Firefly Revisited

Essays on Joss Whedon's Classic Series

Edited by Michael Goodrum and Philip Smith

According to Joss Whedon, the creator of the short-lived series Firefly (2002), the cult show is about “nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things.” The chronicles of crewmembers on a scruffy space freighter, Firefly ran for only four months before its abrupt cancellation. In that brief time, however, it established a reputation as one of the best science-fiction programs of the new millennium: sharply written, superbly cast, and set on an exotic multicultural frontier unlike anything ever seen on the small screen. The show’s large, enthusiastic fan following supported a series of comics and a theatrical film, Serenity (2005), that extended the story, deepened the characters, and revealed new wonders and dangers on the deep-space frontier.

In Firefly Revisited: Essays on Joss Whedon’s Classic Series, Michael Goodrum and Philip Smith present a collection that reflects on the program, the characters, and the post-cancellation film and comics that grew out of the show. The contributors to this volume offer fresh perspectives on familiar characters and blaze new trails into unexplored areas of the Firefly universe. Individual essays explore the series’ place in the history of the space-Western subgenre, the political economy of the Alliance, and the uses of music and language in the series to immerse audiences in a multicultural future.

These essays look at how the show offered viewers high adventure as well as engaged with a range of themes that still resonate today. As such, Firefly Revisited will intrigue the show’s many fans, as well as Whedon scholars and anyone interested in the twenty-first-century renaissance of science-fiction television.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 226 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-4422-4743-7 • Hardback • February 2015 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4422-4744-4 • eBook • February 2015 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

Series: Science Fiction Television

Subjects: Performing Arts / Television / History & Criticism, Performing Arts / Television / Direction & Production

Firefly Revisited

Essays on Joss Whedon's Classic Series

Hardback

eBook

Summary

According to Joss Whedon, the creator of the short-lived series Firefly (2002), the cult show is about “nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things.” The chronicles of crewmembers on a scruffy space freighter, Firefly ran for only four months before its abrupt cancellation. In that brief time, however, it established a reputation as one of the best science-fiction programs of the new millennium: sharply written, superbly cast, and set on an exotic multicultural frontier unlike anything ever seen on the small screen. The show’s large, enthusiastic fan following supported a series of comics and a theatrical film, Serenity (2005), that extended the story, deepened the characters, and revealed new wonders and dangers on the deep-space frontier.

In Firefly Revisited: Essays on Joss Whedon’s Classic Series, Michael Goodrum and Philip Smith present a collection that reflects on the program, the characters, and the post-cancellation film and comics that grew out of the show. The contributors to this volume offer fresh perspectives on familiar characters and blaze new trails into unexplored areas of the Firefly universe. Individual essays explore the series’ place in the history of the space-Western subgenre, the political economy of the Alliance, and the uses of music and language in the series to immerse audiences in a multicultural future.

These essays look at how the show offered viewers high adventure as well as engaged with a range of themes that still resonate today. As such, Firefly Revisited will intrigue the show’s many fans, as well as Whedon scholars and anyone interested in the twenty-first-century renaissance of science-fiction television.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 226 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-4422-4743-7 • Hardback • February 2015 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4422-4744-4 • eBook • February 2015 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

Series: Science Fiction Television

Subjects: Performing Arts / Television / History & Criticism, Performing Arts / Television / Direction & Production

Author

Michael Goodrum is a lecturer in modern history at Christ Church Canterbury University. He has published articles and reviews in Social History, Literature Compass, Studies in Comics, and the Journal of American Culture. Goodrum has also contributed to edited collections and The Routledge Companion to Comics.

Philip Smith teaches English literature and theatre at Sekolah Tunas Muda, Jakarta. His research interests include Asian American alternative comics, Shakespeare in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and Holocaust literature.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Michael Goodrum & Philip Smith
Filmography
1. Firefly and the Space Western: Frontier Fiction on Fast-Forward
John Wills
2: “A Man of Honor in a Den of Thieves:” War Veterans in Firefly and Serenity
David Budgen
3: “See What’s Inside:” Understanding the Reavers’ Posthuman Identity and Role
in Firefly and Serenity
Gareth Hadyk-Delodder & Laura Chilcoat
4: At the “Corner of No and Where:” River’s Unmappable Body in the
Firefly/Serenityverse
Lisa Perdigao
5: “This is Where I Am . . . Ain’t a place of Wishes:” Kyriarchy and the Preservation of
Power in Better Days
Samira Nadkarni
6: Politics of Loss: The Historical World, “the Right Thing to Do,” and a Utopian
Community in Firefly
Dennis Sobolev
7: Speaking Chinese: Music and the Exotic in Firefly
S. Andrew Granade
8: “Where Does Any Story Begin?”: Book Chapters and Whedonverse Choices
Dean A. Kowalski
9: Lighting Out for the Black: Firefly and the Suspicion of Governance Structures
Andrew Howe
10: “They Couldn’t Let Us Profit, It Wouldn’t Be Civilized:” Economic Modalities and
Core-Periphery Relationships in the Political Economy of Firefly-Serenity
Howard Kahm
11: The Future Isn’t So Shiny: Blade Runner, Firefly, and the Effects of American
Consumerism in Modern China
Tara Prescott
Index
About the Editors and Contributors