Between Extrapolation and Analogy: Alberto Chimal’s “Veinte de robots” and Mexican Science-Fiction in 21st Century

This work focuses on the analysis of Mexican writer Alberto Chimal's text "Veinte de robots" (2012). After situating it in respect to the late 20th century science-fictional modality of cyberpunk (both in continuity of and in divergence from), the article shows how the text operates, through parody, an amalgam between extrapolation (futuristic projection) and analogy (parable to our own contemporaneousness). We will observe the different manners in which identities, be them generic, be them collective or individual, are shaken by humour, as well as the manners in which the textual space becomes kaleidoscopic in being the site of intertextual and metatextual (even architextual) play, to which hybridism is key.