scholarly journals Darwin’s Monsters: Evolution, Science, and the Gothic in Christian Alvart’s ”Pandorum”

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Pisarska
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Evolutionary Processes ◽  
Advanced Science ◽  
The Future ◽  
A Site

<p>This article analyses Gothic tropes in the science fiction film <em>Pandorum</em> (2009, dir. Christian Alvart), through the lens of such concepts as evolution and science, which are presented in the film as inherently monstrous. Key to the analysis is the notion of the return of the repressed (or abjected) past which invades the future, disrupting biological, social, and moral borders of the human. This Gothic return, facilitated by advanced science and technology, turns the future into a site of humanity’s confrontation with their animal instincts, highlighting the fragility of our civilisation and proving our subjection to evolutionary processes.</p>

Animating the Science Fiction Imagination

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.P. Telotte
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Space Travel ◽  
World War ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Short Films ◽  
The Future ◽  
Technological Developments

Before flying saucers, robot monsters, and alien menaces invaded the movies of the 1950s, there was already a significant body of animated science fiction, produced by such studios as Disney, the Fleischers, and Terrytoons. That work has largely been overlooked or forgotten, despite the fact that the same pre-World War II era that produced this group of short films also saw the more prominent development and flourishing of SF as a literary genre. This book surveys that neglected body of work to show how it helped contribute to the burgeoning SF imagination that was manifested in pulp literature, serials, feature films, and even World’s Fairs of the era. It argues that prewar cartoons helped to create a familiarity with the scientific and technological developments that were spurring that SF imagination and build an audience for this new genre. Demonstrating the same modernist spirit as SF literature and feature films, these cartoons adopted many of the genre’s most important motifs (rockets and space travel, robots, alien worlds and their inhabitants, and fantastic inventions and inventors), offered comic visions of the era’s growing fascination with science and technology, and framed that matter in a nonthreatening fashion. Popular animation thereby not only added another dimension to the SF imagination, but also helped prepare postwar audiences to embrace SF’s vision of the future and of inevitable change.

Neo-Victorian Visions of the Future: Science, Crime, and Modernity

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisavet Ioannidou
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Future Science ◽  
The Future ◽  
Perception Of Time ◽  
The Relationship

Neo-Victorian texts frequently associate science and technology with criminal acts, which their perpetrators perceive as acts of progress, because of their potential to initiate the world's passage to the future. Stemming from Victorian apprehensions of science, most notably the possibility of the scientist's malevolence, the abuse of science by neo-Victorian villains presents a criminal past that will give birth to a dystopian future. As the future of neo-Victorian narratives constitutes the present or recent past of the time of narration, the presuppositions of modernity are problematised both within the texts' Victorian narratives and in retrospect; and especially when neo-Victorian employments of science and technology echo concrete twentieth-century instances of scientific misapplication. Neo-Victorian texts expose their complex temporality and defy their integration within genres such as steampunk or science fiction. Considering the difficulty of generic classification, this essay suggests that neo-Victorian instances of scientific crime manifest nineteenth-century scientific and technological progress in a way that illuminates the Victorian era, while remaining relevant for contemporary audiences. The relationship that is thus effected between past and present underlines neo-Victorianism's perception of time as a continuum, in order to problematise contemporary understandings of progress and modernity.

scholarly journals Scientific tales by Kurd Lasswitz: between literature, science and philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-167
Author(s):  
Alexander Belarev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Science And Literature ◽  
Ideal Society ◽  
Ethics And Technology ◽  
German Science ◽  
The Future ◽  
Existential Issues ◽  
Fiction Writer

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.

scholarly journals ON THE WAY TO A NEW ROUND OF INTERESTS IN THE FIELD OF SCIENCE EDUCATION

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-4
Author(s):  
Elena Vasilevskaya
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Chemical Ecology ◽  
Medicinal Chemistry ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Mathematical Chemistry ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Way

Movement along this path will fundamentally change many of the ideas about the possibilities of science and technology that have developed over the centuries and decades. The surge of research in the field of nanometer sizes, the emergence of new directions at the intersection of different sciences (medicinal chemistry, chemical bionics, chemical ecology, mathematical chemistry, chemistry of life) - these are the realities of today. The prospects for the use of new technologies in the future often resemble the plots of science fiction novels, but those whom we teach today will bring them to life.

scholarly journals Novel·les de ciència. La ciència i la tecnologia en la literatura

2015 ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Miquel Barceló
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Jules Verne ◽  
The Future

Most literature frequently ignores the essential role that science and modern technology play in shaping current societies and how we live in them. Around 150 years ago, Jules Verne started to become aware of the need to actively include science and technology in modern narratives. He named it «the science novel». Later, the literary genre of science fiction seemed to reach the point which Jules Verne’s science novel had pioneered. In this regard, science fiction posits itself as a suitable narrative to learn about the future, as it describes worlds which are possible due to science and technology.

PENGEMBANGAN KEILMUAN INTEGRATIF DI UNIVERSITAS ISLAM NEGERI

1970 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-402
Author(s):  
Zainal Arifin
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Advanced Science ◽  
Epistemological Basis ◽  
Integrative Science

This paper attempts to analyze the development of integrative science at two Islamic universities, namely UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta and UIN Malang. The changes are not just ordinary administrative changes, but based on the epistemological basis of integrated scientific development between science and Islam. The changing of IAIN Sunan Kalijaga and STAIN Malang also showed a new relationship between science (general sciences) and Islam, which requiresmutual relations, mutual dialogue, mutual reinforcement to solve the problems of postmodern human life. The purpose of this relation is to create the graduates who are capable of competing in the postmodern world that increasingly sophisticated and advanced science and technology, in addition, the value of religionbased morality is not abandoned, so they become the holistic human being. Tulisan ini mencoba menganalisis pengembangan keilmuan integratif pada dua universitas Islam negeri, yaitu UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta dan UIN Malang. Perubahan keduanya bukanlah hanya perubahan administrasi biasa, tapi didasari oleh basis epistemologi pengembangan keilmuan terintegrasi antara sains dan Islam. Perubahan IAIN Sunan Kalijaga dan STAIN Malang juga menunjukkan adanya relasi baru antara sains (ilmu-ilmu umum) dan Islam, yaitu relasi saling membutuhkan, saling berdialog, saling menguatkan untuk menyelesaikan problema kehidupan manusia postmodern ini. Tujuan relasi ini untuk mewujudkan lulusan yang mampu bersaing di dunia postmodern yang semakin canggih dan maju ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologinya, selain itu nilai moralitas yang berbasis agama tidak ditinggalkan, sehingga menjadi manusia yang utuh.

Living machines in our cultural imagination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Szollosy
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Future ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
The Human Condition

Public perceptions of robots and artificial intelligence (AI)—both positive and negative—are hopelessly misinformed, based far too much on science fiction rather than science fact. However, these fictions can be instructive, and reveal to us important anxieties that exist in the public imagination, both towards robots and AI and about the human condition more generally. These anxieties are based on little-understood processes (such as anthropomorphization and projection), but cannot be dismissed merely as inaccuracies in need of correction. Our demonization of robots and AI illustrate two-hundred-year-old fears about the consequences of the Enlightenment and industrialization. Idealistic hopes projected onto robots and AI, in contrast, reveal other anxieties, about our mortality—and the transhumanist desire to transcend the limitations of our physical bodies—and about the future of our species. This chapter reviews these issues and considers some of their broader implications for our future lives with living machines.

The Android and the Animal

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 503-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula K. Heise
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Police Officer ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Genetically Modified ◽  
Organic Life ◽  
The Future

Pixar's animated feature wall-E (2008) revolves around a sentient robot, a small trash compactor who faith fully continues his programmed duties seven hundred years into the future, after humans have long abandoned their polluted home planet. Landscaped into skyscrapers of compacted waste, Earth no longer seems to harbor any organic life other than a cockroach, Wall-E's only and constant friend. Similarly, in Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004; ), sequel to the groundbreaking first Ghost in the Shell anime, the love of the cyborg police officer Batou for his vanished colleague Motoko Kusanagi is surpassed only by the care and affection he displays for his pet basset hound. These films are two recent examples of works of science fiction in which the emergence of new kinds of humanoid consciousness in robots, cyborgs, or biotechnologically produced humans is accompanied by a renewed attention to animals. Why? In what ways does the presence of wild, domestic, genetically modified, or mechanical animals reshape the concerns about the human subject that are most centrally articulated, in many of these works, through technologically produced and reproduced human minds and bodies?

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