Somewhere in Time. It was a joint project of Yoss and Vladimir to write several short stories based on the album’s song titles. Yoss wrote “Wasted Years,” “Somewhere in Time,” and “Alexander the Great”, while Vladimir writes the aforementioned “Déjà Vu” and the first version of “Sea of Madness.”
[13] It cannot be ruled out that Yoss may have written a story with a dystopian approach even before 1993, but his texts from this period have been lost.
[14] See Juan Carlos Toledano Redondo: “El cyberpunk cubano: del realismo socialista al anarquismo capitalista,” Qubit. Boletín Digital de Literatura y Pensamiento Ciberpunk, no. 35, June 2008, pp. 3-19.
[15] It is interesting to note that the 1996 Havana Book Fair was dedicated to the theme “La computación hacia el año 2000.”
[16] Claire Sponssler: “Beyond the Ruins: The Geopolitics of Urban Decay and Cybernetic Play”, Science Fiction Studies, no. 60, volume 20, part 2, July 1993.
[17] In fact, this generation was and still is the best informed in Sci-Fi readings.
[18] Robert Heinlein may have influenced the previous generation (for example, Agustín de Rojas), but not the Heinlein of Starship Troopers, which is what I am thinking of.
[19] In his essay “Estrategias de legitimación de la ciencia ficción en Cuba: estudio de un fracaso,” Fabricio González, after observing that “no influence of Cuban authors is noticeable” in the new generation, offers this list of names: Robert Heinlein, Alfred Bester, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Orson Scott Card, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (The Island and the Stars. El ensayo y la crítica de ciencia ficción en Cuba, Cubaliteraria, Havana, 2015, pp. 73-90).
[20] Altered Carbon is an excellent cyberpunk novel by British Richard Morgan published in 2003.
[21] Interview with Yoss, November 2017.
[22] Therefore, the beginnings of this new generation would be placed about ten years after the date we adopt here to mark the emergence of the 1990s generation, which is congruent with the principles of literary evolution. I clarify that when I say “they arrive at science fiction,” I am referring globally to the generation. Individually some authors were active since 2000.
[23] MiNatura was (and is) published by the writer and promoter of the genre Ricardo Acevedo, who belongs to the same generation as Yoss, Vladimir, and Fabricio.
[24] It began at the end of the eighteenth century, without an exact date being specified. In his book 30 Great Myths about the Romantics (Wiley/Blackwell, 2015) Duncan Wu dwells precisely on the difficulty of fixing an exact date for the beginning of English Romanticism.
[25] Yoss: “Estamos ganando… pero igual manden más gente,” La Jiribilla, no. 95, 2013.
[26] In order to periodize the Cuban science fiction production of the present century, I believe that one must first of all pay attention to the dynamics of literary groups and ezines, since there are no marked aesthetic differences between the stages. If this is admitted, it is possible to distinguish two periods. The first is the one related to the activity of Grupo Espiral, which ends in 2008 when the group was dissolved and the publication of Disparo en Red ceased. The second begins with the founding of Taller Espacio Abierto in 2009 and the appearance of the ezine Korad shortly thereafter. The latter generation includes authors such as Elaine Vilar Madruga, Gabriel Gil, Eric Flores Taylor, Claudio del Castillo, Carlos Duarte, Dennis Mourdoch, Yonnier Torres, Yadira Álvarez, Victor Hugo Perez Gallo, Alexy Duménigo, Abel Güelmes, Alejandro Rojas, Malena Salazar and others. The presentation letter of this generation of authors is the anthology Hijos de Korad (2013).
