Summary: | Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a new strand of British fiction that grapples with the causes and consequences of the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union. Building on Kristian Shaw’s pioneering work in this new literary field, this article shifts the focus from literary fiction to science fiction. It analyzes Dave Hutchinson’s <i>Fractured Europe</i> quartet—comprised of <i>Europe in Autumn</i> (pub. 2014), <i>Europe at Midnight</i> (pub. 2015), <i>Europe in Winter</i> (pub. 2016) and <i>Europe at Dawn</i> (pub. 2018)—as a case study in British science fiction’s response to the recent nationalistic turn in the UK. This article draws on a bespoke interview with Hutchinson and frames its discussion within a range of theories and studies, especially the European hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. It argues that the <i>Fractured Europe</i> quartet deploys science fiction <i>topoi</i> to interrogate and criticize the recent rise of English nationalism. It further contends that the <i>Fractured Europe</i> books respond to this nationalistic turn by setting forth an estranged vision of Europe and offering alternative modalities of European identity through the mediation of photography and the redemptive possibilities of cooking.
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