Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia
... Albert Robida (1848Robida ( -1926 was French illustrator, caricaturist, and novelist. According to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (Stableford, 2021), "he was the most important and popular nineteenth-century figure in this nascent field." Robida was incredibly prolific and published more than 60,000 illustrations. ...
... His style was lively, satirical, and full of comic and absurd situations. During and after World War I, his style became much darker; Les Villes Martyres (1914; The Martyred Cities) for example portrayed ruined cities. L'Ingénieur von Satanas (1919; The Engineer von Satanas) is similar to Ravage in many ways and "express a sense of the fragility of the electric future he had once espoused" (Stableford, 2021). Claudia Aradau considers that Ravage is a "novel that switches from one (Robida/Vian-like) regime of verisimilitude to another (apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic) one" (Aradau 2016, 47). ...
... According to Wordcat, the most succesful works written by René Barjavel are The Ice People, with "175 editions published between 1968 and 2021 in 4 languages," followed by Ashes, Ashes, with "95 editions published between 1943 and 2019 in 4 languages" and Le voyageur imprudent, with 77 editions published between 1955 and 2017 in 5 languages" (Wordcat 2022). Ravage is not only taught at school in France, but has been successuflly adapted into comics by French author Jean-David Morvan, with drawings by Filipino author Rey Macutay, and colors by Walter Pezzali (Morvan, Macutay, & Pezzali, 2016-2021. The English translation was published in July 2021 by Magnetic Press: ...
Latest version, errors and typos corrected. Peer-reviewed, published version. Chapter 6 introduces René Barjavel (1911-1985), a French author and journalist more famous in the speaking-French world than in Anglo-Saxon countries, despite the fact that he was one of the pioneers of science fiction and time travel (the grand-father paradox in Future Times Three; French: Le Voyageur imprudent, 1944). Ashes, Ashes (French: Ravage, 1943) is a science fiction novel set in 2052 France. The protagonist, 22 years old François Deschamps, leads a small group of survivors after the sudden disappearance of electricity that causes chaos and destruction in France. This chapter introduces Barjavel and his works, describes Paris in 2052 before the apocalypse (technology/society), and discusses several themes, including censorship and population control (comparison with Fahrenheit 451), the technocratic hubris and the collapse, the creation of a patriarchal society in New Provence, tribal war and the infernal machine, the issues of racism and sexism, and durability of love.
... It is a literary genre of speculative fiction that explores imaginative and futuristic concepts, often employing advanced scientific and technological ideas and ideologies, untreated space exploration, undetermined time travel, parallel universe plots, and extraterrestrial life (Stableford, 2006). It serves as a mediator for exploring novel ideas and ethical dilemmas within a speculative context, challenging writers and readers to portray the possibilities beyond the known and the now (So et al., 2022; Tverdynin, 2022). ...
ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT After its release on November 2022, Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) technology (henceforth ChatGPT) as the first rising AI tool, has profoundly invaded our classrooms becoming the unavoidable reality for both students and teachers. Beyond its disruptive impact that led to divided attitudes about embracing or denying it, this study explores its integration into the creative writing process of Algerian Master students, specifically within the genre of science fiction (SF), to understand its impacts on fostering the imaginative capabilities of Algerian Master students. This research juxtaposes the narrative outputs of students utilizing GPT (Experimental Group) against those relying only on traditional writing methods (Control Group) by employing a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative statistical analysis with an exploratory rubric-based evaluation. The findings indicate that GPT integration significantly enhances imaginative writing skills, thematic exploration, scientific integration, and plot development participants, as affirmed by higher performance scores in the Experimental Group across all evaluated criteria. These results suggest that GPT can act as a catalyst for creative and scientific thought, challenging concerns about the potential stifling of creativity or over-reliance on technology. Thus, the paper contributes to the discourse on AI in higher education by providing empirical evidence that approves the positive impact of GPT on creative writing, offering insights into its pedagogical potential, and highlighting the importance of a balanced approach to implicating AI technologies in educational settings in Algerian higher education. The research advocates for further exploration into effectively integrating such technologies across various educational contexts. On further notice, the chapter finally reflects on the ethical ramifications resulting from generative AI implementation that our dedicated teachers have to consider for the sake of their appropriateness and support as well.
... Much of the imaginaries of astrofuturism recast OSM as a "Wild West" frontier (Adee 2012), where "roughnecks" fight an authoritarian and exploitative Earth-based government or corporation (akin to colonist rebels during the U.S. Revolution; e.g., Anderson's [2014] Industrial Revolution). The varied storylines of OSM astrofuturism serve as class-based tributes to blue-collar libertarianism, anarchism, and piracy, and as indictments of the oppressive imperialism of extractivism (Stableford 2006). OSM sites are generally imagined as privatized and dangerous resource frontiers on asteroids, where material conditions (e.g., hypergravity in Baxter's [1991] Raft), extraterrestrial lifeforms (e.g., Aliens [Cameron 1986]), and "human deviances" (e.g., Outland [Hyams 1981]) pose a lethal threat-becoming metaphors of the continued alienation, isolation, and labor exploitation (Sage 2018) experienced in the future and beyond planet Earth. ...
... En el siglo XIX, en plena revolución industrial, los avances de la ciencia y de la técnica se incorporan como motivos al campo de la ficción literaria. Nace entonces el género que más tarde habrá de llamarse "ciencia-ficción" o, más propiamente, "ficción científica", y en el que la geología, como especialidad consolidada de las ciencias de la Tierra, suministrará nuevas y sugerentes ideas a los escritores (Collins, 1935;Pangborn, 1961;Clute and Nicholls, 1993;Stableford, 2006). ...
In this article the relations between geological sciences and literature of fiction, especially with science-fiction, are reviewed. The consolidation of geology as a scientific specialization in the first half of XIXth century attracted some writers of adventure and fantasy novels who used, among other topics, matters based on geological knowledge. Some of the most representative works in this field, published in the XIXth and XXth centuries, by authors as Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. P. Lovecraft, Vladimir Obruchev, Arthur C. Clarke, George Gaylord Simpson and Sarah Andrews, are mentioned. Their contributions are divided in sections according to the aspects involved: the hollow Earth and the exploration of its inner part; the lost worlds (superficial, subterranean and extraterrestrial), inhabited by extinct animals; the prehistoric times and its antediluvian fauna; trips to other geological epochs, above all the Mesozoic times of the great dinosaurs; volcanoes, earthquakes and other natural disasters; and mines and mineral deposits. Finally, the geology of certain literary territories and the geologist, men or women, as a main character in fiction are also taken into account.
... Три закона, по словам Брайана Стейблфорда, являются основой «системы этики» [20] робота, которую невозможно обойти или обмануть. Таким образом, Айзек Азимов обращается к проблеме искусственного интеллекта задолго до того, как он стал реальностью. ...
The image of a mechanical (artificial) creature constructed thanks to the achievements of mankind in the field of science and technology has been present in literature since its inception, since the first oral myths and legends. Only towards the end of the 19th — beginning of the 20th century, the emphasis in the image of the robot in the literature shifted from religious-mystical to philosophic-technical. The purpose of this study is to assess the legitimacy of the statement that the work of the American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was a turning point in the development of the image of a robot in world literature. For this purpose, the following research was done: a comparative historical overview of the development of the image of a robot in literary works; the analysis of the scientific literature on the issue; a thorough analysis of several key works of Isaac Asimov (particularly, stories from the “I, Robot” collection), in which the robot character plays a central role and participates in the formation of the main idea of the work revealing the theme and the construction of the plot. Being a supporter of the idea of the humanistic role of science fiction, Isaac Asimov abandoned the established tradition of a monster robot, endowed it with Three Laws so that humanity could overcome the Frankenstein complex and look at the achievements of technology from a new perspective. This new approach of Isaac Asimov to the robot character and to the question of the relationship between human being and technology, which initially caused a negative response from literary critics, subsequently became one of the components of the reform of American science fiction and the advent of the Golden Age of science fiction. The concept of “robotics” of Isaac Asimov became the cornerstone of not only modern science fiction but also other branches of human activity, including information technology and robotics industry.
... A falta de uma resolução da controvérsia sobre o tamanho do Universo e a existência de outras galáxias poderia ser frustrante para o público. Brian Stableford lembra que "O telescópio se tornou uma arma crucial em uma guerra ideológica," demonstrando que "não se poderia confiar em conhecimento recebido" [35]. Nesse sentido, a reportagem da PS faz uma reflexão interessante sobre os limites da astrofotografia: "por fim, imagine o que significa fotografar um objeto a milhões de anos-luz de distância da Terra" [1]. ...
Em 26 de abril de 1920, dois astrônomos norte-americanos, Harlow Shapley e Heber Curtis apresentaram, no evento anual da Academia Nacional de Ciências, seus resultados e teorias a respeito do tamanho do Universo, natureza das nebulosas espirais e existência de outras galáxias. Neste artigo, exploramos a apropriação pela imprensa norte-americana dessa disputa sobre o nosso lugar no Universo através do artigo “Existem outros universos além do nosso?”, publicada em 1922 na revista ``Popular Science''. A reportagem baseou-se em argumentos de Shapley e Curtis expostos num artigo do Boletim do Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa, em 1921. Além de informar seu público sobre as questões abordadas no artigo do Boletim por meio do uso de metáforas, infográficos e conjecturas, a reportagem transcendeu a astronomia através da imaginação, propondo, inclusive, um mapa para a Via Láctea com base no padrão espiral observado nas nebulosas. Este estudo evidencia a historicidade das discussões científicas do lugar da humanidade no universo e a maneira como tais acontecimentos podem sensibilizar a imaginação, ressaltando o papel e a importância da divulgação científica no processo de formação de uma cultura sobre ciências.
... (Broderick 1995, 57) or the "absent paradigm" (Angenot 1978, 78), which ensures a reality-effect for readers familiar with the genre's conventions, in particular. Not only has SF's thematic repertoire been well inventoried by encyclopedic studies (Ash, 1977 andClute, 1993, for instance), but the genre's specific semiotic mechanisms have already been explained in a satisfactory manner. In what way can cognitive theory shed new light on SF film? ...
SCIENCE-FICTION AND COGNITION Science-fiction (SF) is a paradoxical genre insofar as it combines realism (scientific verisimilitude) and fantasy (free speculations about estranged worlds). It represents a kind of impossible marriage between reason (science) and emotion (fiction). This tension is evoked by an image of the android Roy Batty from Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner (1982), which appears on the front cover of a collection of essays edited in 1999 by Carl Plantinga and Greg Smith, titled Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion. Thus SF has a cognitive dimension, which can be linked primarily to its scientific ideology, as well as an affective dimension, that expresses itself through feelings of estrangement and wonder. How can one account for the semiotic mechanisms that produce meaning and emotion in SF film, in a way that explains the interaction between these two apparently antithetical components? This essay will compare a selection...
... Yet, these three forms, while inter-related, are necessarily distinct. And, for the sake of argument and brevity, we can easily come up to simple spec with their etymology, and even select semantic differences using Brian Stableford's (2006) ...
Mankind’s dependence on artificial intelligence and robotics is increasing rapidly as technology becomes more advanced. Finding a way to seamlessly intertwine these two worlds will help boost productivity in society and aid in a variety of ways in modern civilization.
Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society is an essential scholarly resource that delves into the current issues, methodologies, and trends relating to advanced robotic technology in the modern world. Featuring relevant topics that include STEM technologies, brain-controlled androids, biped robots, and media perception, this publication is ideal for engineers, academicians, students, and researchers that would like to stay current with the latest developments in the world of evolving robotics.
... 21 Les réponses apportées par la science-fiction aux grandes catastrophes permettent de situer ce roman dans un genre qui se situe la plupart du temps dans le futur (Stableford, 2006). Les solutions à de grands cataclysmes sont souvent radicales, et éloignées des valeurs démocratiques. ...
The spectrum of how much or how little organizational processes should be automated has long been debated. As the world undergoes a digital transformation where contactless and frictionless are promoted as two aspects that should be honored, many academics are questioning both the frenetic deployment of digital transformation in learning and teaching environments (e.g., face-to-face classrooms, library and academic office spaces, and laboratories, virtual/hybrid modalities, etc.) and its corresponding validity to students. Indeed, little consultation seems to have taken place with the necessary stakeholders, such as academics, students, instructional designers and pedagogical experts, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather, discussions and decisions appear to have been reactive regarding which modalities of teaching delivery might be the best in a given context, based on operational scenarios directly linked to financials, such as student recruitment trends, and local legislative changes affecting international students. Furthermore, many academic faculty and a great number of corresponding auxiliary staff have found themselves in the unemployment queue. This paper seeks to present the possibilities that AI-based systems may bring to higher education, but in so doing, point to the harmonization required to offer the most appropriate solutions to the needs of both students and teachers, as well as university administration. Education is not a commodity, although it has been treated as one. We are not advocating for an open market which offers “free education” for all, though we wish for everyone to have adequate access to education. But we are certainly advocating for a future in which students and teachers are central to the learning and teaching environment, not relegated to a passive role nor exploited. This article uses Shiv Ramdas’ short science fiction story“, The Trolley Solution”, to work through the future possibilities of AI in higher education.
The history of colonialism and colonial discourse constitutes a profoundly influential historical framework for the science fiction genre, from early literary works to contemporary cinema. The majority of science fiction stories inherently possess a colonial narrative, whether comprehended by the audience or not. This study aims to highlight the trauma experienced by imperialists during the decolonization process and its affect on post-World War II films, a period marked by the emergence of postcolonial theory. Drawing from the assumption that colonial policies are reproduced and reinforced in 1970s sci-fi films, Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) and its sequels will be ideologically analyzed in accordance with the perspectives of authors such as Said, Fanon, and Memmi. The analysis of representations in the films will specifically address the justification of galactic colonization, the rationalization of the massacre of the colonized, and the monsterization of the 'other.'
All theories of world creation, whether scientific, philosophical, or religious, can readily acknowledge the fact that humans have primarily evolved to engage with nature, the individual self, fellow human beings, society, and other naturalistic aspect of existence. Nevertheless, several novel challenges ascend when the human mind engages with technology, media, machines, and related concepts such as—ChatGPT, artificial intelligence, and to name a few. For that reason, we need philosophy and critical assessment of the uncovered essence of advanced technologies, media and machines and our way of life concerning them. In other words, protectively assessing their impact requires a thorough examination of ethical and existential concerns, including technology’s implications for freedom, AI’s evolving role, the essence of human being, and the unexamined transformative societal changes that follow. Building upon the premise that these phenomena share a common thread despite their apparent disparities, our interdisciplinary pursuit draws inspiration from philosophical luminaries such as Luciano Floridi, Karamjit S. Gill, David Kaplan, Aldous Huxley, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Gandhi. Through philosophical insights, we explore the essence of technology and its broad effects, with a focus on its impact on human freedom and essence in both public and private domains.
This chapter deals with the novel El anacronópete (1884 and 1887), written by Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau, its creation and its innovation, both, because of the satirical character and because of its belonging to the genre of science fiction. The nineteenth century witnessed a powerful scientific and technological development—development that introduced economic, political, and social changes. The value of this novel written by Gaspar y Rimbau lies not only in the fact that it precedes what is supposed to be the first time machine in Western literature, but also in the fact that it articulates the scientific and literary discourse in order to address the question of the identity of the Self versus the Other. The narration begins during the International Exhibition of Paris in 1878, where the popularity of the famous Jules Verne and his wonderful hypotheses will be considered children’s toys in the face of the magnitude of the real invention of a modest resident of Zaragoza. More than a science fiction novel, the text requires the incorporation of concepts related to the creation process of national identities from disciplines such as history, sociology, and theory of literature. All of these identities are seen from a satirical prism of a budding science fiction genre.
A novel is not always limited to long works of prose fiction (Hughes, 2002); a novel can inspire anyone in any field. This study employs a bibliometric analysis approach. The data used were 6.516 documents downloaded from scopus.com (see Figure 1). Microsoft Excel 2019 is used to analyze the average publication each year, while VOSviewer is used to create data visualizations and find the number of citations. The results show that the publication trend occurs in 2022 as many as 687. Then, the most researched research theme is “literature, novels, and identity”. In addition, there are several results of citation analysis based on searching the most influential documents, authors, organizations, sources, organizations and countries. It can be concluded that the development of novel publications is increasing to the present day. The researchers suggest a further research can be carried out on a comparative analysis of works of fiction and non-fiction.
In this study, we would like to address the issue of antiheroism in relation to the popular episodic television drama The Boys (Amazon Prime Video, since 2019). The television antihero is discussed quite frequently, but more often in a rather general manner than based on specific case studies. The study outlines the related terminological axis and then applies the individual theoretical frameworks to a specific episodic television drama that presents an axiologically and morally determined conflict between fictional characters of superheroines and superheroes and their counterparts, ordinary citizens, direct or indirect victims of amoral decisions made by people with superhuman abilities. As we believe, applying the given body of knowledge to the selected television drama via a case study allows us to explain the contemporary understanding of antiheroism in relation to fictional characters with superhuman abilities and, at the same time, outline the specific aspects of so-called society of performance on basis of theoretical reflection on the issue, followed by a qualitative content analysis of the episodic television drama The Boys focused on its selected narrative and discursive aspects.
Part II of the present study focuses on the work and legacy of John W. Campbell, Jr. Campbell experienced the new paradigm of manliness and civilization both as a physics undergraduate student and through the fiction promoted by Gernsback. In his own fiction and later as an editor, Campbell demonstrates the refinement of the paradigm into one of personal responsibility. Even though the fallacies that supported the paradigm were no longer accepted in the scientific community, Campbell maintained his reputation as promoting scientific rigor. For many years, Campbell’s stature as a golden-age writer and an editor was irreproachable. Recently, a growing consensus has condemned Campbell’s work as irredeemably racist and sexist. The revaluation of Campbell is justified; if anything, Campbell was more deplorable than his critics suggest. That being said, it is curious to consider how Campbell’s beliefs and actions were accepted for so many years, while his work was held out as an exemplar of science fiction. Learning to reevaluate his legacy provides a window onto the subtle synergy among racism, sexism, and imperialism in the writers he promoted as editor as well as in the STEM professions generally. Campbell’s fiction, and the fiction he promoted as editor, resisted the change of thinking about the connections between race, sex, and civilization.
This is a work of ecocriticism—the interdisciplinary study of literature and environment—
which takes as its point of departure the environmental and literary insights of Amitav Ghosh in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016). According to Ghosh the conventions of literary realism, and the context within which those conventions gained ascendancy, present a range of shortcomings in respect of the depiction of climate change in literature. This thesis brings Ghosh’s insights about literary realism into engagement with critiques of realism pertaining to postcolonial ecocriticism and African literature. I make the case for African science fiction—a blend of science fiction and magical realism exemplified by the works of Nnedi Okorafor—as an environmental literary form par excellence, able to overcome the challenges identified by Ghosh and, moreover, able innovatively to depict a range of African environmental issues. I explore the ecocritical potential of Okorafor’s fusion of magical realism and science fiction—two narrative forms with uncanny similarities that inhabit vastly different positions both within the African literary landscape and within the world of
literary criticism—by taking as case studies two of Okorafor’s novels, namely Who Fears
Death (2010) and Lagoon (2014). Exploring how Okorafor puts to use the conventions and
thematic elements of science fiction and magical realism in each novel, I find that her non-realist narrative modes, which incorporate African modes of apprehension of the world, create novels which address environmental concerns more rigorously than do realist novels.
This section will look at Eminem’s songs in terms of their ‘storytelling’, analysing how lyricists needs to condense content to fit the short word count pop songs demand, how they can include ‘cultural cues’ to create shortcuts to meaning and depth, how they can write narratives across single songs, song pairs, single albums, album pairs, tell multiple stories within one song, or use their whole career as one big storytelling exercise. The section will also explore visual storytelling via album art and music video and look at how this ‘additional’ information fits with or juxtaposes the lyrics themselves.
Includes essays that analyze the intersection of fairy tale, fantasy and reality in postmodern artistic texts. This title underscores the transformation of both the reader-writer relationship and epistemological considerations posed by new technologies and subgenres.
The ability for short fiction to address the issue of expansion might strike as a paradox. Yet at the turn of the nineteenth century, many fictional tales depicting augmented men or women were published in the form of short stories, dealing each in their own way with various scientific interventions altering, for better or worse, the health condition of their protagonists. Authors such as Edith Nesbit, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Clotilde Graves ‐ to name but a few ‐ experimented with the limits of human and textual bodies alike. This intersection will be examined in three of these writers’ narratives: ‘The Five Senses’ (1909) by Nesbit, ‘Good Lady Ducayne’ (1896) by Braddon and ‘Lady Clanbevan’s Baby’ (1915) by Graves. As this article argues, brevity creates a favourable environment for a poetic of expansion to emerge in these texts, thus allowing for the development of imaginative and meaningful representations of bodily and intellectual improvement. To support this claim, I will posit that suggestion and selection, two by-products of the economy of signs which characterizes short literary forms, provided creative ways for the authors to shape and deliver augmented texts.
Hypnosis is an alarmed state of consciousness during which a person establishes an intensified acceptability to the suggestions of the hypnotist. For centuries, hypnosis has been used as a therapy for certain psychological diseases such as auto phobia, agoraphobia, and suicidal inclinations. In modern times, hypnosis becomes a popular theme in literary works. The paper aims at the discussion of the presentation of hypnosis in Dean Koontz's novel, False Memory (1999), shedding light on the origin of hypnosis, its influence on the three parts of the mind (conscious, unconscious, and subconscious), and the distinguished way hypnosis is presented in literature. False Memory explores the negative sides of hypnosis such as brainwashing or memory manipulation and exposes the misuse of its magical power to control people's behavior and destiny.
The books invites the reader to travel across different continents and various methodologies. Once more, the authors look at Jerzy Wasilewski’s anthropological recognitions and offer their own readings. Taboo, shamanism, yurt, trickster, laughter – these as well as other notions from his ethnological dictionary come to life in new approaches of three generations of anthropologists, cultural theorists and scholars.
The theme of religionReligion pervades Stars and emerges in multiple ways, ranging from Cellar ChristiansCellar Christians and Gully’s transformation into a deterritorialized Anti-ChristAnti-Christ to the “blind faith” required to jaunt, the mysticism of the Scientific PeopleScientific People, and the sensory deprived SkoptsysSkoptsys who live like zombified monks in the caves of Mars. Subtly or indiscreetly, Bester has something to say about religionReligion in every chapter. In particular, Gully’s lower-class gutter tongue “speaks” to his (anti)religious identityIdentity as well as the broader context of Bester’s SF authorship. Both the protagonist and the author are metaphorical exorcists who aspire to “cleanse” their respective worlds—one from the violence of upper-class tyranny and prejudice, the other from the limitations of SF writers who fail to live up to the genre’s great potential.
The study conceptualizes science fiction as heuristics. To implement this conceptualization, a hybrid definition of science fiction is proposed: science fiction is a kind of fiction whose works can be characterized by secondary artistic conventionality, cognitive estrangement, and test of an intellectual idea or fantastic assumption. As an operational characterization of heuristics, V. Spiridonov’s concept of heuristics is used. Science fiction can be considered as a kind of heuristics under specific conditions, for example, when science fiction work contains the reflected-out heuristics or when heuristics are brought as science fiction work to stimulate the intuitive flash of the thought or insight. However, science fiction can only be regarded as heuristics with certain reservations: science fiction primarily solves artistic problems while heuristics primarily solve cognitive problems: and they can function independently of each other. But it shows that a heuristic function can be attributed to science fiction to solute a problem or to gain a piece of new knowledge (to make a discovery) in an intellectually and creative way.
As the author of the article claims, there exist close and lasting links between astronomy and science fiction genre. First and foremost, both of these phenomena developed in parallel since antiquity, and both have fiction at their centre as a socially established type of imagination. Scientific hypotheses use justified fabrication, and science fiction offers images of fictional cosmologies. Many writers of proto-science fiction brought astronomical concepts into social play. Among them were astronomers and philosophers who extensively used plot devices based on mythology or allegorical transformations: from Lucian of Samosata to Johannes Kepler. Space travel, beginning with Jules Verne’s prose, is an important part of the thematic resource of science fiction. Astronomy played an important role also in the beginnings of Polish science fiction, thanks to works of Michał Dymitr Krajewski and Teodor Tripplin.
Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a new strand of British fiction that grapples with the causes and consequences of the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union. Building on Kristian Shaw’s pioneering work in this new literary field, this article shifts the focus from literary fiction to science fiction. It analyzes Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe quartet—comprised of Europe in Autumn (pub. 2014), Europe at Midnight (pub. 2015), Europe in Winter (pub. 2016) and Europe at Dawn (pub. 2018)—as a case study in British science fiction’s response to the recent nationalistic turn in the UK. This article draws on a bespoke interview with Hutchinson and frames its discussion within a range of theories and studies, especially the European hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. It argues that the Fractured Europe quartet deploys science fiction topoi to interrogate and criticize the recent rise of English nationalism. It further contends that the Fractured Europe books respond to this nationalistic turn by setting forth an estranged vision of Europe and offering alternative modalities of European identity through the mediation of photography and the redemptive possibilities of cooking.
Die vorliegende Untersuchung beschäftigt sich mit der Darstellung des Mittelalters in sechs deutschsprachigen Jugendromanen der Gegenwartsliteratur, in denen die fremde Epoche innerhalb der Erzählwelt im Rahmen einer Zeitreise erschlossen wird. Die im Phänomen der Zeitreise manifestierte Verräumlichung der Zeit und die in der Jugendliteratur oft erhöhte Bedeutung liminaler Räume greifen ineinander: Der historische Raum wird zum Schwellenraum, der den Jugendlichen Entwicklung und Identitätssuche ermöglicht. Auch Kultur und Gesellschaft sind in der Adoleszenz Konzepte von zentraler Bedeutung, da die Auseinandersetzung mit der Erwachsenenwelt die Entwicklung von Individualität und Geschlechtsbildern nach sich zieht. Die phantastische Metapher einer Reise durch die Zeit, in der sich Zeit und Raum verknüpfen und damit einen neuen Kulturraum zur Entwicklung bieten, eröffnet so eine Vielzahl von erzählerischen Möglichkeiten für die in der Jugendliteratur zentralen Themen von Weiterentwicklung und Selbstfindung.
Teknolojinin her geçen gün gelişmesiyle, mimarlık ve tasarım alanlarında da sürekli gelecek senaryoları üretilerek, alternatif mekânlar kurgulanmaktadır. Teknolojik destekle modellenen bilim kurgu setleri, sanal gerçeklik ve arttırılmış gerçeklik aracılığıyla mevcut düzende elde edilemeyen deneyimler sunulmaktadır. Oysa bilim ve teknoloji desteğiyle kurgulanan alternatif mekân arayışı, bugüne özgü olmayıp endüstriyel devrimle başladığı ve 19. yüzyıl ile üst düzeye ulaştığı William Heath tarafından 1829’da üretilen Akıl Yürüyüşü karikatüründe de görülür. Heath’ten günümüze; gerçeklik sınırlarını zorlayarak üretilen bu mekânlarda her şey sahte, sanal ya da kurgusal mıdır, yoksa bu gerçek dışılık ardında bir gerçek var mıdır, net bir biçimde sunulmaz. Lacan gerçeği mevcutta var olmayan bir gerçekliği yaratma arzusu ve bu arzuyu formüle ederek şekillendiren düzeni olarak tanımlar. Fantastik, teknolojik, gelecekçi mekânların ortaya çıkmasının ardında yatan sebep olan gerçek her zaman gizli olup kurgu tarafından maskelenmiştir. Bu maskenin kaldırılmasını ve gerçeği yani kurgusal mekânı formüle eden dışsal etkiyi aramak için bu makalede erişilebilen en erken kentsel, mimari bilim kurgusal görüntü olan William Heath’in Akıl Yürüyüşü karikatürü ele alınarak kurgudaki gerçeklik yerine kurgunun gerçeği araştırılmıştır. Bunu yaparken çağdaş filozof Slavoj Zizek’in Lacancı psikanalize dayanan trilojisi; imgesel gerçek, simgesel gerçek ve gerçek gerçek kavramları kullanılarak, gerçek üç kategoride incelenmiştir. Sonuçta geçmişteki geleceğin iletişime dayalı bir etki alanıyla kurgulandığı saptanmış ve Zizek’in trilojisi gerçeği aramakta kullanılabilecek bir yöntem olarak önerilmiştir.
Urasawa Naoki’s graphic novel Pluto (2003-2009), set in a virtual post-human world in
which human and robots neighbor each other, raises questions about humanity, both
ontological and epistemological. Pluto is based on and adapted from legendary Japanese
cartoonist Osamu Tezuka’s manga Astro Boy series. In Pluto, 5 out of 7 ‘greatest robots on earth’ are killed consecutively by ‘Pluto’ a mysterious robot villain. Gesicht, android robot detective and protagonist, tracks the murder case. The story attempts a critical reflection on the human and humanity through the life of artificial intelligence robots. Pluto tells about the end of humanity through the story in which the greatest robots on planet are being destroyed. A comforting point is that Pluto never gives up hope for humanity. Just as God leaves Noah and re-flourishes mankind in the face of peril, Pluto presents optimistic expectation on human existence and future through the existence of android robot detective Gesicht. Gesicht and Atom, the last two remaining greatest robots, are eventually killed by Pluto. After the death of Gesicht, his memory chip is used to awaken Atom, and the last moment of Gesicht right before the destruction is implanted into the memories of Atom. It was his words of “Nothing comes from hatred” and the human emotion of love and forgiveness. The existence of Gesicht tells that artificial intelligence has already evolved into a new humanity who is superior to human beings physically and ethically, and consequently post-human age has begun.
The amazing science fiction setting and plot depicted by Ernest Cline in his Ready Player One may constitute a real challenge to translators and subtitlers alike as his book was also turned into a movie by Steven Spielberg. We have collected hundreds of terms from the original book (2011), its Hungarian translation (2012), the Hungarian dubbed version (March 2018), the most popular Hungarian fansub (2018), and the professional subtitle (July 2018, from the same person who translated the script for the dubbing). Having classified the collected terms into various categories, we have managed to identify successful Hungarian renditions of cultural allusions from the 1980s (movies, books, videogames, shows, songs, characters, objects, vehicles, etc.).
This article discusses a futuristic science fiction, featuring advanced steam technology and aerostation, which was published in an anthology from Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1835. This story has not received adequate attention from the historians and critics of science fiction since it was produced away from a Western metropolis and targeted at a small community of Britons residing in colonial India. This article considers this story as a science fiction with respect to the parameters developed by Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. This article also discusses the cultural implications of the story's view of future India. This article will be of interest to students of science fiction, history of science, postcolonialism and history of the British Empire, South Asian Studies and Religious Studies.
Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti series (2015–2017) weaves advanced mathematics, multi-species entanglements, and futuristic modes of communication into Africanfuturist narratives; the series’ devotion to mathematics in particular has even led to its inclusion into the Scientific American’s Math Reading Challenge 2020. This article sets out to analyze Binti’s depiction of mathematics as an almost magical skill that allows users actively to influence, shape and change their environment. Moreover, the article explores how Okorafor presents connections and communication systems between human and non-human agents, and the conglomeration of various identities—also spanning multiple species—within an individual, initially human, body. Both of these aspects in Binti’s futuristic world are connected through their rootedness in African cultures, histories, and spiritualities, which marks Okorafor’s work as a central work of African-inspired science fiction.
This chapter presents pioneering approaches to creativity through science fiction, before developing some features of design fiction. John Arnold used a method inspired by science fiction to stimulate the creativity of young researchers. He proposed to project himself into the environment of an imaginary planet, Arcturus IV, in order to project problems and establish original solutions. Design fiction is a practice that has been developed increasingly in organizations that use the science fiction imaginary world in order to innovate. It allows a diversification of sociotechnical concepts through original works produced in an innovative framework. The institutionalization of science fiction, or science fictionalization, is the consequence of design fiction. Technotypes, like identity archetypes, belong to an ancestral psychology. Their study provides an understanding of how the economy works, as innovations are linked to an analysis and discovery of these technotypes. Technotypes are the result of a recollection of ancestral events and the activation of fundamental archetypes.
The article aims to speculate on one of the most controversial terms in the sphere of fantastic literature – “hard” science fiction, providing these speculations with condensed and relevant excerpts from the works of specialists in the field. Nevertheless, the major part of the paper is an attempt to justify the high position of “hard” sci-fi among the other modes of science fiction, to test the strength of the proposed statements and draw conclusions on the basis of the discussion in absentia.
Précis
L'empire des Nairs, publié en 1793, imagine une société dans laquelle mariage et paternité ont été abolis. L'amour et la sexualité y sont libres pour les deux sexes. Les femmes sont payées par l'Etat pour s'occuper des enfants. Les hommes, libérés de toute responsabilité paternelle, placent leur énergie au service de la science ou de la guerre. Lawrence, l'auteur de cette utopie qui connaît de multiples éditions en allemand, anglais et français, se réclame du féminisme. Mais une société qui charge exclusivement les femmes du soin des enfants peut-elle être considérée comme féministe ? Promouvoir l'amour libre, à une époque où l'on ne maîtrise pas la contraception, n'est-il pas une vision androcentrée de l'égalité des sexes ? On répond à ces questions en comparant les propositions de Lawrence avec la législation française et les romans féministes anglais sur le mariage et la paternité dans l'espace transnational de la cause des femmes des années 1790.
The Empire of the Nairs, first published in 1793, imagines a society in which marriage and paternity would be abolished. Love and sexuality would be free for both sexes. Girls and boys would receive the same education. Mothers, not fathers, would give their name to children. Women would be paid by the state for taking care of children, while daughters and sons would inherit from the maternal lineage. Fathers, by contrast, having no familial obligations, would reserve their sexual energy for love, genius, or war. Lawrence, the English author of this utopia, considered himself a feminist. But how can a society that places the entire burden of raising children on women be feminist? Wasn't advocating free love, in a time with no contraception, an androcentric point of view? Only by examining the way French legislators and English feminist novelists during the 1790s thought about marriage and paternity can we answer these questions.
Among the highest goals to be achieved by political feminism, a female US president has held an elusive but prominent place. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, which coincided with Wonder Woman’s new post as the United Nations ambassador, has been the closest moment for this goal to be achieved. Clinton’s inattention to truth-telling, the email interrogation pursued by the FBI against her and her failure to win the election, however, have in part resulted in the passing of that moment. This study, on this account, probes Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president in terms of women’s historical relation with truth-telling and feminist standpoint. It argues that if Clinton had been more committed to the truth-telling principles and practices, her presidential campaign would have been a substantial contribution to historical and political feminism.
One of the most salient aspects of dystopian societies entails the manipulation of identity parameters by replacing the natural bonds of love and kinship with artificial ties and enforced allegiances to the establishment. This paper examines the strategies employed by various fictional regimes to indoctrinate, brainwash, condition or rewire their inhabitants before pushing (or, alternatively, easing) them into convenient boxes. The analysis will briefly identify the main such mechanisms outlined in texts ranging from the classics (Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Fahrenheit 451 and The Handmaid's Tale) to perhaps less familiar examples such as E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops," Ayn Rand's Anthem, Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun and Foundation and Earth and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? before focusing on the perpetuation and reconfiguration of the same elements in their young adult narrative descendants: Lois Lowry's The Giver, Lauren Oliver's Delirium and Veronica Roth's Divergent series. Attention will be paid to endeavours ranging from rewriting the past (of select individuals or entire societies) and inventing new social castes and professional categories to the vilification and suppression of emotional manifestations, as well as to the extent to which such texts have succeeded in highlighting existing problems, anticipating future developments and hopefully prompting their readers to reassess their perception of human interaction and identity formation.
The word ‘apocalypse’ comes from the Hebrew word meaning ‘to reveal’ or ‘what is revealed … a revelation’; it is a word, as David Ketterer observes, ‘as fashionable and relevant to our times as it is carelessly and inconsistently employed in critical discourse’.2 From Tom Lehrer’s song of the fifties about the GI gaily marching off to Armageddon, to Coppola’s 1982 film about the Vietnam experience (Apocalypse Now), to Schell’s The Fate of the Earth where the word ‘holocaust’ is used alongside scientific terminology — the language of Biblical apocalypse has been transferred effortlessly and wholesale to the description of late twentieth century angst and, in particular, the secular menace of nuclear destruction.
Dealing with the in-vitro creation of human beings, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and Kazuo lshiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005) share the dystopian tradition, holding a catastrophic view of a technocratic society in a future in which humanity is depicted to be in a state of crisis. This article aims to examine the above-mentioned novels in terms of posthumanism, focusing on one of the well-known theorists of this field, Francis Fukuyama, who in Our Posthuman Future treats posthumanism as a threat to humanistic values. Fukuyama warns against a posthuman future in which technology will give us the capacity to modify the essence of human nature gradually, over time. The focus of this article will be on “Factor X”, a concept introduced by Fukuyama, and the ways in which the characters of the novels possess it, or come into its possession. The ways in which Fukuyama's pathways to a posthuman world are realised in the dystopian worlds that Huxley and lshiguro create, are also discussed.
The novel Harmony, by the Japanese author Project Itoh, addresses the theme of political resistance to a medical utopia realized. In the relatively near future, and after a terribly murderous nuclear war, the authorities have entrusted the organization of society to the medical community. Individuals are equipped with a technology that follows their health and prevents them from getting sick. Most diseases have been eradicated by this innovation, which also aims to purge Humanity of its destructive and bellicose tendencies. Young girls oppose this system according to a suicidal and terrorist rhetoric urging them to fight against a liberticidal "medicracy". This novel makes it possible to address the limits of innovations in the medical field. If the networking of medical data is supposed to improve the knowledge of diseases, it can also cause situations contrary to individual freedoms. The criticism of medicracy recalls the philosophy of Michel Foucault and his concept of biopolitics. The representations of this future without disease are part of the continuity of transhumanist and technopolitical discourses that announce for several decades the advent of what Lucien Sfez calls "the utopia of perfect health". The Japanese company is one of the most innovative in the world, as evidenced by the political will and the number of patents filed each year. It also regularly produces science fiction stories interviewing innovators about the ethics and morals of their discoveries and new products.
Ecothrillers deal with the mostly invisible and intangible problems of climate change by searching for better ways of imagining its relations to nature and humanity. Ecothrillers present a global environmental crisis with variegated local effects that threaten all humankind but can still be prevented at the very last minute. The environmental crisis is mostly depicted as a result of anthropocentric dominion over nature, as a rationalistic ideology of progression and technological-economical exploitation of natural resources. The chapter (1) presents the impact of the Anthropocene for the humanities, (2) summarizes the characteristics of ecothrillers, and (3) analyzes prominent German-speaking examples by Frank Schätzing and Bernd C. Fleck while scrutinizing their different narrative patterns (precautionary, apocalyptic, dystopian, utopian) to contribute to a reflection on species agency.
In the Peace Treaty of Tartu 1920 Finland was given a corridor to the Arctic Sea. This area of 10,000 km² called Petsamo, was situated along the eastern side of the present Russo-Norwegian border. For many Finns Petsamo was seen as part of a Greater Finland expansionist ideology. Petsamo remained part of Finland until 1944, and during that time tourism was intensified to this new Arctic Ocean part of Finland. However, the most significant single project for bringing modernity and the young Republic of Finland to Petsamo was the Kolosjoki nickel mine. Kolosjoki was a piece in a larger international struggle for natural resources to be used for economic and political gains both in times of war and peace. The Kolosjoki mine can be compared with other similar mining communities in the Arctic and Siberia. When compared with the Soviet Russian Piramid mining community on Svalbard, differences in architectural style also become a signifier. The Kolosjoki mining village was built in a functionalistic style that was eagerly adopted by Scandinavia and Finland at that time. An Arctic dimension, connected explicitly to the Arctic Ocean presence of Finland at that time, is mostly lacking in later Finnish collective history culture.
Accounts that take Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) as representative of interwar reproductive dystopia fail to recognise that the novel expresses both an interest and an anxiety about the possibility of new reproductive technologies to transform sex, gender, and the family that were widely shared by writers in different genres and perhaps expressed best by those likely to be most affected: women. This article explores three earlier works—Charlotte Haldane's Man's World (1926), Vera Brittain's Halcyon, or the Future of Monogamy (1929), and Naomi Mitchison's Comments on Birth Control (1930)—in which pregnancy, instead of figuring as illness or debility, becomes a form of resistance to the status quo. These works engage with biomedicine, however, rather than abjuring it. Through a reading of these works, this article argues that the intersection of medical humanities and science fiction (SF) can enrich both: medical humanities can push SF to go beyond the canon, and SF can challenge any characterisation of literature in the medical humanities as purely fantastical by demonstrating how it responds to the hopes and anxieties of a particular time.
Die bedeutende, von den 1880er Jahren bis 1914 dauernde Blütezeit der phantastischen Literatur in Frankreich und Belgien setzt teilweise die Schwarze Romantik in ihrer ›frenetischen‹ französischen Variante fort (vgl. II.5.3), wie sie neben dem frühen Victor Hugo die Autoren der Jeune-France (Pétrus Borel, Charles Nodier, Xavier Forneret u. a.) mit grellen Effekten und starker Akzentuierung des Schauerlichen vertreten, ohne dabei auf einen avantgardistischen Impetus zu verzichten. Zukunftsweisender sind jedoch die protosurrealistischen Traum-Erzählungen (vgl. III.3.3.9) Gérard de Nervals (u. a. Les filles du feu, 1854) und, was ein signifikantes Detail betrifft, Théophile Gautiers Novelle La morte amoureuse (1836), die den bereits von der gothic novel favorisierten Motiven (Nekrophilie, Vampirismus, vom Glauben abgefallener Kleriker) die morbide Atmosphäre des artifiziellen, später meist inmitten einer Großstadt verorteten Innen-Raumes hinzufügt.
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