Science Fiction Studies

Quentin Meillassoux, "Metafísica y ficción extracientífica, seguido de "La bola de billar" de I. Asimov. Santiago: Roneo, 2020. Traducción y notas de Meillassoux por Jean-Paul Grasset B. Prólogo de Jean-Paul Grasset B. y Mario Teodoro Ramírez.
Traducción de 'La bola de billar" por Cristóbal Carrasco y Nicolás Vargas.

This paper examines a variety of cyborg figures in science fiction and art, and investigates how these posthuman subject’s perceptual capacities are altered through their “cyborging,” how this might lead to greater intersubjective understanding and empathy, and advocates an embodied phenomenology for these figures. The cyborg and the posthuman are not necessarily synonymous but share similar political and ethical goals in theory: to radically redefine the human and the humanities, in order to see a way to better intersubjective and interspecies relations.
Ghost in The Shell, Anne McCaffrey, Neil Harbisson.

Marginalia is a multilingual bibliographic bulletin (format PDF) of international secondary sources about popular fiction and films : science-fiction & fantasy, fantasic and gothic fiction, horror, spy stories, comics and animation, westerns, war stories and films, erotica, historical novels and films, adventures, children’s Literature (free 4 issues yearly, available on demand).
Contact: Norbert Spehner : nspehner@sympatico.ca

Benedetta Cappa Marinetti does not simply write novels, she constructs them. Over the span of ten years, Benedetta pairs narrative first with images, then with performative elements, and lastly, with letters. She applies her abstract and conceptual style to observable and palpable works. In her first novel, Le forze umane (1926), Benedetta parallels handwritten words to hand- drawn images, or what she terms as “graphic syntheses.” From this autobiographical beginning, Benedetta immerses her audience into the timeline of her own life events. Surpassing a simple documentary or chronological account, Benedetta embeds her own states of mind in the narrative, a practice also explored by Futurist Giuseppe Steiner. In her next novel, Viaggio di Garar (1931), Benedetta continues to incorporate visuals into her narrative, however, not to convey states of mind, but to immerse the reader into another realm: the theater. Viaggio di Garar is a “cosmic novel for the theater,” allowing the work to be flexibly read as both a script and a novel. Her final novel, Astra e il sottomarino (1936) evokes an epistolary model, continuing her interest in the participatory elements of script and narrative. Benedetta’s much overlooked literary narrative includes a female perspective missing from many of her fellow Futurists’ novels.

Presented 2-11-16 @ King's College (PA) (for Socratic Society)

In the wake of the popularity of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I endeavor to use the movie to explain some philosophy, and use philosophy to explain and explore some of the movie. To do this I answer criticisms of the movie, and then attempt to answer a number of questions the movie raised:

- Was the plot of Episode VII derivative of Episode IV (A New Hope)?
- How was Rey able to defeat Kylo?
- Is J.J. Abrams a feminist?
- What’s the deal with Kylo’s lightsaber?
- Who is Supreme Leader Snoke?
- Why did Luke go into hiding? (Does he have a plan?)
- Who are Rey’s parents? (And is Rey going bad?)

A version of the presentation, with audio, is available on Youtube @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFizt76bh5k

A philosophical look at the twisted, high-tech near-future of the sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror, offering a glimpse of the darkest reflections of the human condition in digital technology

Black Mirror―the Emmy-winning Netflix series that holds up a dark, digital mirror of speculative technologies to modern society—shows us a high-tech world where it is all too easy to fall victim to ever-evolving forms of social control.In Black Mirror and Philosophy, original essays written by a diverse group of scholars invite you to peer into the void and explore the philosophical, ethical, and existential dimensions of Charlie Brooker’s sinister stories. The collection reflects Black Mirror’s anthology structure by pairing a chapter with every episode in the show’s five seasons—including an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure analysis of Bandersnatch—and concludes with general essays that explore the series’ broader themes. Chapters address questions about artificial intelligence, virtual reality, surveillance, privacy, love, death, criminal behavior, and politics, including:

Have we given social media too much power over our lives?
Could heaven really, one day, be a place on Earth?
Should criminal justice and punishment be crowdsourced?
What rights should a “cookie” have?
Immersive, engaging, and experimental, Black Mirror and Philosophy navigates the intellectual landscape of Brooker’s morality plays for the modern world, where humanity’s greatest innovations and darkest instincts collide.

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Mirror-Philosophy-Blackwell-Culture-dp-1119578264/dp/1119578264/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard explores the power of “poetic images” that form the foundation of our phenomenological experience of space. Demonstrating their ubiquity through examples in poetry, Bachelard suggests that these poetic spatialities can give us insight into the articulation of primal metaphors; the nest as well-fitting shelter, the shell as body inhabited by a soul.

If things as common-place as nests and shells resonate with a rich poetic dynamism, then what desires and apprehensions, spatial dreams and fantasies clamour around something as exotic and super-natural as a Wormhole?

This paper is an preliminary reconnaissance into Wormholes, taking Bachelard's 'topoanalysis' – the systematic psychological study of sites – as a point-of-departure.  It forms a tentative “Poetics of Wormholes” exploring the imaginative significance of the wormhole beyond its literal definition, though using science fiction rather than poetry as a source of reference material.

En 1976, Ray Bradbury, auteur des célèbres Chroniques martiennes (1950), écrivait que la science-fiction était devenue « une littérature centrale de notre temps » : « Nous retrouvons dans chaque récit de science-fiction l’ensemble des problèmes idéologiques, philosophiques et moraux posés par le développement de l’humanité ». La science-fiction, dont la nature originelle est littéraire, s’est métamorphosée aujourd’hui en un domaine culturel polymorphe. Son caractère transmédiatique se décline entre littérature, cinéma, séries télévisuelles, jeux de rôle ou jeux vidéos. Cette transversalité formelle, iconographique, thématique est aujourd’hui intégrée de manière évidente dans la culture des jeunes générations.

Mars apparaît souvent comme un pur réceptacle, un signifiant vide qui vaudrait pour toute planète source de vie extraterrestre, origine d'envahisseurs ou théâtre d'intrigues de space opera. Pour qu'un signifié colle à ce signifiant en respectant sa spécificité, il doit tirer profit de certains traits saillants fondés sur la matérialité de Mars. Deux grandes propriétés semblent incontournables : la proximité avec la Terre, et la couleur rouge caractéristique de cet astre. À celles-ci s'ajoute une spéculation, la question de son habitabilité, passé, présente ou future. Si Mars est habitée, sa proximité implique la possibilité d'une invasion des Martiens. De plus, sa couleur rouge sang la prédestine à la guerre. D'autre part, sa proximité peut aussi impliquer sa conquête par les Terriens, qu'elle soit habitée ou non. Quoi qu'il en soit, ces traits sont si connus qu'ils se sont banalisés et n'apparaissent plus eux-mêmes que comme des clichés, qu'il faut réactiver en leur donnant un nouveau sens, repris au second degré, parodiés ou mis en abyme. Diverses fictions recourent ainsi à la métafiction ou à la transfictionnalité pour redonner de la profondeur à la sémiologie martienne, et renouveler la fiction dédiée à cette planète.

" The Matrix Trilogy " , which was scripted and directed by Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, is one of the most important science fiction films. " The problem of reality " , which has been present, in various forms, ever since Plato's " allegory of the cave " , is once again being evaluated in " The Matrix Trilogy " through the medium of cinema. Moreover, there are various opinions regarding exactly what the main natures of human are in " The Matrix Trilogy ". Furthermore, " The Matrix Trilogy " provides a striking view on the relationship between the " basic natures of human " and the " system " in which humans live. The system explored, and the human insights examined in " The Matrix Trilogy " have a distinctly philosophical feel. As such, this article analyses " The Matrix Trilogy " , viewing it as a work of art which presents philosophical problems. Therefore, the dialogues in " The Matrix Trilogy " and the context of the dialogues shall be taken as the basic reference resource for the analysis. This article studies the nature of the understanding of system and human in the " The Matrix Trilogy " , with particular emphasis on analysing the content of dialogues. The article concludes that the basic human characteristics which distinguish " Neo " from other living beings in " The Matrix Trilogy " are " the ability to know " and " the will of change. " Keywords: The Matrix Trilogy, science fiction films, the will of change, the ability to know, the problem of reality, knowledge, system.

Dans The Tempest de W. Shakespeare, Foe de J.M. Coetzee et Solaris de S. Lem, l’écriture de l’altérité est liée à celle de l’insularité. Caliban et Friday sont des figures de l’autochtonie représentatives de l’Autre colonial ; la planète Solaris, à la fois lieu et personnage, ailleurs et autre, permet d’explorer ce lien entre l’altérité et l’insularité. L’éloignement et la clôture spatiale de l’île dessinent une épistémologie de l’altérité qui est toujours pensée via ce modèle spatiale — et qui pose la question de la possibilité de la rencontre. Il s’agit dans ce mémoire d’explorer les représentations de l’autre et leurs enjeux poétiques, éthiques et épistémologiques.

At the beginning of the 20th century the collective imagination was fascinated and terrified by the discovery of radium. A scientific imagery sprang up around radioactivity and was disseminated by public lectures and newspaper articles discussing the ambiguous power of this strange substance. It was claimed that radium could be used to treat cholera, typhus and tuberculosis, but at the same time there were warnings that it could be used for military purposes. The media and the scientists themselves employed a rich vocabulary influenced by religion, alchemy and magic. The ambivalent power of radioactive elements exerted a great influence on science fiction novelists. This paper will examine some significant works published in Europe, America and Russia during the first decades of the 20th century and their role in the creation of the complex imagery of radioactivity that seized the public imagination long before the invention of the atomic bomb.

Contents
- Introduction: The Historical Context
- The Utopias of Emilio Salgari and H.G. Wells, Suspended between Progress and Catastrophe
- The Ambiguous Nature of Radioactivity and Anxieties Regarding Technology in Early 20th-Century Novels and Feuilletons
- Radioactivity and Nuclear Energy in Slavic Literature in the 1920s and 1930s
- Conclusions

This article identifies a shift in the mode of embodying the Other in the science fiction TV series
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager and Battlestar Galactica: from visibly marked
difference to technological hybridization to passing.
As a genre, science fiction is full of political
monsters: nonhuman characters that embody the Other in ways that exposes how an ontological
understanding of the «human» as an exceptional subject is embedded in historical norms and ideo-
logies. I suggest that science fiction provides a part
icular lens through which it is possible to con-
sider questions about identity and belonging at stake in the dynamics of passing and Othering
humanness. I am particularly concerned with how the impact of technology in and on the body
contributes to challenge the human as a stable and fixed being. The article is in Norwegian.

Female science fiction writers are about to occupy a significant spot on the genre's author scene in China. At least since August 2016, when Hao Jingfang (*1984) became the first Chinese woman to win the Hugo Award, it is clear that they are as successful as their male counterparts. Since the introduction of science fiction literature to China in the late Qing dynasty, the scene was male-dominated. Nevertheless, in connection with the current heyday it has lately evolved more diversified.
This paper examines social and political commentary in contemporary Chinese science fiction literature written by women. I argue that these writings pose challenging views of a future Chinese society as well as provide suggestions for a more equal society. Through a close reading of Hao Jingfang’s novella “Folding Beijing” (2014) and her short story “Invisible Planets” (2010), this paper analyzes the discrepancies between the official image and her perceptions of the “Harmonious Society” and the “China Dream”.

Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (1995) was a commercial and critical success, but it is Gilliam's least understood film, even on the basic plot level. Aside from recognizable debts to specific films such as La Jetée (1962) and Dr. Strangelove (1964), 12 Monkeys plays with a number of genres: apocalypse and post-apocalypse movies; sci-fi; nuclear noir, and what is becoming known as 'geek dystopia.' This book examines Gilliam’s film—and briefly the TV series based on it—in the context of post-apocalypse movies and with an eye to the film’s major themes, including mental illness, conspiracy theories, the impossibility of human closeness, and the nature of reality. It is the first to read 12 Monkeys’ portrayal of time travel in light of Einstein’s ideas about time, and to ask what answers these ideas suggest to the film’s most basic philosophical predicament: the problem of free will versus determinism.

Pour cette communication, je me suis servi de l’exemple de deux textes de science-fiction ayant suivi des parcours comparables et soulevant des questions similaires : The Y Chromosome de Leona Gom (Gom 1990) et Chroniques du Pays des Mères d’Élisabeth Vonarburg (Vonarburg 1992). Outre certaines ressemblances quant à leur édition (année de publication, éditeurs semblables, cotraductions), ces deux romans racontent tous deux l’histoire de la disparition presque complète des hommes biologiques et l’avènement d’une société de femmes. Ces deux récits, construits autour de sociétés proposant des modèles socio-sexuels différents du modèle straight familier, ne constituent pas seulement une simple inversion des structures. En retirant du social fictif un des genres (un des sexes biologiques, carrément), ils font ressortir la diversité du genre restant, ils spéculent à propos d’une ségrégation fondée sur le genre dans le contexte d’un univers science-fictionnel. Ce faisant, ils mettent en scène une oppression fondée à la fois sur le sexe biologique et sur le genre et soulignent l’aspect artificiel de la binarité hommes/femmes dans notre univers réel. Leur portée queer se situe dans le regard qu’ils nous forcent à poser sur l’identité et sur les structures sociales genrées, et leur traduction ne peut détourner le regard de ces questions. The Y Chromosome et Chroniques du Pays des Mères, dans leur écriture, représentaient pour leurs traductrices des défis similaires quoique parfois inversés,  féministes et queer, mais aussi science-fictionnels. Quel parti prendre lorsque la langue de départ et celle d’arrivée ne gèrent pas de la même façon le genre et la relative neutralité, dans un contexte où c’est précisément l’enjeu du récit? Comment, plus précisément, transférer de l’anglais au français les marqueurs identitaires liés au genre et au sexe? Comment préserver tout cela dans une œuvre de science-fiction dont le but est de proposer une distanciation cognitive dans le contexte d’un récit de l’imaginaire? Comment conserver une posture de traduction queer dans le contexte québécois, où la culture participe à la fois d’une tradition française, où certaines notions n’existent qu’en importation, et d’une tradition nord-américaine? Au fait, quel rôle la traduction (le traducteur, la traductrice) peuvent-ils et elle jouer dans les politiques queer?

В статье исследуется, как в современных антиутопиях отражаются трансформирующиеся взаимоотношения между личностью, обществом и государством. На примере повести Аркадия и Бориса Стругацких «За миллиард лет до конца света» и дилогии Сергея Лукьяненко «Черновик» и «Чистовик» показано, что фантастическое в современной утопической литературе практически перестало быть средством социальной критики. Скорее наоборот, фантастика взяла на себя «терапевтическую» функцию: оказывает молодому поколению помощь в поисках собственного пути и дает новые ориентиры в усложнившемся мире.

The cumulative effect of the (post)colonial predicament is to see cultural productions in the global South such as films, comics and artworks, as imitative, transformations or, at worst, travesties of originals in the West, thus denying agency to those who develop them. Eurocentric legacies impel the development of discursive approaches that can enable an appreciation of postcolonial cultural productions without seeing them as shadows of a master print. In this article, I propose that theories of mimesis need to be shifted away from planar mirrors of reflection and adaptation to coeval vectors of parabolic intersections where the ontological status of ‘original’ and ‘copy’ is put under question. With this approach, I consider the emergence of superhero comics in the context of a post-liberal and nuclearized India with a particular focus on fictions of science, superheroism, the state and gendered universes with respect to the comic book series on the atomic superhero Parmanu.


International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol 15, Issue 4, 2012, pp. 329–347.
http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ics

Who is Perry Rhodan? He is the central figure of an epic Science Fiction phenomenon created by German-speaking authors. Published weekly in pulp magazine format since 1961 with colorful covers depicting futuristic landscapes, Perry Rhodan’s 3000th issue now hits the newsstands. Science Fiction is gaining importance for contemporary planning efforts, and both SF literature and its images inspire planners and designers by offering fantastic visions of speculative futures and humanity’s cosmic destiny. Blade Runner is one case in point, and Perry Rhodan is another. By the way: This is also our first small step towards the upcoming issue of topos focused on utopias.

This story-based journey is an eclectic discussion on marine plastic pollution. It responds to the Environmental Humanities by bringing material history, personal experiences as well as ecotheories and natural sciences together. The conversational style, like shifting tides, speaks to anyone who wishes to develop a broader understanding on plastic pollution and its ecological consequences. While much of the scientific data has been drawn from specialist journals such as Marine Pollution Bulletin and UN-Oceans, it is the mostly shared experiences on the World Ocean that inform this study such as dialogues and stories spoken by blue activists, general audiences, local groups, fishermen, researchers, students, scientists, surfers, sailors, divers, day-trippers, ferry crews, port authorities and marine protection societies. These voices speak from a position of ecocosmopolitanism on wide-ranging issues such as indifference, world-systems, modernity, ecological literatures, a common geostory, biosemiotics, the Anthropocene as well as Planetary Boundaries. By acknowledging that the World Ocean and its qualities have come to symbolise a fluid globalising world economy, alternative themes surface such as permeability, flows, agencies, loss, renewed sense of place, cross-species entanglements, peace and sustainability. The debates edge along fairly freely yet engage with three original ideas, namely: (1) plastic pollution may impact the climate more severely than the actual circulating concepts on climate change; (2) critical levels in the environment have been reached and this should, therefore, be part of a Planetary Boundary within "Novel entities" as it adversely affects the Earth’s systems; and (3) the question of language and how new education curricula centred around ecolinguistics and a shared geostory would better inform our environmental relations and altruistic natures. As presented here, plastic pollution is at its heart a debate involving a moral reassessment and appreciation of Planet Ocean, which constitutes our greatest personal gift - the "common heritage of humankind."

Rupert J. M. Medd, words and photographs, www.instagram.com/eyesotherwise
Hélène Guyot, illustrations, www.firstrainofsummer.com

Koolhaas read The Cast of the Metabarons. Or maybe not. The overlap between OMA's Casa da Musica in Porto and the spaceship designs of the early 1990's simply underline the way in which science fiction's architectural imaginary has become part of the general imaginary of architecture. Today, the conflation of the advances in representational and building techniques fosters a parallel conflation of the modus operandi of architects and sci-fi designers. We live in a new paradigm where science fiction's architectural imagery, so crucial in the shaping of the imaginary of several generations of architects brought up in visions of white, hi-tech landscapes and dark corridors covered with lockgates and leds, is as much a part of the architectural cultural heritage as the classical orders, the Pantheon, or the Unité d’Habitation.

У статті здійснено спробу порівняльного аналізу просторових образів, які є топофоном майбутнього, у фантастичних романах Г. Велса та Р. Бредбері. Зміст цих образів має онтологічний та аксіологічний плани. Була виявлена принципова схожість концептуальної організації онтології топофону та аксіологічна контрастність окремих складових образу простору в досліджуваних творах. Однак, відмінною виявилась представлена в романах світоглядна позиція письменників щодо долі людства у майбутньому.
Статья представляет собой опыт сравнительного анализа пространственных образов, изображающих топофон будущего, в фантастических романах Г. Уэллса и Р. Бредбери. Содержание этих образов включает онтологическую и аксиологическую плоскости. Было обнаружено принципиальное сходство концептуальной организации онтологии топофона и аксиологическая контрастность отдельных составляющих пространственного образа в исследуемых произведениях. Однако представленная в романах мировоззренческая позиция писателей относительно судьбы человечества в будущем разнится.
This study aims to compare spatial images of the future depicted in novels by H. Wells and R. Bradbury. Information about the images has ontological and axiological planes. Both novels were found to have similar conceptual structure of the topophone ontology and axiological polarity of some constituents within the spatial image. However, the writers tend to have different views on the future of mankind, which they tried to present through their novels.

Elokuvan suhdetta menneisyyteen ja tulevaisuuteen on viime aikoina käsitelty varsin paljon, mutta huomio on kohdistunut ennen kaikkea niihin lajityyppeihin, joilla on eksplikoidusti "ajallinen" orientaatio. On kirjoitettu sekä historiallisen elokuvan tavasta kertoa menneisyydestä että tieteiselokuvan tavasta kuvata tulevaisuutta. Tarkoitukseni on tässä artikkelissa kääntää asetelma päinvastaiseksi ja kysyä: miten tieteisfiktio kuvaa menneisyyttä? Kaiken kaikkiaan nyt-hetkessä eläminen on jatkuvaa menneisyyden kokemusten ja tulevaisuuden odotuksen välistä vuoropuhelua. Käsitykset menneestä ja tulevasta eivät ole toisistaan riippumattomia: mistäpä muualta tieteiskirjailija tai elokuvaohjaaja etsisi ymmärrystä tulevaisuuden kuvaamiseksi ellei menneisyydestä. Historiasta tieteisfiktioiden tekijät usein noutavat myös kerronnallista ja kuvallista raaka-ainetta.

Die Cyborgisierung des Menschen erzwingt eine „innere“ Disziplinierung, die ganz direkt auf der Ebene des Nervensystems wirkt. Die Institution, welche die Körperdisziplinierung trägt, setzt nicht mehr an der leiblichen Oberfläche an – sie ist keine gesellschaftliche Institution im klassischen Sinne mehr. Diese Institution ist nunmehr der Leib selbst.
Denkbar sind eine ganze Reihe verschiedener technisch-organischer Hybridmenschen. Der Essay schlüsselt das Feld des Techno-Körpers auf und versucht in kritischer Absicht den inneren Motiven nachzuspüren, die vielen Phantasmen der Technisierung des Leibes zu Grunde liegen.

This chapter examines the perverse utopianism in Chinese author Liu Cixin’s science fiction novel 三体 (literally Three-Body, English translation The Three-Body Problem). It argues that the text’s exploration of the desire for human extinction functions as a critique of the utopian belief in scientific progress, evident in earlier Chinese science fiction and the aesthetics of socialist realism. Extinction becomes a way of mapping the decline of the idea of utopia. The threat of extinction allegorises a number of threats to the human species, particularly climate catastrophe and the future solar death of the Earth. In Three-Body, extinction pushes allegorical writing to its limit. This chapter argues that in reaching the limits of allegory, the text reaches a utopia that is radically inconceivable and refuses inscription.

In questo saggio analizzo Dark, serie creata da Baran bo Odar e Jantje Friese per Netflix.
Osservatorio TV è un progetto di ricerca indipendente sulla serialità televisiva coordinato da Barbara Maio.
http://www.osservatoriotv.it/Archivio.html