Science-Fiction

The following considerations are meant as a contribution to the current debate within literary and cultural studies on the possibilities and limits of an interrelation between the sciences and literature. Using Thomas Lehr's science fiction novel 42 (2005) as an example, various epistemological models of literature such as ‚thought experiment', ‚trading zone' (Galison), ‚Interdiskurs' (Link), ‚phénoménotechnique' (Bachelard), etc. are discussed and compared with the novel's specific literary strategies.The article focuses on Lehr's attempt to illustrate questions from theoretical physics and the philosophy of time using literary and narrative means.

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.

The cycle of works by Soviet science fiction writers Strugatsky brothers, dedicated to the communist future of humanity - the 'World of Noon', as they called it, located at the intersection of fiction, philosophy, and social theory, and represents perhaps the only experimental utopia in Russian-language science fiction of the second half of the 20th century.  Karl Marx's 1844 Manuscripts was the foundation for the Strugatsky experiment. And their experiment was a unique experience of making sense of the "Manuscripts..." In my text, I reconstruct the basic conditions and results of this experiment in the light of Marx's "Manuscripts..." and, more broadly, the coordinates of utopian thinking as such.

Mindenki úgy gondolja, hogy az első időutazásos regénye és ezzel a tudományos fantasztikus irodalom megteremtése H. G. Wells nevéhez fűződik. Ám egy jeles irodalmárunk, Herczeg Ferenc megelőzte őt néhány évvel, mikoris megírta a Sziriuszt. Később is úttörőnek bizonyult ez a novella, hiszen a világ legelső időutazós filmje is ez lett (1942).
Ebben a dolgozatban körbejárom ezeket a témákat, s ismertetem azt az időfelfogást mely azóta is nyitott téma.

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?

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 article defines the ‘post’ part of Post-Cyberpunk as it appears in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age (1995). Marketed as a Post-Cyberpunk novel, The Diamond Age adopts some of Cyberpunk’s genre-specific motifs such as setting the novel in a near-future dystopia and embedding cyberspace as a “microworld” (McHale). This article extends and adapts Brian McHale’s definition of Cyberpunk from Constructing Postmodernism (1992) to a definition of Post-Cyberpunk, while showing how Post-Cyberpunk can be considered part of the Romantic tradition. McHale defines Cyberpunk using motifs of “worldness,” motifs of “the centrifugal self,” and motifs of “death both individual and collective.” My analysis shows The Diamond Age is Cyberpunk to the extent it adopts this postmodern worldness and dissolution of self. However, the text is also Post-Cyberpunk because it subverts Cyberpunk’s motifs of individual and collective death. According to Northrop Frye, Romanticism is a “new mythology” that attempts to recover the life-affirming power of nature in magical terms. Stephenson’s subversion of death is Romantic because his protagonist Nell’s quest for a better life is a deliberate rewriting of the life-affirming concerns of Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop (1841). Additionally, Nell’s quest is motivated by the magical realist nanotechnological device – the Primer – which allows her to redefine her world in magical terms. I evaluate the extent to which The Diamond Age is truly Post-Cyberpunk based on Stephenson’s (mis)use of Jung’s spiritual theories and make some suggestions for thinking beyond Stephenson’s version of the genre.

afkar/ideas, n°63, Estudios de Política Exterior S.A. de Madrid et L’Institut Européen de la Méditerranée (IEMed) de Barcelone, été 2021, pp. 72-74.

Article in Spanish: https://www.iemed.org/publication/ciencia-ficcion-y-arte-contemporaneo-en-palestina/?lang=es

Article in French: https://www.iemed.org/publication/la-scifi-et-lart-contemporain-de-palestine/?lang=fr

While Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy has been read through the uncanny human traumas and tropes of “contamination” in its first novel, Annihilation, the trilogy’s radical ecological thought emerges more clearly through cosmic and transformative trauma in the final novel, Acceptance. Rather than some contaminated space, Area X is restoring Earth’s ecosystems to a “pristine” state, but in a process of guided succession that traumatizes human life as lived under ecologically destructive neoliberal economies of extraction. Reading the twinned falls of Saul and Control, this article shows how Acceptance reimagines uncanny trauma for a new form that is painful but also familiar, human but also posthuman, and utterly necessary for planetary survival.

Luke was first introduced in 1977’s Star Wars, as living on the desert planet of Tatooine, working as a moisture farmer. Star Wars – Episode VIII – The Last Jedi’s depiction of Luke Skywalker is contradictive, and it fails to acknowledge it is a place in a larger story.

Fantastique, science-fiction, fantasy. Trois genres, trois « champs du possible ». Explorés sous l’angle de l’étude scientifique et sociale, vus au prisme de l’horreur ou pris comme cadre pour une quête épique, toutes les « littératures de l’imaginaire » donnent à lire un ailleurs. Qu’ils soient plus ou moins originaux et plus ou moins coupés de notre réalité, les mondes fictionnels de l’imaginaire s’offrent toujours comme des espaces (géographiques, culturels, sociaux…) à découvrir, à comprendre, à explorer.

Cet article cherche à défendre une conception unifiée des genres de l'imaginaire aujourd'hui.

The first Polish translation of one of the best-known articles on the poetics of science fiction, considered nowadays a must-read reference in the field. In this classical piece, Darko Suvin famously argues in favour of introducing the concept of cognitive estrangement modelled after Viktor Shklovsky’s ostranenie (often questionably rendered as defamiliarisation) as well as Bertolt Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (as defined in his Kleines Organon für das Theater). Arguing, in due course, for acknowledging the cognitive and epistemological potential of thus defined estrangement, Suvin proceeds to introduce and analyse two distinct models for studying science fiction from both historical and formalist perspective—the extrapolative model and analogic model—which altogether help at outlining features of the most prototypal science fiction. This translation is also supplemented with an addendum from 2014 wherein the author revisits his thoughts from Marxist perspective and ponders on their relevance in reference to a more politically inclined debate in science fiction studies.

This paper broadly traces developing attitudes towards in-vitro and other alternative meats within science fiction, from their utopian origins in the nineteenth century to their overwhelmingly dystopian and “neocarnist” depictions in post-twentieth-century literature and culture.

20. yüzyılın ikinci yarısından beri süregelen postmodern bilim tartışmalarının en radikal isimlerinden biri olan Avusturyalı düşünür Paul Feyerabend, güncel anlamıyla inşa ettiği anarşist bilgi kuramıyla klasik bilim anlayışına sert eleştiriler getirmiştir. ‘Her şey uyar’ mottosuyla çoğulcu bir bilim ve bilgi anlayışına işaret eden ve batı biliminin başta nesnellik iddiası olmak üzere pek çok iddia ve vaadini yoğun bir şekilde tenkit eden Feyerabend’e göre emperyal bir kimliğe sahip olan batı bilimi, kendisi dışındaki tüm bilgi, yöntem ve dünya görüşünü yok saymaya çalışmakta ve değersizleştirmektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, disiplinlerarası bir mantıkla Paul Feyerabend’in temsil ettiği bilim felsefesi düşüncesinin ve fraksiyonunun izlerini Amerikan bilimkurgu sinemasının bağımsız yapımlarından olan Mike Cahill’in yönetmenliğini yaptığı 2014 yılı yapımlı I Origins (Kök) filmi üzerinde sürmek ve bilim felsefesi ile bilimkurgu sineması arasındaki çoğunlukla es geçilen ilişkiyi ortaya çıkarmaktır. Çalışmanın yöntemi, ideolojik film eleştirisi yaklaşımı ve içerik analizi olarak belirlenmiştir. Çalışmada elde edilen sonuç ise filmin organik bir bağ inşa etmediği (veya bunu belirtmediği) Paul Feyerabend’in düşünceleriyle açıklanabilir ve yorumlanabilir olduğudur.

[Finalist of the 2020 Jamie Bishop Memorial Award for an essay on the fantastic written in a language other than English ; The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA), USA]
On ne trouve que rarement trace, dans l’histoire des arts, d’une mention de l’existence d’un théâtre de science-fiction. Les œuvres pourtant ne manquent pas, tout au long des XIXe, XXe et XXIe siècles, dans lesquelles les thèmes et les motifs privilégiés par la SF sont mobilisés. L’inexistence du théâtre de SF ne paraît donc pas être un fait artistique (les œuvres ne manquent pas), mais un fait discursif : on n’utilise pas le terme « science-fiction » pour en parler. Cela tient peut-être au fait qu’on identifie, depuis près d’un siècle, le théâtre à un « art du présent » — ce rapport au temps fonderait sa spécificité vis-à-vis de la littérature et surtout du cinéma —, alors qu’au contraire la SF aurait, croit-on souvent, pour objet le futur. Vu sous cet angle, le syntagme « théâtre de science-fiction » serait une manière d’oxymore, à l’impropriété pour ainsi dire définitionnelle. À la faveur de déplacements conceptuels, il est toutefois bien possible que la SF jouisse aujourd’hui de conditions favorables à une existence reconnue. Cet article entend faire le point sur l’histoire et l’historiographie de ce genre inaperçu que serait le théâtre de SF, genre qui depuis peu semble se constituer de manière explicite sur les scènes de théâtre.

In the last few years, Native filmmakers have begun drawing explicitly on the science fiction genre. Engaging recent short films depicting noncolonial encounters of the third kind and alternative utopian–dystopian futures, I argue that Native science fiction film provides a creative subversive mode of representation, uniquely positioning indigenous filmmakers to vividly reimagine a multiplicity of futures for their communities while critically addressing contemporary issues. Synthesizing scholarship in visual anthropology, afro and feminist futurism, and indigenous methodologies, I attempt to further develop an indigenous futurist analytical framework as part of a larger argument for increased anthropological engagement with Native futures.

بازیکن اول آماده
Ready Player One

بازیکن اول آماده باش یک رمان علمی تخیلی به قلم نویسنده‌ی آمریکایی ارنست کلاین است. این کتاب در سال 2011 منتشر شد. داستان در یک دیستوپیا (کابوس‌آباد) در سال 2045 اتفاق می‌افتد. پروتاگونیست (شخصیت اصلی) نوجوانی به نام وِید واتس است که در یک بازیِ جهان مجازی به دنبال تخم‌مرغ‌عیدپاکی می‌گردد که پیدا کردن آن موجب می‌شود او برنده‌ی ارثیه‌ی خالق آن بازی شود. این کتاب در 16 آگوست 2011 منتشر شد؛ و کتاب صوتی این اثر نیز در هم همان روز به چاپ رسید. کتاب صوتی بازیکن اول آماده باش توسط ویل ویتون که به صورت خلاصه در یکی از قسمت‌های کتاب به او اشاره شده، خوانش شده است. این کتاب در سال 2012 در بخش انجمن کتابخانه‌ی آمریکا از سوی انجمن کتاب‌خانه‌های نوجوانان، برنده‌ی جایزه‌ی الکس شد. در همان سال جایزه‌ی پرومتئوس را نیز از آن خود کرد. استیون اسپیلبرگ (که در کتاب به او نیز اشاره شده است) با اقتباس از این کتاب و فیلم‌نامه‌ای که توسط خودِ کلاین و زاک پِن نوشته شد، فیلمی ساخت که در 29 مارس 2018 به اکران رسید.

فضای داستان : در سال 2045 جهان بخاطر سوءمصرف سوخت‌های فسیلی دچار بحران انرژی شده و درگیر مشکلاتی از قبیل گرمایش زمین و جمعیت بیش از حد است. در همین حین مشکلات شدید اجتماعی و اقتصادی گریبان‌گیر خیل عظیم انسان‌هاست. مردم برای فرار از این مشکلاتِ به "اوآسیس" پناه می‌برند: جهانی مجازی که به بازیکنانش این امکان را می‌دهد که با عینک مخصوص و تلکنولوژی‌هایی لمسی، از جمله دستکش‌ لمس، با این جهان مجازی تعامل داشته باشند. اوآسیس که هم یک بازی نقش‌آفرینی چندبازیکنی اینترنتی و هم یک جامعه‌ی مجازی است، به جزئی ثابت از واقعیت جهان تبدیل شده است. این بازی/جهان‌‍مجازی توسط جیمز هلید خلق شد. وقتی هلیدی مُرد، در وصیت‌نامه‌‌ی ویدیویی ِعمومی‌اش اعلام کرد که یک تخم‌مرغ‌عیدپاک در اوآسیس پنهان کرده است. او یک سرنخ و یک سری یادداشت روزمره در یک تقویم نجومی برای جستجوگران تخم‌مرغ به جا گذاشت. وصیت‌نامه هلیدی و تقویم نجومی آنوراک پُر از ارجاعات بی‌پایان به فرهنگ پاپ دهه‌ی هشتاد میلادی‌ست و از همین دانش داشتن به نشانه‌ها و نمادها و فیلم‌ها، موسیقی و مُد لباس و از همه مهم‌تر، بازی‌های کامپیوتری اولیه که بیشتر مربوط به اواخر هفتاد و هشتاد میلادی هستند، برای جستجوی تخم‌مرغ پنهان شده در اوآسیس امری ضروری است. داستان این کتاب روایت‌گر جستجوهای وید واتس است که پنج سال پس از اعلام وصیت‌نامه‌ی هلیدی، زمانی که موفق می‌شود یکی از سه کلید لازم برای رسیدن به گنج را پیدا کند، اتفاق می‌افتد. این کتاب یک اثر گیکی به تمام معنا است. بازیکن اول اماده باش کتابی هیجان انگیز برای همه‌ی جوانان گیمر و گیک امروزی و نیز اثری نوستالژیک برای گیک‌ها و گیمرهای قدیمی است که وارد دوران بزرگسالی  شده‌اند.

Les Mains d'Orlac, roman de Maurice Renard publié en 1920, relate l'histoire d'une double greffe de mains sur un pianiste accidenté. Nous en faisons ici une triple analyse concernant l'épistémologie implicite du discours, le travail sur le schéma corporel et la question de l'identité hybride. M. Renard est un des rares écrivains de science-fiction a avoir théorisé sa propre pratique, en montrant qu'elle repose sur un modèle hypothético-déductif où l'hypothèse provient d'une analogie, d'une généralisation ou d'un fait nouveau fictif. Ici, il s'agit de généraliser l'art de la greffe végétale au monde animal et particulièrement à l'homme. Le roman, de plus, montre une grande attention à l'appropriation sensorimotrice des mains greffées, dans un effort pour adapter son schéma corporel passé à ces mains nouvelles. Enfin, puisqu'il s'agit des mains d'un criminel un conflit identitaire oppose Orlac à elles, avant qu'on ne découvre l'innocence du condamné. On peut noter aussi le télescopage temporelle avec la première double greffes de mains réelle, accomplie en 2000 alors qu'un personnage du roman s'exclame justement : « On se croirait en l'an 2000 ! », et l'hommage rendu par le chirurgien réel – le Pr. Dubernard – à Alexis Carrel, tandis que le chirurgien du roman, le Dr Cerral, s'en inspire directement.

“Anthony Burgess and Science Fiction”, Jim Clarke, SFRA Review 313, Summer 2015, pp. 28-35.

Anthony Burgess was a reluctant writer of SF, but a highly influential one. This article, for the SFRA Review, introduces the author and his SF work and seeks to explain the reason behind his sudden reversal of attitude towards SF in mid-career.

Mémoire de maîtrise en Études littéraires, UQAM, année 1999

À noter qu'il s'agit de la version 1, celle qui a été déposée à la fin de mes études, et qu'une version corrigée est en cours de préparation. (2022)

Le simulacre, mettant à l'épreuve les frontières entre réalité et fiction, est le faux qui se fait passer pour vrai, qui prend la place du réel. Ce que nous observons dans les romans 2001 : L'Odyssée de l'espace d'Arthur C. Clarke, Solaris de Stanislaw Lem et Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep de Philip K. Dick, c'est la mise en scène de personnages secondaires qui sont des simulacres d'êtres humains. Cette analyse s’applique à suivre le parcours identitaire du personnage principal de chacun des récits, déterminé par la relation avec les êtres factices. Deux types de simulacres interagissent dans les textes, désignés par les termes "anima" et "automata". L’être humain, bouleversé dans cette relation à l’automata par le biais du simulacre qui lui sert de miroir, subit les effets d'une scission, suivant un processus par lequel les personnages principaux vont renouveler leur rapport au réel et recréer leur identité. À noter que certaines citations sont en anglais.

Copyright: © 2010 Julie Martineau Standard Copyright License
Version : 2 (non définitive)

NOTE: this is an author's draft of chapter 12 of the book "Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television," eds. Michael Hauskeller, Thomas D. Philbeck, Curtis Carbonell (Palgrave, 2015).  The final, published version is here: http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9781137430328.0018?focus=true  ABSTRACT: LaGrandeur demonstrates how the character of the android in film and television represents three themes common to the idea of the posthuman: our blindness to the possible dangers of our own ingenuity and evolving technology; the problems posed by technology-spurred species creation and species-transition (androids often are represented as an emerging species—or human hybrid); and, concomitantly, the perils of human exceptionalism that could lead to the exploitation of any new, intelligent species we may create in our image—in other words, the possibility of a new slave class, with all that it entails.

The study will attempt to analyze Ian McEwan's novel Machines Like Me (2019) to explore issues related to the question of whether it is possible to found a meaningful relationship between man and machine in a culture which is inching towards a Transhuman or Posthuman state while also focusing on the issue that how the very definition of ‗human' is bound to undergo a radical shift in an environment where machines not just mimic and flawlessly replicate their human counterparts in many respects but also operate in their own peculiar ways which are incomprehensible to humans. The paper further attempts to show that in an extensionist mode of existence in which man and machine will form a symbiotic and synergistic bond, various humanist and liberal concepts of man will undergo dramatic changes. Also, the study will endeavor to analyze the intricate relationship between artificial general intelligence and Islamic teachings. The study will primarily base its theoretical framework on Robert Pepperell's ‗extensionist perspective' of the human agency while at the same time also extracting and employing relevant ideas from such thinkers as

Kindle ebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CL7YFGB/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524435959&sr=1-2&keywords=the+psychology+of+westworld
What lessons can we learn from the popular series Westworld? This work explores issues raised in the first season of this popular series through the lens of the philosophy of mind. Given all its complexity, can human consciousness be reduced to computational algorithms? Indeed, what is consciousness? Do the provocative theories of Julian Jaynes and bicamerality, as portrayed in Westworld, help us understand the nature and emergence of consciousness? Can machines eventually " experience " something like human consciousness? Or can they only mimic—as impressively lifelike as that simulating might be—human intelligence? Can a human-made entity become a being possessed of the ability to experience themselves and the world the way people do? In what ways does the power of modern technology radically transform human nature and our understandings of what it means to be human? This work will be of interest to anyone who wants to know how science fiction intersects with science fact in the realm of psychology.

In this article, I aim to showcase the emergence of the so-called Ancient Astronaut Discourse (AAD) out of religious discourse as well as its continued religious functions despite all differences and pretensions to the contrary (i.e., the concerted effort to resemble legitimate or even superior science, specifically historiography and archaeology). In a second step, I sketch a concise literary history of this emergence itself, as well as the continuous mutual influence between the AAD and the realm of popular culture. This complex intertwinement is exemplified via the rather spectacular case of the "Stargate" science fiction franchise which adapted popular themes and theories from the AAD (in particular its Egyptian front focusing on the pyramids) in the mid-90s. With the success of the movie and the subsequent television shows, the direction of the influence then became strangely reversed: The eponymous Stargate device became integrated into AAD narratives, its fictional origins being silently dropped or explained away by conspiracy theories. I try to account for this development by a methodical approach in the vein of recent studies on fiction-based religions as well as Jean Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality and simulacra. Throughout all these observations, we encounter an imaginary Egypt as providing both the primary building blocks and the general backdrop of ancient mystery from and upon which the AAD's flying pyramids are built.

Lunettes, stimulateurs cardiaques, prothèses dentaires, audioprothèses, implants mammaires, bras mécatroniques, etc. : notre monde nous plonge de plus en plus dans un univers de prothèses – l'âge venant, peu d'entre nous y échappent. Cette hybridation change nos vies et notre quotidien. Elle concerne des aspects à la fois variés et essentiels : les gestes moteurs, les perceptions, l'expression de soi, l'esthétique, l'identité, l'interface et la connexion avec le monde. Les prothèses peuvent compenser une capacité défaillante. Elles peuvent aussi apporter des capacités modifiées voire inédites. Elles transforment la relation que nous entretenons avec le monde, avec autrui et avec nous-mêmes. Certaines prothèses ne relèvent plus de la compensation mais de l'augmentation ou de la modification d'une capacité ordinaire.
Il semble ainsi bienvenu d'étudier l'abondante source de réflexions prothétiques qu'apporte la science-fiction sous toutes ses formes (roman, film, bande dessinée, design, jeu vidéo, art…) Les contributeurs et contributrices de cet ouvrage révèlent la richesse et la profondeur des explorations que la science-fiction a produites depuis plus d'un siècle. Elle nous donne à vivre une multitude d'expériences par procuration qui mêlent anticipations, rêveries, interrogations personnelles et questions sociopolitiques.
Cet ouvrage académique a bénéficié de l'évaluation d'un comité de lecture universitaire associant la société savante Stella Incognita et l'Association Académique pour les Humanités (AAH). Il est aussi le fruit d'une collaboration avec le consortium de recherche Corps et Prothèses (corps-protheses.org).

Speculative fiction (sfict) is the youngest storytelling genre in literature, identifiable by its use of real as well as fictional elements of fantasy, horror, and science. Since sfict is global, breaks literary conventions and pushes storytelling boundaries to evolve literary forms, extant standards for categorizing texts are increasingly inadequate. The felt need for a standard sfict taxonomy is challenging because genre taxonomy design is complex, resource-intensive and requires input from other domains. One challenge is that while genre taxonomy is used for prescriptive naming and categorization, it does not include the standard assessment systems or the descriptive evaluation structures that are required for categorization of systematic sfict texts and genres. To address the challenge, this study posits that familiar, established systems and constructs from various fields of study can be used to create: 1) a stable, systematic genre taxonomy that can accommodate changes and at the same time maintain its integrity, and 2) applicable assessment standards and evaluation systems that are both empirical and descriptive. Research Goals: One pragmatic research goal is to resolve the arbitrary and confusing names of sfict text and genre categories in online collections, archives, and various databases. This study lays the groundwork for research towards that goal by collating from various disciplines a set of objective standards and systems for sfict genre taxonomy design as well as for objective analysis of sfict stories and genres.