We are seeking contributions for our 2016 special issue, ‘Realizing the Unreal: Victorian Speculative Fiction in Context’. The issue will focus on Victorian speculative fiction and its generic, thematic, historical, and cultural contexts. Victorian speculative fiction is usually described as ‘a flight from the real’; but we welcome submissions that go beyond this understanding to show how the Victorian imagination engages with the unreality of the real or creates alternative realities of the unreal in different forms of speculative fiction.

Possible topics may address some of the broad issues within the parameters set below or any other related area:
– Alternative cultures outside of or in contrast to the dominant culture of the nineteenth century
– Sexual themes; realistic sexual interactions in non-realistic settings; characters embodying non-normative, alternative sexualities
– Speculative fiction and its ties with science fiction, utopian, dystopian, apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic narratives
– Speculative fiction and the other arts
– Human–animal relations, their ethical implications, and their social, political, and ecological effects
– Fantasy, supernatural and the gothic
– The parody/pastiche trope as deployed in speculative writings
– Space and time; concepts of parallel worlds and alternate history
– Virtual spaces and environments (cyber culture, gaming, digital comics)
– Use of technology to imagine an advanced Victorian age (fictional machines in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne);
– Neo-Victorian approaches to speculative fiction;  retro-futurism and steampunk
– Film and television adaptations/ re-workings

We invite college and university professionals and research scholars to submit abstracts of about 500 words, along with brief bio-notes, to cvs.journal@gmail.com by November 15, 2015. Queries can be made to the same address.

We accept entries in both English and Bengali.