Resources for a Journey of Hope: Raymond Williams on Utopia and Science Fiction

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Milner
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
George Orwell ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Interest In Science ◽  
Selective Tradition ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Future ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
Science Fiction Studies ◽  
The City

Raymond Williams had an enduring interest in science fiction, an interest attested to: first, by two articles specifically addressed to the genre, both of which were eventually published in the journal Science Fiction Studies; second, by a wide range of reference in more familiar texts, such as Culture and Society, The Long Revolution, George Orwell and The Country and the City; and third, by his two ‘future novels’, The Volunteers and The Fight for Manod, the first clearly science-fictional in character, the latter less so. This article will summarise this work, and will also explore how some of Williams’s more general key theoretical concepts – especially structure of feeling and selective tradition – can be applied to the genre. Finally, it will argue that the ‘sociological’ turn, by which Williams sought to substitute description and explanation for judgement and canonisation as the central purposes of analysis, represents a more productive approach to science fiction studies than the kind of prescriptive criticism deployed by other avowedly ‘neo-Marxist’ works, such as Darko Suvin’s Metamorphoses of Science Fiction and Fredric Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future.

scholarly journals The problem of human tragedy in the genre of science fiction (on the example of R. Bradbury’s works "Tomorrow's Child" and "The Veldt")

2021 ◽  
pp. 78-87
Author(s):  
O. M. Byndas ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
English Language ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Fantastic Fiction ◽  
The Future ◽  
Absolute Dependence ◽  
Inner World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Definition Of

This article deals with the problem of relationships among people in the future, which are based not on respect and understanding of each other's value, but on absolute dependence on technical progress. The purpose of this work is to highlight the problem of humanity’s tragedy in the genre of science fiction, using the example of Ray Bradbury’s works „Tomorrow's Child” and „The Veldt”. Firstly, it is noted that the difference and, accordingly, the problem begins immediately with terminology, because there is no single stable definition of the term „fantasy” (as a generic phenomenon) in English-language science. The options offered by scientists are speculative fiction, fantastic fiction, fantasy literature. The author notes that science fiction (Sci-Fi) describes many different super important problems of the human society: technological progress, information wars, the desire of people to be immortal, powerful, rich, possessing the Universe. In fact, the tragedy of humanity begins from these desires. However, R. Bradbury’s works „Tomorrow's Child” and „The Veldt” have a wide range of topics, affecting aesthetic, intellectual, moral and scientific problems. In addition, the science fiction writer reveals his special interest in the inner world of the child. In the mentioned-above stories, the idea of the coexistence of people and the techno world is traced, which leads to a tragic situation. Covering the problem of humanity’s tragedy in the future, described back in the distant 1950s, R. Bradbury aims to present another idea of the future, he describes, at the same time, possible threats to us, and shows what significant consequences this can lead to.

Science Fiction Worlding and Speculative Sex

Old Futures ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 129-163
Author(s):  
Alexis Lothian
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Public Sex ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
The Future ◽  
Queer Performance ◽  
Science Fiction Studies

Chapter 4 extends part 2’s analysis of queered and gendered black futurities to the realm of racialized queer masculinity, focusing on the work of Samuel R. Delany. His writing provides a bridge between the discourse of “world-making” developed in utopian theories of queer performance and the idea of “world-building” common in science fiction studies. Delany’s fiction shows how the narrative tactics of science fiction, a genre whose most popular literary and media versions have tended to proffer timelines reliant on unmitigated heterosexuality, can turn against assumptions that the future must be straight, or at least arrived at through heterosexual reproductive logics. In Dhalgren (1974) and Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand (1984), speculative iterations of 1970s and 1980s public sex cultures use genre tropes to reimagine sexual and racial temporalities in response both to the histories of enslavement and to the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.

Journey to the Future

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Westfahl
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Beat Generation ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Childhood And Adolescence ◽  
Chance Discovery ◽  
Interest In Science ◽  
The Future

This chapter describes William Gibson's early years based on his autobiographical sketch, “Since 1948,” first posted to his blog on November 6, 2002. There, he relates the generally familiar story of how he was born in South Carolina and, as a child, frequently moved with his parents because of his father's various jobs. In these early years, the major influence on Gibson's life was television. This chapter first considers Gibson's childhood and adolescence before discussing how he discovered science fiction literature, which became his passion. It then considers the change in Gibson's perception of science fiction beginning in 1962, which he often attributes to his chance discovery of William S. Burroughs and, through him, other Beat Generation writers. It also looks at Gibson's publication of fanzines, his enthusiasm about Fritz Leiber, and how he developed an interest in science fiction poetry and later in nonfiction. Finally, the chapter documents the turbulent events of Gibson's first two decades of his life and notes that since the 1980s, his life has been remarkably uneventful.

The Way the Future Was, 1930–1951

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Page
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Interest In Science ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Way

This chapter looks at Frederik Pohl's first foray into creating a science fictional world by focusing on his youthful adventures in science fiction (SF) fandom. Pohl discovered SF at age ten in 1930. At that time, SF as a defined category of fiction was only in its fifth year, although the genre itself had a much longer pedigree. Hugo Gernsback launched the first SF magazine, Amazing Stories, in April 1926. The first SF magazine Pohl read was the Summer 1930 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly. This chapter discusses Pohl's discovery of a collection of pulp magazines in 1931 at his uncle's farm in Pennsylvania; his interest in science fiction magazines; his initial attempts at writing his own stories; and his involvement with the group called Futurians. The chapter also describes Pohl's involvement in the literary agency business.

Exploring youth citizenship during COVID-19 lockdowns in New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Mutch ◽  
Marta Estellés
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Young People ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Youth Citizenship ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
The City

The research presented in this article explores how young people in New Zealand exercised their citizenship during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Building upon the theoretical concepts of ‘actions’ and ‘acts of citizenship’, this qualitative study draws on data from the experiences of 30 young people aged over 16 in the city of Auckland. Data included classroom observations, focus group interviews, individual interviews and the sharing of student artefacts (e.g. posters and videos). The experiences of the participants covered a wide range of engagement in citizenship rights, sites, scales and acts. Our findings offered an alternative to prevailing portrayals of young people as either passive victims or self-centred troublemakers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lessons for citizenship education are discussed at the end of the article.

scholarly journals The City as a Laboratory of Shadows: Exposing Secret Histories While Thinking of the Future

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Macdonald
Keyword(s):  
Physical Nature ◽  
Port City ◽  
Social Theorist ◽  
The People ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Future ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City ◽  
Radical School

This paper lays out a particular way of ‘seeing’ or looking at cities – one that allows us to see beneath the physical surface of buildings and infrastructure and which thus opens the door to considering the ‘shadows’ of a city as a source of inspiration. In these shadows, it suggests, we can see the city as a ‘laboratory of ideas.’ Specifically, the paper examines the city of Liverpool but its themes are applicable worldwide. It aims to expose Liverpool’s ‘poetic’ qualities and suggests that those best placed to understand it, and guide its development, may not be architects or planners, but rather those that inhabit it most intensely – its people. As a result, the paper becomes a tale about time and movement and the everyday (and night) life of a port city with a history stretching back over centuries. Despite this history, the city has over the past two decades received a whole range of development grants that have and are, right now, changing the physical nature of its urban environment radically. In the context of these physical, externally funded changes to the city’s make-up that mirror conditions found in cities across the world, it is perhaps more important than ever to redirect our thoughts to what lies beneath the surface – to the city’s social, economic and cultural heart. The thinking and experience that underlies this suggestion began in the 1960s when architecture was taught alongside sociology. Imagine a radical School of Art & Design with a sociologist on the staff, in which Richard Hoggart’s The Uses and Misuses of Literacy was on the agenda, and the writings of the Marxist social theorist Raymond Williams were essential reading – Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society , in particular. This author comes out of this tradition, and it is in this tradition that this paper sees the future of cities to be a future without architects or, at least, a future in which architects do not dictate to the people for whom they design. It is an argument applicable across the globe.

scholarly journals Science Fiction and Utopia in the Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerry Canavan
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Future ◽  
Literature And Film

Abstract This article takes up science-fictional visions of the future against the “deep time” of the Anthropocene in order to explore the possibilities for utopia that remain in an era that only seems capable of producing necrofuturological dread. The piece surveys a wide range of contemporary literature and film; the key prose authors discussed are Octavia E. Butler, Margaret Atwood, Ernest Callenbach, and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Exploring youth citizenship during COVID-19 lockdowns in New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Mutch ◽  
Marta Estellés
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Young People ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Youth Citizenship ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
The City

The research presented in this article explores how young people in New Zealand exercised their citizenship during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Building upon the theoretical concepts of ‘actions’ and ‘acts of citizenship’, this qualitative study draws on data from the experiences of 30 young people aged over 16 in the city of Auckland. Data included classroom observations, focus group interviews, individual interviews and the sharing of student artefacts (e.g. posters and videos). The experiences of the participants covered a wide range of engagement in citizenship rights, sites, scales and acts. Our findings offered an alternative to prevailing portrayals of young people as either passive victims or self-centred troublemakers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lessons for citizenship education are discussed at the end of the article.

scholarly journals Las Vegas: past, present and future

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 182-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan Richard
Keyword(s):  
Organized Crime ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Las Vegas ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Future ◽  
External Forces ◽  
The City

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to better understand the dramatic transformation of Las Vegas from a local watering hole to a world renowned entertainment city, and to offer predictions of what this ever-changing city might become in the future. Design/methodology/approach A series of turning points in Las Vegas’ history are presented in a chronological manner, highlighting how external forces have played a role in shaping the city into what it is today. These external forces are then used as the underlying reasoning for a series of scenarios, signposts informing predictions detailing what might happen to Las Vegas in the future. Findings The development of Las Vegas has been influenced by a wide range of external factors, from geology, government, organized crime, business visionaries, large corporations and the economy. The continued influence of these factors could lead to drastically divergent outcomes from the loss of the city to a new golden age. Originality/value This paper identifies turning points that have helped to shape the development of Las Vegas, and in doing so encourages researchers to consider future scenarios grounded in the underlying dynamics of the turning points.

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