The Order and the Other: Young Adult Dystopian Literature and Science Fiction. Joseph W.Campbell. University Press of Mississippi, 2019

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 347-348
Author(s):  
Todd Womble
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literature And Science ◽  
Dystopian Literature

The Order and the Other

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph W. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Literary History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Surveillance Culture ◽  
Literature And Science ◽  
Dystopian Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

The Order and the Other is a call to reexamine the relationship between dystopian literature and science fiction by thinking about the work that each genre does on and for the reader. The author believes that this is especially necessary in regards to dystopian literature intended for adolescents. Now that the cultural boom of YA Dystopian texts is over, this book attempts to understand that boom by placing dystopian works into the larger context of belonging to literary history of dystopian works. It attempts to help readers see how surveillance and power form the way that not only the characters within the films or books think about themselves, but also how it shapes the readers, as well. It also helps show that the surveillance culture and state that we see within such texts is not dependent on science fiction genre structures to exist. Finally, the book examines the most recent efforts to understand the genre and suggests ways inquiry into the genre might go forward.

“The Electric Boy1 Grows Up”: Science Fiction for a Young Adult Audience

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-76
Author(s):  
Joseph W. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
Dystopian Literature ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Over Time

Chapter 2 shows in a compressed, somewhat truncated way, the unique history of science fiction (sometimes called speculative fiction). This chapter also shows some of the myriad theoretical approaches that have been used in the study of science fiction over time. It then demonstrates how those approaches have been used by giving close readings of science fiction texts intended for young adults. This is in an effort to show the difference between science fiction and dystopian literature. It shows that it is a literature directly concerned with the subject’s encounter with the o/Other.

Re-Visioning the Interface: Technological Fashion

Leonardo ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 307-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Elizabeth Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Creative Design ◽  
Literature And Science ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Nano Scale ◽  
Communication Devices ◽  
The One ◽  
And Control

This paper elucidates two positions (the positivist and the critical) that inform the creative design of technological fashion. On the one side is the instrumentalist trend toward the minimized or disappearing interface. On the other, some theorists and artists suggest that increased invisibility presents social and ethical concerns (such as invasiveness and control) when networking and communication devices are involved. The positivist side has roots in modernist design. Positivist designers create responsive and controllable fabrics using shape-changing polymers, e-textiles, and nano-scale electronics to resolve clumsy and prohibitive problems of hardware vs. body. The critical side draws upon archetypal ideas about technology and the body that are familiar from literature and science fiction, and includes writers and media artists who emphasize the intractable or mechanic nature of technological clothing to enhance, rather than erase, the body. The paper concludes that both positions must be considered as the field of technological fashion moves forward.

scholarly journals Rat Cities and Beehive Worlds: Density and Design in the Modern City

2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 722-756
Author(s):  
Jon Adams ◽  
Edmund Ramsden
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Social System ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Efficient Operation ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Nestled among E. M. Forster's careful studies of Edwardian social mores is a short story called “The Machine Stops.” Set many years in the future, it is a work of science fiction that imagines all humanity housed in giant high-density cities buried deep below a lifeless surface. With each citizen cocooned in an identical private chamber, all interaction is mediated through the workings of “the Machine,” a totalizing social system that controls every aspect of human life. Cultural variety has ceded to rigorous organization: everywhere is the same, everyone lives the same life. So hopelessly reliant is humanity upon the efficient operation of the Machine, that when the system begins to fail there is little the people can do, and so tightly ordered is the system that the failure spreads. At the story's conclusion, the collapse is total, and Forster's closing image offers a condemnation of the world they had built, and a hopeful glimpse of the world that might, in their absence, return: “The whole city was broken like a honeycomb. […] For a moment they saw the nations of the dead, and, before they joined them, scraps of the untainted sky” (2001: 123). In physically breaking apart the city, there is an extent to which Forster is literalizing the device of the broken society, but it is also the case that the infrastructure of the Machine is so inseparable from its social structure that the failure of one causes the failure of the other. The city has—in the vocabulary of present-day engineers—“failed badly.”

scholarly journals Demons of the mind: The ‘psy’ sciences and film in the long 1960s

2021 ◽  
pp. 095269512110285
Author(s):  
Tim Snelson ◽  
William R. Macauley
Keyword(s):  
Child Development ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Other ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Radical Feminist ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Mind

This introduction provides context for a collection of articles that came out of a research symposium held at the Science Museum's Dana Research Centre in 2018 for the ‘ Demons of Mind: the Interactions of the ‘Psy’ Sciences and Cinema in the Sixties' project. Across a range of events and research outputs, Demons of the Mind sought to map the multifarious interventions and influences of the ‘psy’ sciences (psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis) on film culture in the long 1960s. The articles that follow discuss, in order: critical engagement with theories of child development in 1960s British science fiction; the ‘horrors’ of contemporary psychiatry and neuroscience portrayed in the Hollywood blockbuster The Exorcist (1973); British social realist filmmakers' alliances with proponents of ‘anti-psychiatry’; experimental filmmaker Jane Arden's coalescence of radical psychiatry and radical feminist techniques in her ‘psychodrama’ The Other Side of the Underneath (1973); and the deployment of film technologies by ‘psy’ professionals during the post-war period to capture and interpret mother-infant interaction.

»Lass dich nicht von Morpheus verführen …«

2020 ◽  
pp. 98-109
Author(s):  
Laura Zinn
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Current Popularity

Artikelbeginn:[English title and abstract below] In der Antike und den überlieferten antiken Mythen spielen Visionen bzw. Prophezeiungen und Träume – wie sich beispielsweise am Status des Orakels von Delphi als Omphalos (Giebel 2001, S. 7 f.) oder am vom römischen Philosophen Lukrez beschriebenen Beruf des Traumdeuters (Naf 2004, S. 90 f.) erkennen lasst – eine wichtige Rolle und nehmen ebenfalls politischen Einfluss (Trampedach 2015). Es ist daher nicht verwunderlich, dass auch gegenwärtige Mythenadaptionen, allen voran Rick Riordans Percy Jackson-Reihe bzw. mittlerweile korrekter: Reihen, in denen Percy Jackson mitunter als Crossover-Figur auftritt, auf Orakel, Prophezeiungen, Visionen und Träume vermehrt zurückgreifen.   »Don’t Let Morpheus Seduce You ...«Dreams, Oracles and Visions in Contemporary Retellings of Myths Oracles and dreams, which had a prominent position in antiquity, appear in the wake of the success of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series as frequent motifs in retellings of myths in contemporary young adult fantasy. This article examines three examples: Josephine Angelini’s Starcrossed trilogy (2011 – 2013), the first volume of Richard Normandon’s eponymous series La conspiration des dieux (2009) and Daniela Ohms’s two-volume Insel der Nyx (2013 – 2014). In these novels, the motifs serve to mirror typical topics of adolescence. Through their prophecies, the oracles circumscribe possible alter-native futures, and the protagonists react by either not complying or trying to prevent fulfilment. To regain self-determination, most of the young protagonists, and at least at one point in the narration, rebel against the predictions. Dreams (including daydreams), on the other hand, allow them to explore different concepts of identities. Oracles and dreams therefore become symbols for the changes that occur during adolescence. In this way, the ancient myths are reduced to a backdrop, making these novels similar to other novels in the genre, which might account (to a certain degree at least) for the current popularity of retellings of ancient myths in young adult novels.

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