scholarly journals Repairing the Broken Earth: N.K. Jemisin on race and environment in transitions

Elem Sci Anth ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair Iles
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Sustainability Transitions ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Social Subordination ◽  
Ecological Science ◽  
Social Affairs

Sustainability transitions tend to be seen as technical, not social, affairs. Mainstream scholars and practitioners do not very often acknowledge environmental and social justice in their transitions work. They seldom recognize rights for racially marginalized people, or the possible existence of rights of Earth. Nor do they query whether they are exaggerating the reach of scientific and technological solutions. By contrast, some recent ecological science fiction writing has begun to place these issues at the center of transitions. In the Broken Earth series, N.K. Jemisin explores Earth through the lens of racial and ecological injustice. She interrogates four themes relevant to transitions. How should we live in a climate-changed world? What role does racial and social subordination play in destroying the environment? What are the dangers of hubris in seeking out a fundamental change through science and technology that cannot be readily controlled after all? How should we think about Earth itself? I conclude with some thoughts on how Earth could be made ‘unbroken’ again through integrating recognition, humility, renewal, and redistribution into transitions.

scholarly journals Sentence Fragments in the Narration of the Novel "The Hunger Games"

Lexicon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhani Nurhusna
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Hunger Games ◽  
Essential Components ◽  
The Hunger Games ◽  
Dependent Clause

The use of sentence fragments is generally discouraged in good English writing because they lack one or more essential components of a sentence, namely a subject and/or a predicate, and thus are grammatically unacceptable. However in fiction writing, the use of sentence fragments is not only quite common in dialogue, but in narration as well. The present study analyses sentence fragments in the narration of the first novel of the young-adult science-fiction trilogy The Hunger Games written by Suzanne Collins, to investigate the types of fragments employed in the novel and their classification based on syntactic structure in the form of dependent-clause fragments and phrase fragments. The sentence fragments were further analysed for their use based on the context of their preceding sentences. The use of sentence fragments in the novel basically serves the function of creating emphasis or stressing important points in the story.

The Stone and the Wireless

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaoling Ma
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Media History ◽  
Gender Dynamics ◽  
Chinese Media ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Feminist Poetry ◽  
Do So ◽  
Communicative Processes

In the final decades of the Manchu Qing dynasty in China, technologies such as the phonograph, telephone, telegraph, and photography were both new and foreign. In The Stone and the Wireless Shaoling Ma analyzes diplomatic diaries, early science fiction, feminist poetry, photography, telegrams, and other archival texts, and shows how writers, intellectuals, reformers, and revolutionaries theorized what media does despite lacking a vocabulary to do so. Media defines the dynamics between technologies and their social or cultural forms, between devices or communicative processes and their representations in texts and images. More than simply reexamining late Qing China's political upheavals and modernizing energies through the lens of media, Ma shows that a new culture of mediation was helping to shape the very distinctions between politics, gender dynamics, economics, and science and technology. Ma contends that mediation lies not only at the heart of Chinese media history but of media history writ large.

Computing Ethics, Intercultural Comparisons

2011 ◽  
pp. 189-205
Author(s):  
Darryl Macer
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Information Age ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
Emerging Issues ◽  
Access To Knowledge ◽  
Free Flow Of Information ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
Positive Support

Computers are a vehicle for the information age, and are central to the dispersal of descriptive accounts of technology, and to interactive discussion between growing communities. Despite the commitment of all countries to free flow of information and access to knowledge sources based upon social justice there are still ethical problems of the digital divide. The attitudes of respondents towards science and computers in both Japan and Thailand is compared between 1993 and a decades later. There is more positive support towards science and technology in general in Thailand than in Japan, but both countries continue to be positive in attitude. There is a clear social mandate in both countries for their government policies promoting the development of information technology and science and technology in general. The perception of benefits and the worries about computers are discussed, as are some emerging issues.

scholarly journals ‘A Marriage of Freud and Euclid’: Psychotic Epistemology in The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Samuel Francis
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Scientific Status ◽  
Contemporary Status ◽  
Mathematical Sciences ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theories

The writings of J.G. Ballard respond to the sciences in multiple ways; as such his (early) writing may productively be discussed as science fiction. However, the theoretical discipline to which he publicly signalled most allegiance, psychoanalysis, is one whose status in relation to science is highly contested and complex. In the 1960s Ballard signalled publicly in his non-fiction writing a belief in psychoanalysis as a science, a position in keeping with psychoanalysis’ contemporary status as the predominant psychological paradigm. Various early Ballard stories enact psychoanalytic theories, while the novel usually read as his serious debut, The Drowned World, aligns itself allusively with an oft-cited depiction by Freud of the revelatory and paradigm-changing nature of the psychoanalytic project. Ballard’s enthusiastic embrace of psychoanalysis in his early 1960s fiction mutated into a fascinatingly delirious vision in some of his most experimental work of the late 1960s and early 1970s of a fusion of psychoanalysis with the mathematical sciences. This paper explores how this ‘Marriage of Freud and Euclid’ is played out in its most systematic form in The Atrocity Exhibition and its successor Crash. By his late career Ballard was acknowledging problems raised over psychoanalysis’ scientific status in the positivist critique of Karl Popper and the work of various combatants in the ‘Freud Wars’ of the 1990s; Ballard at this stage seemed to move towards agreement with interpretations of Freud as a literary or philosophical figure. However, despite making pronouncements reflecting changes in dominant cultural appraisals of Freud, Ballard continued in his later writings to extrapolate the fictive and interpretative possibilities of Freudian and post-Freudian ideas. This article attempts to develop a deeper understanding of Ballard’s ‘scientific’ deployment of psychoanalysis in The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash within the context of a more fully culturally-situated understanding of psychoanalysis’ relationship to science, and thereby to create new possibilities for understanding the meanings of Ballard’s writing within culture at large.

scholarly journals A Bridge between Worlds: Parallel Universes and the Observer in “The Celestial Plot” by Adolfo Bioy Casares

KronoScope ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-129
Author(s):  
Victoria Carpenter ◽  
Paul Halpern
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Quantum Physics ◽  
Many Worlds ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Multiple Realities ◽  
Parallel Universes ◽  
Adolfo Bioy Casares ◽  
The Many ◽  
Main Protagonist

AbstractAdolfo Bioy Casares’s story “The Celestial Plot” (1948) is among the best known examples of Latin American science fiction writing of the early twentieth century inspired by contemporary advances in quantum physics. Most readings of the story focus on the movements of its main protagonist, Captain Ireneo Morris, as he traverses realities while test-flying a plane. This approach overlooks the role of the story’s other protagonist, Dr. Carlos Servian, who, we argue, is the lynchpin upon which the multiple realities are dependent. We read the changes to Dr. Servian’s character from a variety of scientific and philosophical perspectives on parallel universes. By addressing variations in Servian’s character and language, and focusing on the disparate representations of the key objects in the story, we show how the story anticipates in some ways the Many Worlds notion which argues that reality bifurcates during quantum measurements, leading to near-identical copies of observers.

scholarly journals UNSUR ESTETIKA BAHASA DALAM NOVEL-NOVEL PEMENANG SAYEMBARA FIKSYEN SAINS DAN TEKNOLOGI DARI TAHUN 2012 SEHINGGA 2017

2019 ◽  
pp. 189-212
Author(s):  
ROSNANI MD ZAIN ◽  
NIK RAFIDAH NIK MUAHAMAD AFFENDI
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Review Analysis ◽  
Language Style ◽  
Poetic Text ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Language Styles

ABSTRAK Estetika merujuk kepada cabang ilmu yang membahaskan perihal keindahan dalam karya sastera. Unsur estetika memainkan peranan penting dalam penghasilan sesebuah karya kreatif, iaitu dijadikan sebagai medium bahasa dalam menyampaikan mesej yang jelas kepada pembaca. Kajian yang dilakukan ini berdasarkan pengamatan pengkaji tentang pendapat sarjana sastera yang mendakwa novel-novel fiksyen sains yang terhasil daripada Sayembara Fiksyen Sains dan Teknologi tidak memaparkan unsur keindahan bahasa kepada pembaca. Sehubungan dengan itu, untuk merungkai permasalahan ini pengkaji menggunakan lima buah novel pemenang Sayembara Fiksyen Sains dan Teknologi iaitu Bekamorfosis (2012) karya Jali Kenoi, Petaka Bakteria (2012) karya Mohd Kasim Mahmud, Puranakila (2015) karya Saadiah Ibrahim, Ajal (2015) karya Ruhaini Matdarin dan Yang Diselindung Samudera (2017) karya Nor Azida Ishak, Fadli al-Akiti dan Ted Mahsun. Kajian yang dilakukan ini juga mempunyai dua objektif kajian iaitu mengklasifikasi dan menganalisis unsur estetika bahasa iaitu penggunaan gaya bahasa yang terdapat dalam novel-novel kajian. Oleh itu, kajian ini menggunakan kaedah kajian kepustakaan, analisis teks dan penerapan Teori Puitika Sastera Melayu yang diasaskan oleh Muhammad Haji Salleh sebagai sokongan terhadap hujahan pengkaji. Hasil kajian yang dilakukan terhadap novel-novel fiksyen sains tersebut pengkaji mendapati dua jenis gaya bahasa yang diketengahkan oleh pengarang iaitu gaya bahasa perbandingan dan gaya bahasa pengulangan. Gaya bahasa tersebut juga dapat dikaitkan dengan konsep estetika dalam Teori Puitika Sastera Melayu iaitu keindahan dalam mendidik atau mengajar, keindahan dalam pengungkapan kesusahan dan kesedihan serta keindahan dalam rasa seperti yang dinyatakan oleh Muhammad Haji Salleh.   ABSTRACT Aesthetics refers to the branch of knowledge that debates the subject of beauty in literary works. The aesthetic element plays an important role in the production of a creative work, which serves as a language medium in delivering clear messages to the reader. This study is based on the study of literary scholars who claim that science fiction novels from the Science and Technology Fiction Contest do not present the language’s beauty element to readers. To this end, the researcher used the five novels of Science and Technology Fiction Contest winners namely Bekamorfosis (2012) by Jali Kenoi, Petaka Bakteria (2012) by Mohd Kasim Mahmud, Puranakila (2015) by Saadiah Ibrahim, Ajal (2015) by Ruhaini Matdarin and Yang Diselindung Samudera (2017) by Nor Azida Ishak, Ted Mahsun and Fadli Al-Akiti. The study also has two objectives of the study which is to classify and analyze the aesthetics of language which is the use of language style found in the research novels. Therefore, this study uses the method of literature review, analysis and application of the theory of poetic text Malay literature founded by Muhammad Haji Salleh in support of the submissions from researchers. As a result of the study of science fiction novels, researchers have identified two types of language styles that the author promotes: comparative language style and repetition language style. The style of these languages can also be associated with the aesthetic concept in the theory of poetic beauty of Malay literature in educating or teaching, discovery of beauty in distress and sadness and beauty in the sense as described by Muhammad Haji Salleh. 

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