Kim Stanley Robinson

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Markley
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Economics And Politics ◽  
Time Culture ◽  
Selection Of

Kim Stanley Robinson is the first full-length study of one of the most widely read and influential science-fiction writers of our era. In dicussing eighteen of his novels published since 1984 and a selection of his short fiction, this study explores the significance of his work in reshaping contemporary literature. Three of the chapters are devoted to Robinson’s major trilogies: the Orange County trilogy (1984-90), the Mars trilogy (1992-96), and the Science in the Capital trilogy (2004-07). Two other chapters consider his groundbreaking alternative histories, including “The Lucky Strike” (1984), The Years of Rice and Salt (2002), and Shaman (2014), and his future histories set among colonies in the solar system, notably Galileo’s Dream (2009) and 2312 (2012). The concluding chapter examines Robinson’s most recent novels Aurora (2015) and New York 2140 (2017). In interviews, Robinson describes his fiction as weaving together, in various combinations, Marxism, ecology, and Buddhist thought, and all of his novels explore how we might imagine forms of utopian political action. His novels—from the Mars trilogy to New York 2140—offer a range of possible futures that chart humankind’s uneven progress, often over centuries, toward the greening of science, technology, economics, and politics. Robinson filters our knowledge of the past and our imagination of possible futures through two superimposed lenses: the ecological fate of the Earth (or other planets) and the far-reaching consequences of moral, political, and socioeconomic decisions of individuals, often scientists and artists, caught up in world or solar-systemic events. In this respect, his fiction charts a collective struggle to think beyond the contradictions of historical existence, and beyond our locations in time, culture, and geography.

Epilogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 239-240
Author(s):  
Jennifer Fleeger
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
Class Session ◽  
The Past ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
Selection Of

Part of living at a distance has meant relying on a stream. Today alone, so much information has streamed into my home from so many sources on so many devices I would have trouble accounting for all of it. While my daughter streamed her class session upstairs, a selection of music I would be likely to enjoy streamed on my phone, and my son streamed a movie from one of the services to which I hastily (and regrettably) subscribed when the pandemic began. We streamed a bedtime story read remotely by Dolly Parton, a Shakespearian sonnet read by Patrick Stewart, and a silent film playing on the wall of a New York City apartment. Unlike the tsunami of my emotional state for the past few months, these streams have been rather comforting. But how does the metaphor of the stream hold up to the discourses and dangers of ventriloquism we have been addressing throughout this collection?...

The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future

Daedalus ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 142 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Oreskes ◽  
Erik M. Conway
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
The Face

Authors' note: Science fiction writers construct an imaginary future; historians attempt to reconstruct the past. Ultimately, both are seeking to understand the present. In this essay, we blend the two genres to imagine a future historian looking back on a past that is our present and (possible) future. The occasion is the tercentenary of the end of Western culture (1540 – 2073); the dilemma being addressed is how we – the children of the Enlightenment – failed to act on robust information about climate change and knowledge of the damaging events that were about to unfold. Our historian concludes that a second Dark Age had fallen on Western civilization, in which denial and self-deception, rooted in an ideological fixation on “free” markets, disabled the world's powerful nations in the face of tragedy. Moreover, the scientists who best understood the problem were hamstrung by their own cultural practices, which demanded an excessively stringent standard for accepting claims of any kind – even those involving imminent threats. Here, our future historian, living in the Second People's Republic of China, recounts the events of the Period of the Penumbra (1988 – 2073) that led to the Great Collapse and Mass Migration (2074).

Introduction and recent range expansion in the moss Ptychomitrium serratum (Ptychomitriaceae) in the Southern and Eastern United StatesThis paper is one of a selection of papers published as part of the special Schofield Gedenkschrift.

Botany ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norton G. Miller ◽  
Sean C. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
New York State ◽  
Eastern United States ◽  
East Texas ◽  
The Past ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
Selection Of

The moss Ptychomitrium serratum (C. Müll. Hal. ex Schimp.) Besch., is native to Mexico and parts of western Texas and southern New Mexico, and it is a rare adventive in the area from East Texas and Louisiana to Missouri, Tennessee, South Carolina, and northward to locations near the coast in New York State and Massachusetts. In the adventive part of this calcicole’s range, all collections are from the past 50 years. Concrete, mortar, and rarely asphalt shingle are its only known substrata in this region, which contrasts sharply with its common occurrence on limestone in the native portion of its range. These observations indicate recent, perhaps on-going, immigration into the eastern United States and dispersal from established populations in this region. This monoicous moss commonly produces spores, which are its primary means of spread. Given the low density occurrences in the adventive portion of the range of P. serratum, dispersal may be generally northeastward from Mexico – Texas – New Mexico, following northeastward storm tracks in the southern and eastern United States. The apparently recent spread of this moss does not show obvious reliance on any direct human activity.

scholarly journals Two crossbows and a carbine: Out of the commentary on A.N. and B.N. Strugatsky’s novel “Hard to be a God”

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-58
Author(s):  
Irina N. Arzamastseva ◽  
Alexander V. Kuznetsov
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sea Monster ◽  
Intertextual Connections

The article is devoted to the study of the functions of the characters’ weapons in A.N. and B.N. Strugatsky’s novel “Hard to be a God”. It is important for writing a commentary on the prologue of the novel. The authors used the historical-typological and mythopoetic research methods. As the result of reviewing the history of words-concepts, as it made by A.N. Veselovsky, the authors managed to study the intertextual connections of “Hard to be a God” with V.T. Shalamov’s poem “Crossbow” and his story “May”, as well as N.S. Gumilev’s poem “Just looks through the cliffs...” and E. Hemingway’s play “The fifth column”. Through these connections, the image of weapons is formed in the work of science fiction writers. It is necessary to destruct the mythological enemy – the sea monster, which symbolizes the social evil within the novel framework. As we have found out, the reason for such an intricate symbolism lies in the peculiarities of the age: the image of the sea monster standing for public evil is due to historical reasons. And since the elimination of social problems by such radical methods, according to the authors, is impossible, the movement towards a bright future should be only gradual and peaceful. As in reality, weapons are fundamentally unable to perform their task. Moreover, the weapon is dangerous for its owner, which indicates the ambivalence of the image. In addition, the comparison, important for the novel “Hard to be God”, of the past and future appears the first in the comparison of crossbows and carbines, further developing by other means. Weapons are involved in creating a number of important motives: doom, the danger of using force, and interference in the course of history.

Samuel R. Delany

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Matharoo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Temple University ◽  
City College ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Aids Crisis ◽  
Open Relationship ◽  
University Of Massachusetts

Samuel R. Delany is a profoundly influential and award-winning African-American gay author, critic, and teacher, whose many novels, short stories, memoirs, and essays are among the most important of the 20th and 21st centuries. His works have fundamentally altered the terrain of science fiction (SF) due in part to their formally consummate, theoretically sophisticated, materially grounded, and politically radical explorations of difference. These explorations reach an apogee in Dhalgren (1975), a bestselling countercultural classic. Delany is a Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) Grand Master. He is also one of SF’s best critics. The courageous humility and pragmatism with which he treats his subjects, when considered alongside the virtuosity with which he writes, gesture at a cosmologically scaled multiplicity, the understanding of which is dependent on biography, a point rendered clear in his exquisite autobiography The Motion of Light in Water (1988). Delany was born in Harlem, New York, on 1 April 1942. He was educated at the prestigious Dalton School and Bronx High School of Science. He spent summers at progressive youth camps. He also briefly attended the City College of New York. Delany has held professorships at University of Massachusetts Amherst, SUNY Buffalo, and Temple University. From 1961 to 1980, he and poet Marilyn Hacker had an open marriage; they have one child. He has been in an open relationship with Dennis Rickett since 1991. He was astoundingly prolific at a prodigal age. He translated Rimbaud’s Le bateau ivre (1871) when he was eighteen. For a time, he lived in a commune in New York, writing songs for the folk-rock band Heavenly Breakfast. He has worked on shrimp boats in Texas. He has written graphic novels and a couple of stories for the Wonder Woman comics. He has written an opera, and he has written and directed a film. He has published pornographic novels that engage thoughtfully with the HIV/AIDS crisis. In short, to borrow a concept he develops in Empire Star (1966), Delany might be described as “multiplex”: even an ephemeral biography such as this one casts light on his singular ability to sustain and synthesize presumably opposed differences into a greater unity.

scholarly journals Why do women become teachers while men don’t?

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Carroll ◽  
Jaai Parasnis ◽  
Massimiliano Tani
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Primary Teachers ◽  
Secondary Schooling ◽  
Female Teachers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Market Women ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract Across countries, almost all primary and pre-primary teachers are women while few men in the occupation tend to specialise in secondary schooling and administration. We investigate the decision to become a teacher versus alternative occupations for graduates in Australia over the past 15 years. We find that this gender distribution reflects relative returns in the labour market: women with bachelor qualifications receive higher returns in teaching, while similarly educated men enjoy substantially higher returns in other occupations. We also find evidence that schools which can, and do, make higher wage offers successfully attract more male teachers as well as more female teachers with a degree in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These results are consistent with the predictions of theoretical models of self-selection of intrinsically motivated workers.

scholarly journals Strategies of Cognitive Estrangement in Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-121
Author(s):  
Michał Klata
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
The Past ◽  
Unusual Position

Abstract This paper seeks to analyse the strategies of cognitive estrangement employed by the science fiction writer and literary scholar Kim Stanley Robinson in his New York 2140 (2017). I argue that the novel was written as a call to action to mitigate the effects of climate change, and rather than being merely a description of a particular vision of the future, provides a comment on the current ecological crisis, mechanisms of history, and human agency. Robinson’s unusual position at the intersection of the field of literary production and literature studies allowed him to apply the ideas developed for the analysis of the genre of science fiction in his creative work. The three main thematic areas in the novel are ecology, politics, and history. In each of these, allusions to the present, the past, and literary tradition, characterisation, and narrative structure are used as a means to convey the author’s message and sensitise the reader to issues connected with ecology and social justice, painting a realistic, yet hopeful vision where human civilisation carries on despite the consequences of global warming.

scholarly journals Augmented Reality and Life in the Cyberspace in William Gibson’s Neuromancer

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Md. Shafiqul Islam
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Capabilities ◽  
Story Line ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
The Relationship

This paper attempts a cybercritical reading of William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer (1984) to explore the genesis of cyborgs in the novel, address issues pertaining to cyberpunks and scrutinize the portrayal of a cyberculture set in the futuristic dystopian city of Chiba. The relationship between humans and machines has gone through multiple phases of changes in the recent past. That is why instead of satirizing machinized-humans, science fiction writers have embraced different dimensions of man-machine relationships during the past few decades. ‘Cyborg’ is no longer represented as the ‘mutation of human capabilities’, but as ‘machines with Artificial Intelligence’. Gibson’s Neuromancer, a landmark piece of literary work in the sphere of Sci-Fi literature, specifically predicts a new height of man-machine relationship by employing both human and cyborg characters at the center of his story line. This paper shows how Gibson accurately prophesizes the matrix of machine-human relationship in his novel. It also explores Gibson’s depiction of female characters through the lens of cyberfeminist theories. In view of that, this paper uses contemporary critical and cultural theories including Donna Haraway’s idea of cyberfeminism, Baudrillard’s simulation and simulacra, Foucauldian discourse analysis, Jeremy Bentham’s concept of tabula rasa and other relevant theoretical ideas to examine and evaluate the transformative changes.

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