TWO REPUBLICAN SCIENCE FICTION STORIES: HULYA BU YA... AND BUYUK KUKURIKO
İKİ CUMHURİYET BİLİMKURGUSU: HÜLYA BU YA… VE BÜYÜK KUKURİKO ADLI ÖYKÜLER

Author : Şener Şükrü YİĞİTLER
Number of pages : 595-615

Abstract

Science-fiction is not a conventionally developed genre in Turkish Literature, but it has reached an acceptable level, though far from reaching an aesthetic level, thanks to quest for new narration and style forms, propagation of techno-culture and postmodern perspectives through the 80s. Like science fiction, utopia and dystopia are among the genres not fully developed in Turkish literature and being non-canonical genres, they continue to be extraordinary style trials in mainstream literature, and positioned on the periphery of the center. This study examines stories called Büyük Kukuriko (The Big Ciciricu), first published as a serial in 1948, by Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı and Hülya Bu Ya... (Imagine This…), 1921, by Refik Halid Karay , and shows, in contrary to common held in literature researches that dates science fiction genre in Turkish Literature only to 1950s, these two stories are among the earliest examples. In these stories science fiction is used to make an ironic and humorous critic as seen in pre-modern world literatures. Idealistic, disciplinary and developmentalist policies under the nation-state project promulgated in Early Republican Period were reacted against and harshly criticized by some Turkish authors both during the application period and afterwards. While statist, populist and often standardizing applications envisaged for the construction of “ideal citizen” by the official ideology are satirized with a utopian Ankara setting in Hülya Bu Ya... (Imagine This…), Büyük Kukuriko (The Big Ciciricu) exposes the corruption of idealistic values of the Republic that emerged in every sense even before 1950s in a dystopian fiction. Finally, these two authors’ approach to Republic is explained with the concept of being “exile.”

Keywords

Science fiction, utopia, dystopia, Early Turkish Republic, nation-state, industrialism

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