scholarly journals The Jodoverse: Cosmic cloning of classical geopolitics

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-556
Author(s):  
Vladimir Ajzenhamer
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Technological Determinism ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
Infinite Space ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Initial Assumption

The paper is an attempt at geopolitical contextualization and realpolitik reading of comic works by Alejandro Jodorowsky. The focus of the analysis is on the so-called ?Jodoverse? - a segment of Jodorowsky?s opus which includes three great science-fiction sagas - ?The Incal?, ?The Saga of the Metabarons? and ?Technopriests?. These works, which can be defined as ?space operas? in terms of genre, vividly evoke a futuristic vision of one of the possible cosmic futures of humanity. This paper aims to map those motives in this fictional universe that draw inspiration from the tradition of classical geopolitics, i.e., the practice of political realism. The author?s initial assumption is that the Jodoverse is designed to function as a (popular-cultural) reflection of earthly geopolitical principles in the mirror of outer space and that, therefore, the depiction of astropolitics in the works of Jodorowsky is nothing but cloning of realpolitik in infinite space above the earth?s orbit. In order to confirm this assumption, the author will use the geopolitical and astropolitical concepts of Karl Schmidt and Everett Dolman as a key to unravelling the secrets of the Jodoverse. For that purpose, Schmidt?s concept of the nomos of the earth will be used, as well as the teaching on technological determinism which is present in the works of both theorists. By applying these concepts to Jodorowsky?s comics, the author will try to prove how the ideas of classical geopolitics have their counterparts in the cosmic phantasms of this genius of the ninth art.

They Walk among Us

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Megan Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
The Body ◽  
Racial Passing ◽  
Postwar America ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
The Earth ◽  
External Threat ◽  
Science Fiction Films

This chapter focuses on science fiction films that featured aliens passing as humans and examines how they tapped into the fears and anxieties about politics and issues of identity in postwar America. In films such as Invaders from Mars, Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, and The Day the Earth Stood Still, friendly neighbors might be alien invaders pretending to be humans. These Hollywood films were of two main categories: those concerned with the external threat of alien invasions, and those that deal with the internal threat of aliens who infiltrated the earth and passed for human. The chapter suggests that aliens passing for human brought to the fore the connections between anxiety about racial passing, Communism, and subversive gender or sexual identities.

Patrick Moore, Arthur C. Clarke and ‘British Outer Space’ in the mid 20th century

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Dunnett
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Audience Participation ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Television Programme ◽  
Human Destiny

This article seeks to explore a notion of ‘British outer space’ in the mid 20th century with reference to the British Interplanetary Society and the works of Patrick Moore and Arthur C. Clarke. Geographies of outer space have been examined following early work by Denis Cosgrove on the Apollo space photographs. Cosgrove’s work has encouraged a growing body of work that seeks to examine both the ‘Earth from space’ perspective as well as its reciprocal, ‘space from Earth’. This article aligns itself with the latter viewpoint, in attempting to define a national culture of ‘British outer space’. This is found to have an important connection with the British Interplanetary Society, founded in 1933 near Liverpool, which went on to influence the works of Patrick Moore, who edited the magazine Spaceflight and presented the television programme The Sky at Night, and Arthur C. Clarke, who became known as a science fiction writer through his early novels in the 1950s. The themes of audience participation and human destiny in outer space are examined in a close reading of these two case studies, and further engagement with cultures of outer space in geography is encouraged.

scholarly journals The Vision of an Axe. Dostoevsky and Astronautics

2021 ◽  
pp. 124-152
Author(s):  
Ilya Yu. Vinitsky
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Artificial Satellite ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Brothers Karamazov ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Literary Origins

This essay explores the scientific and literary origins of the image of an axe thrown into outer space to orbit the earth, as it appears in the chapter “The Devil. The Vision of Ivan Fyodorovich” in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Did Dostoevsky anticipate the idea of an artificial satellite, as many critics and journalists argue? How were science (in this case astronomy) and literature connected in his mind? How did Dostoevsky’s scientific and creative imagination work in general? The author shows that Dostoevsky’s “prophetic” reference to a sputnik was rooted in popular articles and textbooks about Newton’s mechanics and in Marko Vovchok’s (Maria Vilinskaya’s) translation of Jules Verne’s science fiction novel Around the Moon (“Autour de la Lune”), published in The Russian Herald (Russkii vestnik) in 1869. The novel relates the chronicle of a voyage of brave researchers inside a cannonball that was fired out of a giant space gun. The essay reconstructs the trajectory of Verne’s image of a manmade satellite in Russian literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

scholarly journals The Vision of an Axe. Dostoevsky and Astronautics

2021 ◽  
pp. 124-152
Author(s):  
Ilya Yu. Vinitsky
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Artificial Satellite ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Brothers Karamazov ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Literary Origins

This essay explores the scientific and literary origins of the image of an axe thrown into outer space to orbit the earth, as it appears in the chapter “The Devil. The Vision of Ivan Fyodorovich” in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Did Dostoevsky anticipate the idea of an artificial satellite, as many critics and journalists argue? How were science (in this case astronomy) and literature connected in his mind? How did Dostoevsky’s scientific and creative imagination work in general? The author shows that Dostoevsky’s “prophetic” reference to a sputnik was rooted in popular articles and textbooks about Newton’s mechanics and in Marko Vovchok’s (Maria Vilinskaya’s) translation of Jules Verne’s science fiction novel Around the Moon (“Autour de la Lune”), published in The Russian Herald (Russkii vestnik) in 1869. The novel relates the chronicle of a voyage of brave researchers inside a cannonball that was fired out of a giant space gun. The essay reconstructs the trajectory of Verne’s image of a manmade satellite in Russian literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Dreams of the Earth and Sky

Leonardo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-146
Author(s):  
Olesya Turkina
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Scientific Ideas ◽  
Technological Modeling ◽  
Interplanetary Flight

This article examines how artists, writers and filmmakers inspired by scientific ideas imagined space flight and how engineers and scientists were inspired by these fantasies. The first section discusses Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's impact on images of interplanetary flight and the promotion of outer space in the early twentieth century. The second considers the emergence of popular science films about space as conceived by director Pavel Klushantsev as well as the role of artist Yuri Shvets in the Soviet space epic and the impact of technological modeling on science fiction in art. Finally, the author surveys the “space work” of artists-cum-inventors Bulat Galeyev and Vyacheslav Koleychuk.

Cosmic Plots in Early Soviet Culture: Flights of Fancy to the Moon and Mars

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-199
Author(s):  
Michael G. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Soviet Culture ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Real Science ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Soviet Science Fiction ◽  
Soviet Experience

This article explores two classics of Soviet science fiction – Konstantin Tsiolkovskii’s Beyond the Earth (1918) and Aleksei Tolstoi’s Aelita (1923) – in their related historical contexts. Both had their origins in the popular nineteenth-century “cosmic romance,” owing to their staple characters, settings, and plots. These were extraordinary adventures into the heavens, modern signposts of how the fantastic was becoming real. Yet both novels also became leading texts in the genre of Stalinist Socialist Realism, stories that made “fairy tales come true.” Tsiolkovskii and Tolstoi both appealed to the Bolshevik Revolution as a radical break in time here on earth, much as they predicted that the rocket would become a radical new means to reach beyond into outer space. They centered their stories on real science and technology, articles of comprehension and anticipation. They created characters that revealed the utopian potential of human beings to create new regimes of equality and freedom. Part inheritance from abroad, part innovation at home, the cosmic romance in their hands became a successful medium to situate and justify the Soviet experience.

scholarly journals Staying Alive: Science Fiction in the Age of the Anthropocene — Philip K. Dick’s Pessimistic Humanism

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tallulah Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Scientific Advancement ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

In recent years, literary studies have become increasingly invested in environmentalism. As science reveals the negative impacts of climate change, and demonstrates a growing concern for humanity’s contribution, literature operates as a form of cultural documentation. It details public awareness and anxieties, and acts as a conduit for change by urging empathetic responses and rendering ecological controversy accessible.To explore the relationship between literature and environmental politics, this paper will focus on the work of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, and his dystopian visions. In his particular brand of sci-fi, there is no future for humanity. Science and technology fail to pave the way for a better and fairer society, but rather towards, as far as Dick is concerned, extinction. He argues that scientific advancement distances us from reality and from a sense of “humanness”. His pessimistic futures are nihilistic but tender; nurturing a love for humanity even in, what he considers to be, its final hours.Unlike the work of other prominent sci-fi writers, Dick’s fiction does not look towards the stars, but is in many ways a return to earth. The barren landscapes of Mars and other planets offer no comfort, and the evolution of the human into cyborgs, androids and post human species is depicted as dangerous and regressive. Dick’s apocalyptic visions ground his readers in the reality around them, acting in the present for the sake of the earth and humanity’s survival. His humanism is critical of grand enlightenment ideas of “progressivism”, and instead celebrates ordinariness. In the shadow of corporate capitalism and violent dictatorial governments, Dick prefers the little man, the ordinary everyday domestic hero for his narratives. His fiction urges us to take responsibility for our actions, and prepares us for the future through scepticism and pessimism, and a relentless fondness for the human.

scholarly journals Dynamic Equilibria in Statistical and Nonlinear Physics of Uniform Stress Rotating Space Elevators (USRSE)

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Leonardo Golubovic ◽  
Steven Knudsen
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Nanotubes ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
Dynamic Equilibrium ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Uniform Stress ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Equilibrium Configurations ◽  
Space Elevators ◽  
Dynamic Equilibria

The discovery of ultra-strong materials such as carbon nanotubes and diamond nano-thread structures has recently motivated an enhanced interest for the physics of Space Elevators connecting the Earth with outer space. A new concept has recently emerged in space elevator physics: Rotating Space Elevators (RSE) [Golubović, L. & Knudsen, S. (2009). Classical and statistical mechanics of celestial scale spinning strings: Rotating space elevators. Europhysics Letters 86(3), 34001.]. Objects sliding along rotating RSE string (sliding climbers) do not require internal engines or propulsion to be transported from the Earth's surface into outer space. Here we address the physics of a special RSE family, Uniform Stress Rotating Space Elevators (USRSE), characterized by constant tensile stress along the string. From the point of view of materials science, this condition provides the best control of string’s global integrity. We introduce an advanced analytic approach to obtain the dynamic equilibrium configurations of USRSE strings. We use our results to discuss the applications of USRSE for spacecraft launching.

scholarly journals Priority scientific and technical tasks in the field of exploration and efficient use of outer space

2019 ◽  
Vol 89 (5) ◽  
pp. 496-501
Author(s):  
V. A. Soloviev ◽  
A. A. Kovalenko ◽  
S. V. Soloviev
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Noise Immunity ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Space Communications ◽  
Existing Problems ◽  
Space Navigation ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Fundamental Research ◽  
The Russian Federation

The article discusses the main directions of development of cosmonautics, which have an impact on ensuring the connectivity of the territories of the Russian Federation. The key role of such areas of space activity as space navigation, space communications, remote sensing of the Earth, applied and fundamental research in space is shown. An analysis of the development trends of applied cosmonautics, existing problems and ways to solve them is conducted: increasing the scientific space and remote sensing group of the Earth, methods of improving the accuracy of positioning, availability, noise immunity of space navigation, etc.

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