The Genre Code of Realism: the recent development of the alien invasion movie

Real to Reel ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 99-118
Author(s):  
Martin Sohn-Rethel
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Real ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Alien Invasion ◽  
Different Order ◽  
Historical World

This chapter addresses the genre code of realism, which brings with it a fundamentally different order of realism. Not one concerned so much with the real social-historical world but one which revolves instead around our expectations of a particular genre. Here the starting point lies within the realm of a fiction genre itself rather than in lived experience of the real world as rendered in the language of scripted fiction. The chapter shows that when words like 'real' and 'realism' are cited for, say, a science-fiction film, what is meant is more directly aligned to expectations of the science-fiction genre than to notions of the real world. It then looks at examples of science fiction, all of which belong to its alien invasion subgenre: District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009), Monsters (Gareth Edwards, 2010), and Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011).

scholarly journals Fantasy in Literature: A Symbiotic Relation to the Real

Pravaha ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-123
Author(s):  
Lekha Nath Dhakal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Real World ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
External Reality ◽  
The Real ◽  
Fantasy Fiction ◽  
Fantastic Fiction ◽  
Artistic Representation ◽  
Symbiotic Relation

This article attempts to explore the use of fantasy in literature and how it has attained the position of a literary category in the twentieth century. This work also concerns how as the form literature, it functions between wonderful and imitative to combine the elements of both. The article reveals that wonderful represents supernatural atmospheres and events. The story-telling is unrealistic which represents impossibility as it creates a wonderland. In the imitative or the realistic mode, the narrative imitates external reality. In it, the characters and situations are ordinary and real. Fantasy in literature does not escape the reality. It occurs in an interdependent relation to the real. In other words, the fantastic cannot exist independently of the real world that limits it. The use of fantastic mode in literature interrupts the conventional artistic representation and reproduction of perceivable reality. It embodies the reality and transgresses the standards of literary forming. It normally includes a variety of fictional works which use the supernatural and actually natural as well. The developers of fantasy fiction are fairy tales, science fiction about future wars and future world. A major instinct of fantastic fiction is the violence threatened by capitalist violation of personality that is spreading universally.

The real world- or science fiction

AIHAJ ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 43 (10) ◽  
pp. 717-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
HERVEY B. ELKINS
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Real

scholarly journals Making Science Fiction Real: Neoliberalism, Real-Life and Esports in Eve Online

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Richard Johnson ◽  
Robert Mejia
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Real World ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Physical World ◽  
The Real ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Political Economic

In this paper, we argue that EVE Online is a fruitful site for exploring how the representational and political-economic elements of science fiction intersect to exert a sociocultural and political-economic force on the shape and nature of the future-present. EVE has been oft heralded for its economic and sociocultural complexity, and for employing a free market ethos and ethics in its game world. However, we by contrast seek not to consider how EVE reflects our contemporary world, but rather how our contemporary neoliberal milieu reflects EVE. We explore how EVE works to make its world of neoliberal markets and borderline anarcho-capitalism manifest through the political economic and sociocultural assemblages mobilized beyond the game. We explore the deep intertwining of  behaviors of players both within and outside of the game, demonstrating that EVE promotes neoliberal  activity in its players, encourages these behaviors outside the game, and that players who have found success in the real world of neoliberal capitalism are those best-positioned for success in the time-demanding and resource-demanding world of EVE. This thereby sets up a reciprocal ideological determination between the real and virtual worlds of EVE players, whereby each reinforces the other. We lastly consider the “Alliance Tournament” event, which romanticizes conflict and competition, and argue that it serves as a crucial site for deploying a further set of similar rhetorical resources. The paper therefore offers an understanding of the sociocultural and political-economic pressure exerted on the “physical” world by the intersection of EVE’s representational and material elements, and what these show us about the real-world ideological power of science fictional worlds.

scholarly journals The nuclear taboo,Battlestar Galactica, and the real world: Illustrations from a science-fiction universe

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 348-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Fey ◽  
Annika E Poppe ◽  
Carsten Rauch
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Real ◽  
Battlestar Galactica

Different Engines

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Westfahl
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Real ◽  
Alternate History ◽  
Film Version ◽  
Bruce Sterling ◽  
Song Lyrics ◽  
The Difference ◽  
First Offers

This chapter examines William Gibson's The Difference Engine, a collaboration with Bruce Sterling, as well as his screenplays, poetry, song lyrics, and nonfiction. Sterling used an irresistibly marketable concept for The Difference Engine: a novel by what he could describe as the two leading cyberpunk authors that would appealingly blend three popular subgenres of science fiction—cyberpunk, alternate history, and “steampunk” literature. Despite the prominence of cyberspace in his Sprawl trilogy, Gibson claimed that he has “never really been very interested in computers themselves.” This chapter first offers a reading of The Difference Engine before discussing Gibson's screenplays written for Hollywood in the late 1980s, including one for a proposed Alien 3 film and another for the film version of Johnny Mnemonic. It also considers Gibson's poems such as “The Beloved: Voices for Three Heads,” his ventures into writing song lyrics, and the approach he used in some of his later nonfiction works: looking at the real world in terms of science fiction, conveying that we indeed live in a science fiction world.

scholarly journals IRONY AND FANTASY

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-126
Author(s):  
D. Ajdačić
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
The Real ◽  
What Is Said ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

The absence of a typology of irony in the theory of fiction stems from the fact that irony and fiction differently form and transform reality – fiction is a kind of fictional depiction of amazing worlds or phenomena. On the contrary, irony does not create worlds; in it, the subject comments on reality, adding another vision, a vision with a reassessment and deviation from what is said or presented. Irony can comment on the realities of different ontological status, that is, irony can relate to the real world and the fictional world, whether it is real or amazing. Fantasy transforms the world – it distorts, destroys or completes, or builds new worlds, and irony already adds a different vision to the ideas and views presented, regardless of whether they are real or fictional. The terminological and literary-theoretical aspects of the use of irony in works of literary fiction are discussed in the text. Dragan Stojanović’s book “Irony and Meaning” and the author’s terms “Ironical Focus” and “Meaning Pressure” are used as a theoretical starting point. After highlighting the touchpoints of irony and fiction and their special qualities and roles, is proposed a typology of the use of irony in fiction that separates ironic actions concerning the real world, the marvelous world and problematizing the relationship between the real and the marvelous world.

scholarly journals Des angles et des contours dans História do Cerco de Lisboa (une lecture parmi tant d'autres)

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 169-180
Author(s):  
Armando Aguilar de León
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Real ◽  
Principal Character ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Meteorological Phenomenon ◽  
Historical World

This paper analyzes the narrative structure and the literary elements that give Saramago’s novel its postmodern features, focusing in the plot and its uchronic perspective in order to appreciate the sci-fi dimension that the historical events take through the narrative. Our discussion examines the action of the principal character, Raymundo Silva, who proofreads a historical work titled The History of the Siege of Lisbon and decides to deny an important fact: "the crusaders did (not) help the Portuguese forces against the Moorish army". Added to the historical work, this não ("not", in portuguese) produces a disruption over the ‘real’ temporary line. In consequence, the city of Lisbon, at the centre of a meteorological phenomenon, slides in between the medieval siege and contemporary life. Thus, the historical subject resorts to a science fiction procedure: uchrony. Two intradiegetic symbols -the circle and the deleatur- represent the two overlapped universes; the circle refers to the historical world and the deleatur symbolizes the uchronic universe. Therefore, História do cerco de Lisboa is not a sci-fi work, but a postmodern historiographical metafiction.

scholarly journals Mózg jako nowy wszechświat – wokół Incepcji Christophera Nolana

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (37) ◽  
pp. 207-220
Author(s):  
Marcin Kowalczyk
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Real World ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Space Travel ◽  
The Real ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
Christopher Nolan ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

The article shows the growing interest of science fiction cinema in the human brain and related concepts, such as mind or consciousness. Nowadays, when distant space travel seems unreachable, artists find the exploration potential of the brain very promising. Thus, the main thesis of this analysis says that the brain has become for science fiction cinema the new universe. An excellent example of this paradigm shift is Inception (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2010). In the movie, the mind is depicted as a physical and accessible place, where we can find a lot of mysteries to solve. The characters travel to the deepest parts of subconsciousness because the processes inside the brain are the key to understanding and changing the real world. The article also shows how the director uses the achievements of science fiction cinema and, at the same time, that he postulates a new way of considering the issues relevant to modern neuroscience.

scholarly journals A DYSTOPIAN READING OF THE PRESENT TIME IN DAVID MITCHELL'S NUMBER 9 DREAM

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (12) ◽  
pp. 12-22
Author(s):  
Alireza Farahbakhsh ◽  
Soulmaz Kakaee
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Real World ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Genre Criticism ◽  
The Given

With the intention to study the implications and their affinity with and deviation from reality, the present study will analyze Number9Dream (2001) in terms of its narrative style, ontological qualities, and certain conventions which lead to the particular genre of dystopian science fiction. It tends to settle the following questions: are the implications and contributions of categorizing Number9Dream as a dystopian science fiction significant in any way? What is the role and ontological significance of setting in the novel? Narratological approach and genre criticism are applied to the novel to analyze it from the perspective of its critical engagement with dystopia. It traces science fictional elements and then continues to examine their utopian or dystopian nature and the different functions of those elements. It also refers to the connection between the given ontologies and reality. The present article shows that the novel provides a range of multiple possible worlds through two layers of internal and external ontology which are the representations of the real world. Dystopian narrative and science fiction conventions are exploited to address today's world issues. Through a detached view toward the present societies, Mitchell gives the opportunity to criticize what is not otherwise visible. The novel warns about human's isolation, alienation, and dehumanization and calls people to action accordingly. It briefly refers to the reconciliation of past/ present and nature/ science as a solution.

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