‘[…] tentacular invisible mother divine!’: (The) Weird (in) Metal as convergence of sonic extremities and literary margins

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Norman
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Black Death ◽  
The Core ◽  
Weird Fiction ◽  
Extreme Metal

Weird Fiction is often understood as an unclassifiable fusion of horror, science fiction (SF) and fantasy, and therefore a kind of generically hybridized writing. Here I discuss various parallels between Weird Fiction and music marketed and recognized as ‘extreme metal’, an umbrella term for bands playing in the core styles of black, death and doom metal, and their various offshoots like grindcore and sludge. Analysis of all Weird Metal is beyond the scope of this article, so I focus on artists who achieve Weirdness through the presence and interrelationship of hybridity, numinosity (an overwhelming feeling of majesty) and alterity (radical difference), especially: Wolves in the Throne Room, Howls of Ebb, Portal, A Forest of Stars, Voices and (The Unsearchable Riches of) Void. I also consider how metal relates to the ‘New Weird’, radical developments in traditions of the form, concluding with thoughts on the wider theorization of The Weird.

scholarly journals The Absolute as the Meeting Point Between Speculation and Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 349-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daina Habdankaitė
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Meeting Point ◽  
Weird Fiction ◽  
Weak Points ◽  
The Absolute

AbstractThe article investigates Meillassoux’s notion of the absolute in relationship with the Kantian and Hegelian philosophical systems. The absolute, as independent of subjective consciousness, is showcased as the meeting point of speculation and fiction. By looking into Meillassoux’s notions of speculation and some works of weird fiction, it is argued that the significant role of imagination as well as a deferred temporality is what facilitates the discussion of both speculation and fiction as faculties able to transcend the limitations that are projected by the correlationist mind. Through a reading of Lovecraftian fiction, both the strong and weak points of Meillassoux’s argumentation in After Finitude and Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction are identified, proving the latter to be a less successful way of grasping the chaotic real.

scholarly journals Education for Sustainability: Developing Ecocritical Literature Circles in the Student Teacher Classroom

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Lykke Guanio-Uluru
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Student Teachers ◽  
Young Adult Literature ◽  
Literature Circles ◽  
Student Feedback ◽  
Education For Sustainability ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
The Core ◽  
Literature Circle

Abstract How can student-teachers learn efficient ways to encourage sustainability thinking in their pupils and fulfil the competence aims on sustainability outlined in national subject curriculums as a response to UNESCO’s programme on Education for Sustainable Development, ESD? The core hypothesis of this project was that tailored literature circles, focused on the ecocritical aspects of literary texts, would make student-teachers aware of how they can use literature as a process to reflect on sustainability. This would enable them to incorporate sustainability thinking into their own teaching practices. The project’s tailoring of the standard literature circle roles (Daniels 1994, 2002, 2006) involved the design of reading roles that highlighted ecocritical and generic aspects of the studied texts and the application of an analytical matrix developed by literary scholars researching the representation of nature in children’s and young adult literature. This article presents the results of a small-scale study testing the ecocritical literature circles approach and its impact on student-teachers’ conception of their own ability to meet the competence aims on sustainability in their teaching. The intervention included lectures on ecocriticism and on the posthuman debate prior to the literature circles and student feedback through pre- and post-circle questionnaires. It was implemented in the teacher-training classroom, working with dystopian science fiction texts for young adults. These texts present the reader with visions of the future. The study showed that the ecocritical literature circles, and in particular the ecocritical reading roles, were considered useful by the participating student-teachers. The participants also reported a significant increase in confidence relative to their own ability to discuss sustainability issues with their pupils.

Introduction

Dune ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
Christian McCrea
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Internal Logic ◽  
The Core ◽  
Adventure Story ◽  
Film Version ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
Core Elements

This chapter focuses on David Lynch's 1984 film version of Dune. It analyses Dune's narrative structure, characterisations, its approach to science fiction, and audiovisual language that are all highly idiosyncratic. It also illustrates Dune as an audacious science-fiction film that refuses to be futuristic, as a political narrative that is undone by the power of prophecy and dream, and as an adventure story structured like a poem. The chapter talks about the feeling of watching Dune, which is described as being unmoored from cinema itself and free-floating in the form's infinite, unexplored possibilities. It explores the core elements of Frank Herbert's novel version of Dune, which is heavily reliant on its own internal logic.

Science, Technology and the Large Corporation

1992 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Technological Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Industrial Growth ◽  
The Core ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Future Society ◽  
Political Differences

ECONOMIC HISTORY IS FAR REMOVED FROM PRECISE SCIENCE and cannot offer an unambiguous explanation of the initiation, pace and causes of rapid industrial growth. Nevertheless, few economic historians would disagree that the pattern of growth is not random; and that in evaluating it, technological innovation must be a central element.The landmarks of industrial development are conventionally thought of in terms of science and technology. From the adoption of the stirrup and the plough, which heralded the feudal age in Europe; to the spread of the silicon chip and the microprocessor, which lie at the core of the emergent IT economy, the development of society can be charted in terms of technological change. And just as the analysis of technological change has become one of the dominant tools of the economic historian, so ‘futurology’ is centred around trajectories of innovation. Over the next century changes are projected which are just as profound as those experienced since 1890. The world of 2090 will be different, and while the fundamental political differences may be unpredictable, there is a presumption that it will be technologically very different from the present. It is appropriate that popular speculation about future society is termed not ‘future fiction’ but ‘science fiction’.

How Speculative Fiction Can Teach about Gender and Power in International Politics: A Pedagogical Overview

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Boaz
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
State University ◽  
The Core ◽  
Battlestar Galactica ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
Separate System

Abstract Fictional universes can be treated as discrete units of analysis in which we see the operation of international relations theory. This article discusses insights gleaned from a course created at Sonoma State University called “Gender and Geopolitics in Science Fiction and Fantasy,” in which feminist theory and international relations approaches are integrated, and science fiction and fantasy texts serve as the mechanism through which to examine the key themes and questions. This article provides an overview of the pedagogy to highlight the usefulness of speculative fiction in teaching. Each of the fictional universes is treated as a separate system where gender and political dynamics manifest in ways that observers of international relations will recognize. The core texts are Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, Jessica Jones, Star Trek, Misfits, and Watchmen. The major theories and approaches explored here have implications for gender studies and feminist theory, the concepts of metaphor and allegory, and game theory.

Johanna Sinisalo and the New Weird

2018 ◽  
pp. 183-200
Author(s):  
Hanna-Riikka Roine ◽  
Hanna Samola
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
The Core ◽  
Text Types ◽  
Fiction Writer

This chapter analyzes the Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo’s 2013 novel Auringon ydin [The core of the sun] in the contexts of speculative fiction, dystopia, and fairy tale to provide an illustrative example of Sinisalo’s oeuvre. The novel combines various elements, genres, and text-types in a self-reflexive and parodic way, which both gives the novel a peculiar twist and offers an interesting viewpoint on the Finnish weird. The novel’s fabulous thought experiment combines the depiction of human domestication with real documents addressing eugenics and sterilization and the domestication of silver foxes. The chapter also discusses dystopian and fairy-tale elements in the novel and suggests that while Sinisalo draws from multiple sources in her writing, she can be considered a science-fiction writer due to her focus on the thought experiment.

Posthumanism in Fantastic Fiction

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Common Goal ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
Weird Fiction ◽  
Fantastic Fiction ◽  
Companion Species ◽  
Narrative Mode

Posthumanism in Fantastic Fiction is a collection of interdisciplinary studies by established and emerging international scholars devoted to the discussion of literary redefinitions of the human subject’s place in the world. They focus on fantasies that challenge anthropocentric epistemology and Cartesian dualism to redraw the boundaries between the human, the animal, the technological, the natural environment, and the ‘inanimate’ object world. The articles combine the methodological apparatuses and theoretical insights of critical animal-, plant-, thing- studies and posthumanist philosophy with literary theories of the fantastic narrative mode. They scrutinize an impressive range of literary fantasy subgenres, including the postmodern science-fiction dystopia, ecohorror, mythopoeia, (new) weird fiction, environmentalist picturebook, and proto-modern ghost story. Contributors venture to explore how a posthumanist identity politics allows to address metaphysical, philosophical, ethical, legal, technological concerns beyond speciesist shortsightedness. The volume embraces a common goal of humanists and posthumanists by aiming to listen more attentively to the promise of companion species as the best chance for preserving and responsibly inhabiting our worlds.

scholarly journals How Dumb Are Big Dumb Objects? OOO, Science Fiction, and Scale

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 552-565
Author(s):  
Raino Isto
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Technical Aspects ◽  
Weird Fiction ◽  
Technological Sublime ◽  
Science Fiction Studies ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology

AbstractThis article considers the potential intersections of object-oriented ontology and science fiction studies by focusing on a particular type of science-fictional artifact, the category of ‘Big Dumb Objects.’ Big Dumb Objects is a terminology used—often quite playfully—to describe things or structures that are simultaneously massive in size and enigmatic in purpose: they stretch the imagination through both the technical aspects of their construction and the obscurity of their purpose. First used to designate the subjects of several science fiction novels written in the 1970s, Big Dumb Objects (often called BDOs) have been understood in terms of science fiction’s enduring interest in the technological sublime and the transcendental. While object-oriented ontology has often turned to science fiction and weird fiction for inspiration in rethinking the possibilities inherent in things and their relations, it has not considered the implications of BDOs for a theory of the object more broadly. The goal of this article is to consider how extreme size and representations of scale in science fiction can help expand an understanding of the object along lines that are similar to those pursued by object-oriented ontology, especially Timothy Morton’s notion of hyperobjects.

Landscaping Nature’s Otherness in Pre-1960s Terraforming and Proto-Gaian Stories

Terraforming ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 18-55
Author(s):  
Chris Pak
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Energy Economics ◽  
Environmental Philosophy ◽  
Initial Growth ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Living World ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Mechanistic View

This chapter brings to bear environmental philosopher Keekok Lee’s three fundamental environmental theses (the Asymmetry, Autonomy and No-Teleology Theses) to consider how science fiction constructs human relationships to cosmological nature. It considers how pre-1950s science fiction engages with concepts now central to environmental philosophy before moving on to examine the sublime in proto-Gaian living world narratives. Underlying this discussion is the concept of nature’s otherness, a relationship between non-human nature and the human. It builds on the insight that the initial growth of ecologism in the 1880s involved two strands, a mechanistic view of nature based on energy economics and a monism that involved a vitalist view of nature as essentially irreducible to mechanistic conceptions. These concepts form the core of the readings to follow.

‘It Is One Story’

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-61
Author(s):  
Chris Pak
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Real World ◽  
World History ◽  
Black Death ◽  
Alternate History

Alternative histories create a ludic space where a game of allusion, extrapolation and speculation is played. Kim Stanley Robinson’s (2002) The Years of Rice and Salt depicts a world that might have developed had European civilisation been eradicated by the Black Death. This chapter examines how Robinson uses science fiction, utopia and the alternate history to examine and challenge assumptions about progress, memory, identity, culture and storytelling. It investigates how The Years of Rice and Salt portray the actors who make up the story of history, how this history is characterised and what repercussions these explorations have for reading the stories that make up contemporary “real-world” history.

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