scholarly journals Hackers and Cyborgs: Binary Domain and Two Formative Videogame Technicities

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan Keogh
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
Virtual Character ◽  
Consumer Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Everyday Experiences

Through the course of Binary Domain’s action-packed narrative, it becomes increasingly unclear who is human, who is machine, and who is somewhere in between. Ultimately, such a distinction is futile when our everyday experiences are so ubiquitously augmented by technologies—even the act of playing Binary Domain by coupling with a virtual character through a videogame controller challenges any clear distinction between human and machine. While such themes are not new to science fiction, the anxieties expressed by Binary Domain’s characters are relevant to what have emerged over the past twenty- five years as two formative modes of identifying with videogames: the dominant hacker and the integrated cyborg. The hacker, an identity that the dominant and hegemonic ‘gamer’ consumer identity can trace a clear lineage from, comes to represent the masculinist, mastery-focused identity that most blockbuster games celebrate. The cyborg emerges in resistance to the hacker, pointing to a diversity of forms and identities that are focused less on mastering the machine than participating with it. This paper uses Binary Domain’s complex anxieties towards technology as a lens through which to trace the histories of these constitutive modes of identifying with videogames, and to demonstrate the influence they have on videogame forms and audiences.

scholarly journals Counterfactuality as a Polyphonic Assemblage. Entangled Human and Nonhuman Stories of Early Modern Sciences in Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-121
Author(s):  
Mateusz Chaberski
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Multispecies Ethnography ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Neal Stephenson ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Point Of Departure

Summary In recent science-fiction literature, we can witness a proliferation of new counterfactual narratives which take the 17th century as their point of departure. Unlike steampunk narratives, however, their aim is not to criticise the socio-political effects caused by contemporary technological development. Such authors as Neal Stephenson or Ian Tregillis, among others, are interested in revisiting the model of development in Western societies, routing around the logic of progress. Moreover, they demonstrate that modernity is but an effect of manifold contingent and indeterminate encounters of humans and nonhumans and their distinct temporalities. Even the slightest modification of their ways of being could have changed Western societies and cultures. Thus, they necessitate a rather non-anthropocentric model of counterfactuality which is not tantamount to the traditional alternative histories which depart from official narratives of the past. By drawing on contemporary multispecies ethnography, I put forward a new understanding of counter-factuality which aims to reveal multiple entangled human and nonhuman stories already embedded in the seemingly unified history of the West. In this context, the concept of “polyphonic assemblage” (Lowenhaupt-Tsing) is employed to conceptualize the contingent and open-ended encounters of human and nonhuman historical actors which cut across different discourses and practices. I analyse Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle to show the entangled stories of humans and nonhumans in 17th century sciences, hardly present in traditional historiographies. In particular, Stephenson’s depiction of quicksilver and coffeehouse as nonhuman historical actors is scrutinized to show their vital role in the production of knowledge at the dawn of modernity.

scholarly journals A comparative study for structural bedrock delineation by using conventional geophysical methods

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 1301
Author(s):  
Τ. Δ. ΠΑΠΑΔΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ ◽  
I. A. ΑΛΕΞΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ ◽  
Π. Ι. ΚΑΜΠΟΥΡΗΣ
Keyword(s):  
Seismic Refraction ◽  
Geophysical Methods ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Tectonic Processes ◽  
Refraction Method ◽  
Limestone Bedrock ◽  
Modern Analysis ◽  
Seismic Refraction Method ◽  
Effective Design

In this paper is examined the potential and effectiveness of two conventional geophysical methods in geotechnical research. The seismic refraction method that has been successfully used in the past for subsurface bedrock delineation in foundation projects, failed to indicate clear distinction between flysch and limestone bedrock material in the area under investigation. This failure is due to the macro-anisotropy structure of the limestone that resulted from joints, tectonic processes or/and karstic phenomena and later fillings of the voids with argillaceous material. The geoelectrical method of vertical sounding, on the other hand, although provided a clear distinction for the bedrock characterization, failed to distinguish the overburden cover from the underlain flysch formation. Finally, in this paper it is shown that for a successful application of geophysical work in  geotechnical research, it is required effective design, utilization of modern analysis methods and handling more than geophysical methods.

Excavating the Future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shawn Malley
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Cultural Study ◽  
Homeland Security ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Adaptive Responses ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The U.S

Well-known in popular culture for tomb-raiding and mummy-wrangling, the archaeologist is also a rich though often unacknowledged figure for constructing ‘strange new worlds’ from ‘strange old worlds’ in science fiction. But more than a well-spring for scenarios, SF’s archaeological imaginary is also a hermeneutic tool for excavating the ideological motivations of digging up the past buried in the future. A cultural study of an array of popular though critically neglected North American SF film and television texts–spanning the gamut of telefilms, pseudo-documentaries, teen serial drama and Hollywood blockbusters–Excavating the Future treats archaeology as a trope for exploring the popular archaeological imagination and the uses to which it is being put by the U.S. state and its adversaries. By treating SF texts as documents of archaeological experience circulating within and between scientific and popular culture communities and media, Excavating the Future develops critical strategies for analyzing SF film and television’s critical and adaptive responses to contemporary geopolitical concerns about the war on terror, homeland security, the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq, and the ongoing fight against ISIS.

Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic Science Fiction

2020 ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Doug Davis
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Southern Literature ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
The Past

Where convention categorizes southern literature as especially preoccupied with the past, Doug Davis reads O’Connor’s stories as science fiction, highlighting the surprising extent of her engagement with futurism. From time travelers to space cadets to cyborgs, O’Connor’s stories are filled with images and characters that appear in popular science fiction. Davis argues that for O’Connor, the vocabulary of science fiction provides a way to both explore and critique the promises and effects of technological progress in the context of Cold War America.

scholarly journals Has Akira Always Been a Cyberpunk Comic?

Arts ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin de la Iglesia
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western World ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Blade Runner ◽  
Genre Awareness

Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, interest in the cyberpunk genre peaked in the Western world, perhaps most evidently when Terminator 2: Judgment Day became the highest-grossing film of 1991. It has been argued that the translation of Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s manga Akira into several European languages at just that time (into English beginning in 1988, into French, Italian, and Spanish beginning in 1990, and into German beginning in 1991) was no coincidence. In hindsight, cyberpunk tropes are easily identified in Akira to the extent that it is nowadays widely regarded as a classic cyberpunk comic. But has this always been the case? When Akira was first published in America and Europe, did readers see it as part of a wave of cyberpunk fiction? Did they draw the connections to previous works of the cyberpunk genre across different media that today seem obvious? In this paper, magazine reviews of Akira in English and German from the time when it first came out in these languages will be analysed in order to gauge the past readers’ genre awareness. The attribution of the cyberpunk label to Akira competed with others such as the post-apocalyptic, or science fiction in general. Alternatively, Akira was sometimes regarded as an exceptional, novel work that transcended genre boundaries. In contrast, reviewers of the Akira anime adaptation, which was released at roughly the same time as the manga in the West (1989 in Germany and the United States), more readily drew comparisons to other cyberpunk films such as Blade Runner.

Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 224-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle P. Whyte
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Viewing Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Parallel Universes ◽  
Indigenous Perspectives ◽  
Colonial Violence ◽  
Climate Crisis

Portrayals of the Anthropocene period are often dystopian or post-apocalyptic narratives of climate crises that will leave humans in horrific science-fiction scenarios. Such narratives can erase certain populations, such as Indigenous peoples, who approach climate change having already been through transformations of their societies induced by colonial violence. This essay discusses how some Indigenous perspectives on climate change can situate the present time as already dystopian. Instead of dread of an impending crisis, Indigenous approaches to climate change are motivated through dialogic narratives with descendants and ancestors. In some cases, these narratives are like science fiction in which Indigenous peoples work to empower their own protagonists to address contemporary challenges. Yet within literature on climate change and the Anthropocene, Indigenous peoples often get placed in historical categories designed by nonIndigenous persons, such as the Holocene. In some cases, these categories serve as the backdrop for allies' narratives that privilege themselves as the protagonists who will save Indigenous peoples from colonial violence and the climate crisis. I speculate that this tendency among allies could possibly be related to their sometimes denying that they are living in times their ancestors would have likely fantasized about. I will show how this denial threatens allies' capacities to build coalitions with Indigenous peoples. Inuit culture is based on the ice, the snow and the cold…. It is the speed and intensity in which change has occurred and continues to occur that is a big factor why we are having trouble with adapting to certain situations. Climate change is yet another rapid assault on our way of life. It cannot be separated from the first waves of changes and assaults at the very core of the human spirit that have come our way. Just as we are recognizing and understanding the first waves of change … our environment and climate now gets threatened. Sheila Watt-Cloutier, interviewed by the Ottawa Citizen. (Robb, 2015) In North America many Indigenous traditions tell us that reality is more than just facts and figures collected so that humankind might widely use resources. Rather, to know “it”—reality—requires respect for the relationships and relatives that constitute the complex web of life. I call this Indigenous realism, and it entails that we, members of humankind, accept our inalienable responsibilities as members of the planet's complex life system, as well as our inalienable rights. ( Wildcat, 2009 , xi) Within Māori ontological and cosmological paradigms it is impossible to conceive of the present and the future as separate and distinct from the past, for the past is constitutive of the present and, as such, is inherently reconstituted within the future. (Stewart-Harawira, 2005, 42) In fact, incorporating time travel, alternate realities, parallel universes and multiverses, and alternative histories is a hallmark of Native storytelling tradition, while viewing time as pasts, presents, and futures that flow together like currents in a navigable stream is central to Native epistemologies. ( Dillon, 2016a , 345)

Building Asian Canadian Literary Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor Ty
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
American Literature ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Canadian Literature ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Statistics Canada

Asian Canadian Literary Studies is a relatively new field of study which began in the mid to late 1990s. Even though literature written by Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian Canadians had been published in literary magazines and anthologies since the 1970s, the identification of a distinct body of works called “Asian Canadian literature,” as Donald Goellnicht has noted (in “A Long Labour”), began only when there was a sociopolitical movement focused on identity politics. The literature includes early experiences of Chinese in Gum San or “gold mountain”; Japanese Canadian internment during the Second World War; South Asian Canadians diasporic writing from former British colonies like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Trinidad, Guyana, Tanzania, and Kenya; feminist experimental and genre writing; and writing from the post-1975 wave of first- and 1.5-generation immigrants and refugees. Early 21st-century works have moved from mainly autoethnographic stories to those that include larger sociocultural concerns, such as poverty, domestic violence, the environment, lesbian, queer, and transgender issues, and other intersectional systems of oppression that face Asian Canadians and other marginalized groups. Genres include memoirs, films, short stories, autobiographies, realist novels, science fiction, graphic novels, poetry, plays, and historical novels. In the past, without naming the field “Asian Canadians,” many critics have engaged with Asian Canadian literary texts. For example, articles and chapters about Joy Kogawa’s Obasan can be found in journals and books on Canadian, postcolonial, ethnic, and Asian American literature. South Asian Canadian literature also has strong links with postcolonial studies and institutions, such as the book publisher TSAR Publications, which began as the literary journal, The Toronto South Asian Review. In Canadian English usage, Asian usually refers to people from East and Southeast Asian while the term South Asian Canadian is a subgroup of Asian Canadian, according to Statistics Canada. In literary studies, it has only been in the past ten or fifteen years that the term “Asian Canadian” is used as a pan-ethnic term for all peoples who are originally from or have roots in Asia.

Lucha Libre

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Allen
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Urban Culture ◽  
Federal District ◽  
The United States ◽  
Professional Wrestling ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mexican Culture ◽  
Societal Norms ◽  
United States Mexico ◽  
Lucha Libre

Lucha libre, or professional wrestling, has become a staple of urban Mexican culture over the course of the 20th century. In the past twenty years, it has gained international acclaim for its distinctive style and culture. Best known for the masks that luchadores often wear, lucha libre has become a distinctly national rendition of an imported product. Along with Japan and the United States, Mexico is one of the most influential nations in the world of professional wrestling. The sport allows fans to root for técnicos, rudos, and exóticos and it provides theater that upends societal norms in Mexico. Banned from performing on television by Federal District authorities from the 1950s to the early 1990s, wrestlers like El Santo and Blue Demon took to the silver screen to film “Mexploitation” horror and science fiction films. Although the sport has become an urban tradition, it reflects the cosmopolitan nature of working-class urban culture as well as the influence of Mexican culture on other nations.

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