ABSTRACT
Science fiction in Latin America has a long tradition going back at least to the eighteenth century, and while each Latin American nation has something of a science fiction tradition, it has been Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba that have been the most prolific and so the most studied. Latin American science fiction has been well charted by scholars of Latin American literature and there are various studies of the history of the genre, in addition to anthologies and bibliographies. Rachel Haywood Ferreira has, for example, examined some of the most influential works of science fiction primarily from the nineteenth century in her study The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction. J. Andrew Brown’s thematic study Cyborgs in Latin America (2010) as well as a collection of essays Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice (2012) edited by J. Andrew Brown and M. Elizabeth Ginway explore more recent works of fiction and film. The most commonly used bibliography is Darrell B. Lockhart’s Latin American Science Fiction Writers: An A-to-Z Guide (2004) and the most representative anthology is Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain (2003) edited by Andrea L. Bell and Yolanda Molina-Gavilán. As it does in all of science fiction, sexuality appears as a common subject in Latin American science fiction, even while women writers have not been equally acknowledged in the field. Nevertheless, as Andrea Bell observes, “women are in the minority among Latin American sf writers, but they are an active minority and have been since the 1960s” (Bell and Molina-Gavilán 2003: 444). Two of the most prominent women writers who often write about sexuality have been Argentina’s Angélica Gorodischer and Cuba’s Daína Chaviano, both of whose works has increasingly been translated into English. This chapter examines the short story “The Annunciation” (2003) by Daína Chaviano who frequently joins sexuality, religion, and mythology in her novels and short story collections.
