Beyond the East-West Dichotomy

This article investigates how French Vietnamese author Aliette de Bodard’s The Universe of Xuya series challenges Anglocentrism in the sf megatext and marketplace. I examine how de Bodard’s immersive elements of language, setting, and culture in a futuristic space empire create what Joy Sanchez-Taylor calls “double estrangement” and then discuss how her approach to posthuman subjectivity and human-AI relations offers an alternative view of Asian futurism beyond capitalist logic. Then, I consider how Xuya’s paratextual materials and positioning as a “Confucian-inspired” space society may be seen as a strategic appeal to both an Anglo-American audience attracted to the anthropological exotic in fiction as well as to a broader diasporic Asian readership. Xuya, as a Vietnamese space empire, exemplifies how Southeast Asian authors continue to negotiate the boundaries of Orientalist expectation and reaffirms the necessity of a multiplicity of Southeast Asian stories that are diverse and non-Sinocentric in the Anglophone speculative landscape.