Popular Culture Review Vol. 23, No. 2, Summer 2012 | Page 48

44 Popular Culture Review same proportions as in Spanish science fiction. For instance, the novel by Ivan Zaldua, IfSabino Were Alive (Si Sabino viviria, 2005), presents the structure of a space opera narration, however the planets involved in the conflict each represent a specific political tendency; we have therefore a planet inhabited by the descendents of Franco, another populated by those of the Basque separatists, and so on. The humor is produced by the opposition between the typical paradigms of a space opera narration—spaceships, distant galaxies, interstellar travels—and very precise historical and political elements. Here, the science fiction genre is used as a support to parody radical political positions as the narration leans toward political satire. We also find a recurrent figure, supposedly an amusing one, throughout contemporary Spanish science fiction, that of the “funny guy” (el gracioso), who is often the protagonist and the narrative voice. His outlook on life is that of a marginal character who compensates his deficiencies with humorous resignation, and his narrative function echoes a long Spanish theatrical tradition originated in the Golden century, as Spanish science fiction authors feel the need to recycle canonical literary figures in order to assert some type of national identity within a mostly alien narrative genre. (2) Self-consciousness: This humorous tendency is intrinsically related to self-consciousness, which could be seen as a mandatory condition of any author involved in the process of creating science fiction in Spain. In spite of all their efforts, Spanish authors can never forget that they are arriving late into a narrative mode in the creation of which they did not participate and that they are still in the process of discovering, and this usually leads them to adopt an ironically self-conscious attitude vis-a-vis the text. It is indeed no easy task to take oneself seriously when one is only imitating a fundamentally foreign type of narrative that was elaborated in a radically different type of environment. Meta-narration and meta-fiction in general—in this case, meta-science fiction— are hence almost always present in contemporary Spanish science fiction, as if Spanish authors sought to defuse the somewhat contradictory aspects of their endeavor by openly exposing their paradoxical situation within their creations. The merging of meta-fiction, a narrative device traditionally associated with “high culture”, and of science-fiction, a popular genre by definition, can yield to interesting results as in the case for instance of Rodolfo Martinez’s The Smile o f the Cat (La sonrisa del gato, 1995), in which the cynicism displayed by the main character regarding both his narrative univ erse and the literary genre to which it belongs provides a note-worthy narrative tension that could be considered as one of the novel’s most convincing aesthetic achievements. (3) Subversion: The somewhat cynical quality that characterizes many protagonists of Spanish science fiction very often relies on the representation of apparently subversive moves, which create a humorous tension vis-a-vis societal collective expectations. However, when compared to their American counterparts, Spanish authors generally appear rather tame in terms of subversive content due to their cultural frame of reference. Indeed, what may