Kids on Bikes in Twenty-First-Century Nostalgia Science Fiction

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-222
Author(s):  
Jeremy Withers
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
First Century ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Motorized Transport

This final chapter focuses on one of the most recent and most popular trends happening right now in science fiction, the rise of a decidedly nostalgic form of science fiction. In particular, the trend examined in this chapter is one called ‘1980s-nostalgia science fiction’ and is made up of science fiction literary and screen texts from c. 2010-present that exhibit a profound fondness for or interest in the American 1980s. The three nostalgia texts that comprise the focus of this chapter are Super 8, Stranger Things, and Paper Girls. After first discussing what is one of the most influential texts for this 1980s-nostalgia science fiction – Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra Terrestrial – this chapter then analyzes how these nostalgia texts align themselves with Spielberg’s blockbuster film by demonizing motorized transport while simultaneously exalting the bicycle.

The Future of Epic in Cinema

2018 ◽  
pp. 119-132
Author(s):  
Pantelis Michelakis
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
First Century ◽  
Genre Criticism ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter explores the ways in which the generic label of ‘epic’ might be deemed relevant for Ridley Scott’s film Prometheus (2012), and more broadly for the ways in which a discussion about the meanings of epic in early twenty-first-century cinema might be undertaken outside the genre of ‘historical epic’. It argues for the need to explore how ‘epic science fiction’ operates in Scott’s Prometheus in ways that both relate and transcend common definitions of the term ‘epic’ in contemporary popular culture. It also focuses on the unorthodox models of biological evolution of the film’s narrative, suggesting ways in which they can help with genre criticism. When it comes to cinematic intertextuality, a discussion about generic taxonomies and transformations cannot be conducted at the beginning of the twenty-first century without reflecting on the tropes that cinema animates and the fears it enacts at the heart of our genetic imaginary.

Coda

2018 ◽  
pp. 182-194
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Insko
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Monuments ◽  
Twenty First Century

The book’s final chapter turns to the twenty-first-century historical present to examine the resurgence of pious warnings about the dangers of presentism in current debates over historical monuments and other forms of historical commemoration. After linking, by way of Afrofuturism, the recent political slogan #StayWoke to the political disposition identified in the book’s previous chapters, I turn to debates about the renaming of college buildings in order to challenge the ideas about history promoted by antipresentists, whose claims are themselves often ahistorical. The historiographical injunction against presentism, I claim, has unwittingly sustained white supremacy in the United States. I feel strongly that we’re not yet done with history—but not done precisely because of, not despite, the history that we inhabit.

Staying Mobile in Postapocalyptic Cli-Fi

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-188
Author(s):  
Jeremy Withers
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
First Century ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter examines how the rising popularity since the 1990s of works of postapocalyptic cli-fi (i.e. climate change fiction) has provided science fiction writers a convenient opportunity to explore issues of mobility and transportation. After first examining an early postapocalyptic cli-fi work from the 1990s by Octavia E. Butler, the chapter then advances this book’s chronological analysis to some twenty-first century works of science fiction. In its discussion of a novel by Paolo Bacigalupi and one by Benjamin Parzybok, this chapter shows how more restrained modes of transport play a vital role during times of apocalypse in keeping a society functioning and keeping us as individuals from slipping into disempowerment.

Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Trilogy

2018 ◽  
pp. 107-128
Author(s):  
Mingwei Song
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Main Part ◽  
First Century ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Chinese Science ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Three Body ◽  
Fiction Writer

This chapter introduces the life and work of Liu Cixin, a Chinese science-fiction writer who has played a major role in reviving the genre in twenty-first-century China. The chapter discusses Liu’s work in the context of the genre’s history in China. Liu and other writers belonging to the same generation have created a new wave, in which the genre has gained unprecedented popularity in China. The main part of the chapter analyzes several major works by Liu and attempts to theorize the aesthetics and politics of the new wave as represented in Liu’s stories and novels. The new wave makes visible the hidden dimensions of Chinese science fiction, together with the darker side of reality that it speaks to.

Conclusion: Returning to Park Royal

2019 ◽  
pp. 164-172
Author(s):  
Tim Strangleman
Keyword(s):  
Economic Activity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Meaning Of Work ◽  
New Capitalism ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Important Marker ◽  
The Way

This final chapter is a reflection on the meaning of work in the twenty-first century. The author takes a walk around the site of the former Guinness brewery at Park Royal and observes and analyzes what replaced the brewery buildings. The chapter examines the profound shifts in the way economic activity has been organized and working careers have been transformed. The story of the Guinness brewery acts as an important marker for the way work used to be thought of; this was a humane, expansive, and dignified vision of work. Today, however, this vision has become eclipsed in the new capitalism.

Doris Lessing and the Forming of History

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
First Century ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Youth Politics ◽  
European Cinema ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Post War

The death of Nobel Prize-winning Doris Lessing sparked a range of commemorations that cemented her place as one of the major figures of twentieth- and twenty-first- century world literature. This volume views Lessing’s writing as a whole and in retrospect, focusing on her innovative attempts to rework literary form to engage with the challenges thrown up by the sweeping historical changes through which she lived. Contributors provide new readings of Lessing’s work via contexts ranging from post-war youth politics and radical women’s writing to European cinema, analyse her experiments with genres from realism to autobiography and science-fiction, and draw on previously unstudied archive material. The volume also explores how Lessing’s writing can provide insight into some of the issues now shaping twenty-first century scholarship – including trauma, ecocriticism, the post-human, and world literature – as they emerge as defining challenges to our own present moment in history.

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