SCIENCE FANTASY AGAINST "COMMON SENSE" LITERAL METAPHORICAL ARGUMENTS FROM YOON HA LEE'S MACHINERIES OF EMPIRE

Abstract

This paper extracts an argument from Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire (2016-2018) trilogy— that the rhetorical device of literalized metaphor and the “genre” of Science Fantasy have the potential to act as logical structures which facilitate an interrogation of the Gramscian “common senses” we operate in daily. This argument is derived from an allegorical reading of how Lee’s trilogy interfaces at narrative, stylistic, and eventually metatextual levels with its central conceit of “Calendrical Mechanics”, which this paper interprets as a literalized metaphor for a hegemonic “common sense”. The paper concludes by finding in Lee’s trilogy a vision of a “provisional common sense”. This “provisional common sense” deploys the logic of literalized metaphor and Science Fantasy to create a dynamic, constantly developing “common sense” which builds into itself the means and desire to actively interrogate and improve itself and a society that is built upon it.