California: The Planet of the Future

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Stanley Robinson

Boom interviews prolific science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson about writing, California, and the future. Topics of discussion include utopian and dystopian visions of the state, the Sierra Nevada and Sacramento Delta, the Orange County of Robinson’s youth, how California’s landscape and environment have informed science fiction, terraforming, utopia, dystopia, and finding a balance between technology and environmentalism.

Dismantlings ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 93-111
Author(s):  
Matt Tierney

This chapter talks about distortion as a form of dismantling. It describes distortion as the historical and theoretical technique by which readers learn to approach political documents as if they were science fiction. When considered as a vehicle of distortion, literature is measured for its potential to alter exploitative conditions, like those of war, patriarchy, and racism. The science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany insists that transformative change takes shape neither in utopian nor in dystopian visions of the future, but rather in efforts toward significant distortion of the present. This attitude, which is also a theory and practice of literature, is one way to describe the inheritance of cyberculture in the works of writers and activists who employed speculative language to repurpose the thought of Alice Mary Hilton and the Ad Hoc Committee. These writers and activists focused not on the machines that would unveil the myth of scarcity, but instead isolate the forms of human life and relation that would follow the act of unveiling.


2002 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-304
Author(s):  
H. L. Wesseling

In 1999, a book appeared in Paris with the rather alarming title De la prochaine guerre avec l'Allemagne (‘On the future war with Germany’). It had not been written by some sensationalist science-fiction writer, but by none other than Philippe Delmas, a former aid to Roland Dumas, who was twice minister of Foreign Affairs under the Mitterrand administration.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-114
Author(s):  
Natalia Nikiforova ◽  

This article examines Russian engineers’ social imagination about the future through the professional discussions held at the electrotechnical congresses in the nineteenth century. Formulating the prospective future of the industry, the state and society was a collective endeavor, a process in which the identity and mission of engineers were crystallized. Through envisioning the future of technology and its role in the society, engineers revealed their cultural role as mediators between technological innovation, and both the wider public and the state. In order to better understand the manifestations of the shared cultural understandings of a desirable future and social order, the article resorts to Sheila Jasanoff’s concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015). The engineering community’s sociotechnical imagination about electricity was shaped around the transformative possibilities of this technology. It was believed that electrical engineering was able not only to accelerate industrial production, but also to solve social, medical and cultural problems, thereby uniting the Russian Empire. Descriptions of the rational, comfortable and beautiful world of the electrified future overlapped in engineering discussions, journalism and science fiction. Positive scenarios emphasized the advantages of electrical engineering and bypassed the problems associated with electrification, constructing an idea of its inevitability. The electrical engineer became a kind of a new cultural hero, who knew how to make a working device or system, and also filled the task of linking the development of technology to the development of society.


Author(s):  
Gary Westfahl

This chapter examines three William Gibson novels: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. Gibson had planned Pattern Recognition for a long time: in 1986, he declared that he would “eventually try something else,” and “in twenty years” he would probably be “writing about human relationships.” By shifting from the future to the present, Gibson clearly felt that he was relaunching his career, and hence he logically reverted to the pattern of his first novel. Known as a science fiction writer for decades, Gibson felt an obvious need to justify Pattern Recognition's present-day setting. This chapter considers a number of ways to argue that Pattern Recognition should be classified as science fiction. Spook Country asserts that we live today in a world filled with science-fictional events, but we are unable or unwilling to properly observe them. Zero History suggests that Gibson has entirely distanced himself from the world of computers, the focus of the cyberpunk literature he was once said to represent.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-167
Author(s):  
Alexander Belarev ◽  

The article deals with the works of German science fiction writer Kurd Lasswitz (1848–1910). The article provides a brief description of the main themes and directions of the writer’s work. Lasswitz was the creator of the scientific tale genre (das wissenschaftliche Märchen), in which he had set the task of building new relationships between science and literature, nature and man, the animate particle and the cosmic whole. In accordance with the spirit of the fin de siècle era the scientific tale represented a new, post-positivist ideal of knowledge. The key theme of Lasswitz’s fiction was the search for extraterrestrial civilizations.Mars became for Lasswitz a place where the intelligent extraterrestrial beings have realized an ideal society in which ethics and technology are NOT in conflict. Lasswitz was not a neo-Kantian philosopher only, he was also an active popularizer of Kant’s philosophy. He was striving to create a Kantian utopia in literature. For Lasswitz Mars became the realization of this utopia. Also Lasswitz sought to give literary embodiment to the ideas of another philosopher, Gustav Theodor Fechner. Following his philosophy, Lasswitz develops environmental and existential issues of the coexistence of intelligent plants with humans. In Lasswitz’ story for children “The Escaped Flower” (1910), one can trace how in Lasswitz’ science fiction (scientific tale) the themes of the habitability of space (Mars), science and technology of the future interact with the ideas of Kant and Fechner.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 915-929
Author(s):  
Tena Thau

AbstractOur romantic lives are influenced, to a large extent, by our perceptions of physical attractiveness – and the societal beauty standards that shape them. But what if we could free our desires from this fixation on looks? Science fiction writer Ted Chiang has explored this possibility in a fascinating short story – and scientific developments might, in the future, move it beyond the realm of fiction. In this paper, I lay out the prudential case for using “attraction-expanding technology,” and then consider it from a moral point of view. Using the technology would, in one respect, be morally good: it would benefit those whom prevailing beauty standards marginalize. But attraction-expanding technology also raises a moral concern – one that can be cast in non-harm-based and harm-based terms. I argue that the non-harm-based objection should be rejected, because it is incompatible with a moral principle central to queer rights. And the harm-based objection, I argue, is outweighed by the benefits of attraction-expanding technology, and undermined by the prerogative you have over your personal romantic choices. I conclude by considering whether, from the perspective of society, the development of attraction-expanding technology would be desirable.


2014 ◽  
pp. 889-915
Author(s):  
Anna Abakunkova

The article examines the state of the Holocaust historiography in Ukraine for the period of 2010 – beginning of 2014. The review analyzes activities of major research and educational organizations in Ukraine which have significant part of projects devoted to the Holocaust; main publications and discussions on the Holocaust in Ukraine, including publications of Ukrainian authors in academic European and American journals. The article illustrates contemporary tendencies and conditions of the Holocaust Studies in Ukraine, defines major problems and shows perspectives of the future development of the Holocaust historiography in Ukraine.


Author(s):  
VICTOR BURLACHUK

At the end of the twentieth century, questions of a secondary nature suddenly became topical: what do we remember and who owns the memory? Memory as one of the mental characteristics of an individual’s activity is complemented by the concept of collective memory, which requires a different method of analysis than the activity of a separate individual. In the 1970s, a situation arose that gave rise to the so-called "historical politics" or "memory politics." If philosophical studies of memory problems of the 30’s and 40’s of the twentieth century were focused mainly on the peculiarities of perception of the past in the individual and collective consciousness and did not go beyond scientific discussions, then half a century later the situation has changed dramatically. The problem of memory has found its political sound: historians and sociologists, politicians and representatives of the media have entered the discourse on memory. Modern society, including all social, ethnic and family groups, has undergone a profound change in the traditional attitude towards the past, which has been associated with changes in the structure of government. In connection with the discrediting of the Soviet Union, the rapid decline of the Communist Party and its ideology, there was a collapse of Marxism, which provided for a certain model of time and history. The end of the revolutionary idea, a powerful vector that indicated the direction of historical time into the future, inevitably led to a rapid change in perception of the past. Three models of the future, which, according to Pierre Nora, defined the face of the past (the future as a restoration of the past, the future as progress and the future as a revolution) that existed until recently, have now lost their relevance. Today, absolute uncertainty hangs over the future. The inability to predict the future poses certain challenges to the present. The end of any teleology of history imposes on the present a debt of memory. Features of the life of memory, the specifics of its state and functioning directly affect the state of identity, both personal and collective. Distortion of memory, its incorrect work, and its ideological manipulation can give rise to an identity crisis. The memorial phenomenon is a certain political resource in a situation of severe socio-political breaks and changes. In the conditions of the economic crisis and in the absence of a real and clear program for future development, the state often seeks to turn memory into the main element of national consolidation.


Contention ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tareq Sydiq
Keyword(s):  

Based on fieldwork carried out from 2017 and 2018, this article examines various attempts to both organize publicly and disrupt such attempts during the Iranian protests during that time. It argues that interference with spatial realities influenced the social coalitions built during the protests, impacting the capacity of actors to build such coalitions. The post-2009 adaptation of the state inhibited cross-class coalitions despite being challenged, while actors used spatial phrasing indicating they perceived spatial divisions to emulate political ones. Meanwhile, in the immediate aftermath of the December 2017 protests, further attempts to control protest actions impacted not only those who would be able to participate in such events in the future, but also those who felt represented by them and who would be likely to sympathize with them. Based on the spatial conditions under which coalitions form, I argue that asymmetrical contestations of spatiality determined the outcome of the December 2017 protests and may contribute to an understanding of how alliances in Iran will form in the future.


Author(s):  
Victoria Ruzhenkova ◽  
Irina Sheremet’eva ◽  
Viktor Ruzhenkov

Stress negatively affects the mental health of students, causes anxiety and depression, leads to poor academic performance, lowers level of professional training and success in the future. The purpose of the research is to study the state of mental health of medical students to develop recommendations for the prevention of maladaptation. Materials and methods. 252 5-year students aged 20–29 (22 ± 1,1) years, 168 (66,7 %) females and 84 (33,3 %) males (137 students of Belgorod State University and 115 of Altay State Medical University (ASMU)) were examined by medico-sociological and psychometric methods. Results. It was established that every fifth student of the Belgorod State University and every third of the ASMU did not enter the medical university on their own initiative. Less than half (43 %) of Belgorod State University students and 30.4 % of the ASMU ones are convinced that the choice of profession was correct, 35 and 37.4 % are, consequently, completely disappointed with it. Students of Belgorod State University dealt with training stress factors poorer and, as a result, have more pronounced mental symptoms of training stress, difficulties in organizing the daily regimen, irregular nutrition, and fear of the future. Regardless of the region of studying, the number of students not committed to the medical profession, after 5 years of study, is more than 3 times higher among those who enter the university not on their own initiative. Students of the ASMU hit substances, skipped classes, played computer games and took sedative drugs more often to overcome academic stress. The degree of anxiety before the exams in students of Belgorod State University was higher (9 points) than in their peers from the State Medical University (7 points). An extremely high (8–10 points) level of anxiety before exams was characteristic of 75,9 and 44,3 % of students, respectively. The former were more likely to experience clinically significant panic attacks: 27,7 and 6,1 %. Conclusion. Given the high incidence of social phobia (19,1–24,1 %), depression (22,6–32,2 %) and anxiety (21,9– 27,8 %) among medical students, the development and implementation of psycho-correctional programs aimed at the formation of adaptive ways to overcome stress, reduce anxiety and depression is required. This will prevent the development of psychosomatic disorders and addictions.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document