The Emergence of Latin American Genre Science Fiction: The Morel Hinge

The evolution of science fiction (SF) in Latin America has been affected concurrently by Northern genre norms and local literary and cultural realities, leading to the development of science fictions unique to the region. Modern genre SF was not imported wholesale to Latin America from the North, nor was it created in a vacuum. So how did the genre transition in Latin America in the 1940s from the relative trough in SF production in the interwar period to the Golden Age of the decades that followed? Adolfo Bioy Casares is perhaps the closest thing we have to an influencer and a bellwether of this moment in genre history. Bioys' ability to juxtapose science and science fictions past and present, to balance plot-driven and experimental writing, and to create new genre hybrids make his work emblematic of this turning point in the evolution of Latin American SF, which I am calling the "Morel hinge." This article considers the theoretical underpinnings of the Morel hinge through an examination of four prologues by Borges and Bioy Casares and illustrates it with a discussion of Bioys' 1944 short story "La trama celeste."