1–20 of 79
If, as I write in the introduction, SF can be read as the queering of realism, then it is as the dominant culture’s death drive that it does so: SF provides the speculative challenge to our primary definitions of reality, the first step necessary in the creation of fiction as such, even as its movement away from…
Doro is an ideal consumer who is both part of a “race,” “nation,” or “empire” (those terms being as confused and intertwined for Doro as they were for Burroughs) and its predator. This depiction of Doro highlights the ways in which a hyper-extended consumerism and an exceptionalist definition of nation both…
Herbert’s critique of this seemingly countercultural utopia is precisely aimed at its conservatism. In necessarily rendering life static, the utopian vision must deny the instability of signification and that permits for change and development itself. In making this argument, I am aware that I am (or Herbert is)…
o, directly opposing Rebekah Simpkins’ assertion that “By removing the control, Neo sets the prisoners free,” the first film ends with those controls still in place.45 At the end of The Matrix, after all, Neo does not awaken everyone to “the real,” but instead exploits the continued functioning of the Matrix, leaving…
Antiblack racism continues not despite, but because of, the disappearance of blacks; this is only a paradox if the construction of blackness is seen as being essentially related to skin colour as opposed to economics. To bolster this position, Matthew emphasises the discourse of “blood purity”—as discussed in the…
In the theoretical and critical literature of whiteness studies, one of the more often discussed ways in which the social efficacy of the category of whiteness has been maintained in the face of its various “leaks” is, ironically, through its erasure as a definable racial category, as was briefly mentioned in the…
This general paradigm is offered as a theoretical ground for the specific focus and readings of the rest of this book, which analyses in detail the issues of gender, race, and their representation in American SF. For, while the “cognitive” element of SF may not hold in all or even most cases, still SF, as a specular…
Delany—in his equally famous and oft-cited definition of science fiction—argues that science fiction is characterised by an extension of semiotic possibilities in language: that is, he argues that words can simply mean more in science fiction than they can in realist fiction. Delany sees this as a function of the…
Moreover, as Csicsery-Ronay points out, albeit in a different way, the “cognition effect” does not escape another problem Miéville points to. In the same piece, Miéville states that “A lot of science fiction that pretends it is about scientific rigor is actually predicated on a kind of a late Enlightenment model of…
Human beings live in ideas. That they were condemning their descendants to death and extinction did not occur to them, or if it did they repressed the thought, ignored it, and forged on anyway. They did not care as much about their descendants as they did about their ideas, their enthusiasms. Is this narcissism?…
The psychologist shut his eyes and scratched his nose. “This is the most incredible example of sensual hallucination and hypnotic suggestion I’ve ever encountered. I went through your «rocket,» as you call it.” He tapped the hull. “I hear it. Auditory fantasy.” He drew a breath. “I smell it. Olfactory hallucination…
Also, Star Wars is set in a fantasy past that can look like anything, while Trek is supposed to be a projection of what we imagine our own future to look like. And Star Wars has always been an exercise in nostalgia from the start — nostalgia for ’30s movie serials and comic strips, for ’40s war movies, for ’50s hot…
Most common are the fictions that begin with Jules Verne, and concern the single artifact—a submarine, flying machine, or death ray—and its consquence for all of humanity. These extraordinary voyages—to use Verne's term—play along the fault line between what we think we are and what we can do. Nemo is no accident, or…
"These are (my son) the riches of Salomon's House. "For the several employments and offices of our fellows; we have twelve that sail into foreign countries, under the names of other nations, (for our own we conceal); who bring us the books, and abstracts, and patterns of experiments of all other parts. These we call…
After a while I noticed that the sun and all the stars in his neighborhood were ruddy. Those at the opposite pole of the heaven were of an icy blue. The explanation of this strange phenomenon flashed upon me. I was still traveling, and traveling so fast that light itself was not wholly indifferent to my passage. The…
In radio and television, for instance, the Other Men were technically far ahead of us, but the use to which they put their astounding inventions was disastrous. In civilized countries everyone but the pariahs carried a pocket receiving set. As the Other Men had no music, this may seem odd; but since they lacked…
During my last years on the Other Earth a system was invented by which a man could retire to bed for life and spend all his time receiving radio programs. His nourishment and all his bodily functions were attended to by doctors and nurses attached to the Broadcasting Authority. In place of exercise he received…
Some time shortly after the invention of the graphical Internet, it became ripely apparent that humanity was fucking itself with its own technology and was on the fast path toward societal morbidity. We maximized energy extraction without perfecting clean use, accelerated manufacturing technologies and global supply…
Chang told him that there were other books published up to about the middle of 1930 which would doubtless be added to the shelves eventually; they had already arrived at the lamasery. "We keep ourselves fairly up-to-date, you see," he commented. "There are people who would hardly agree with you," replied Conway with a…
The shift in subject matter from westerns to science fiction was probably already underway when Burroughs began writing. The frontier, which had been such a key feature of American popular fiction, was rapidly disappearing, and writers had begun looking for new frontiers—hence, the increasing number of stories about…