Rudy and Medway are joined by recently graduated Dr. Virginia Conn to discuss her research on science fiction in the USSR, the German Democratic Republic and China. We discuss what the purpose of science fiction under socialism is, the continuities and ruptures of science fiction in the People’s Republic of China during its diverse political periods, how the new Soviet citizen contrasted with the Chinese new citizen, the figure of Bogdanov within Russian Cosmism, how the particularities of the GDR reflected in its Science Fiction, and how many male-written stories in socialist science fiction both succeed and fail in capturing the intricacies of gender and social reproduction.
Read Virginia’s article “Economic Circulations: Blood-Based Systems of Value in Alexander Bogdanov’s Red Star” here.