Cultural Engineering: A Theme in Science Fiction

Hard Reading ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 89-102
Author(s):  
Tom Shippey
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Engineering ◽  
The World ◽  
Sword And Sorcery ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Near Future

As a form, science fiction conceals homogeneity beneath apparent diversity. The diversity can be seen by looking at the range of paperbacks in any bookshop. One finds lumped together ‘end of the world’ stories, galactic empire stories, stories of the near future and, via time travel, of the very far past, as well as stories that have nothing to do with science at all but depend on magic, or the fantasy type known as ‘sword and sorcery’. One might well think that the inclusion of all these under one heading is just a mistake, that the diversity is genuine. There are two reasons for thinking that is not so: that there is something holding all this diversity together. One is temporary and practical; the other is an element that regular readers recognise, something that forms a large part of the genre’s appeal....

The World after the End of the World

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kas Saghafi
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
End Of The World

In several late texts, Derrida meditated on Paul Celan's poem ‘Grosse, Glühende Wölbung’, in which the departure of the world is announced. Delving into the ‘origin’ and ‘history’ of the ‘conception’ of the world, this paper suggests that, for Derrida, the end of the world is determined by and from death—the death of the other. The death of the other marks, each and every time, the absolute end of the world.

A Compact Embodiment of Pluralities and Denial of Origins: Atwood’s The Year of The Flood

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Rana Sağıroğlu
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Why Questions ◽  
Near Future

Margaret Atwood, one of the most spectacular authors of postmodern movement, achieved to unite debatable and in demand critical points of 21st century such as science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism in the novel The Year of The Flood written in 2009. The novel could be regarded as an ecocritical manifesto and a dystopic mirror against today’s degenerated world, tending to a superficial base to keep the already order in use, by moving away from the fundamental solution of all humanity: nature. Although Atwood does not want her works to be called science fiction, it is obvious that science fiction plays an introductory role and gives the novel a ground explaining all ‘why’ questions of the novel. However, Atwood is not unjust while claiming that her works are not science fiction because of the inevitable rapid change of 21st century world becoming addicted to technology, especially Internet. It is easily observed by the reader that what she fictionalises throughout the novel is quite close to possibility, and the world may witness in the near future what she creates in the novel as science fiction. Additionally, postmodernism serves to the novel as the answerer of ‘how’ questions: How the world embraces pluralities, how heterogeneous social order is needed, and how impossible to run the world by dichotomies of patriarchal social order anymore. And lastly, ecocriticism gives the answers of ‘why’ questions of the novel: Why humanity is in chaos, why humanity has organized the world according to its own needs as if there were no living creatures apart from humanity. Therefore, The Year of The Flood meets the reader as a compact embodiment of science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism not only with its theme, but also with its narrative techniques.

scholarly journals Rat Cities and Beehive Worlds: Density and Design in the Modern City

2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 722-756
Author(s):  
Jon Adams ◽  
Edmund Ramsden
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Social System ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Efficient Operation ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Nestled among E. M. Forster's careful studies of Edwardian social mores is a short story called “The Machine Stops.” Set many years in the future, it is a work of science fiction that imagines all humanity housed in giant high-density cities buried deep below a lifeless surface. With each citizen cocooned in an identical private chamber, all interaction is mediated through the workings of “the Machine,” a totalizing social system that controls every aspect of human life. Cultural variety has ceded to rigorous organization: everywhere is the same, everyone lives the same life. So hopelessly reliant is humanity upon the efficient operation of the Machine, that when the system begins to fail there is little the people can do, and so tightly ordered is the system that the failure spreads. At the story's conclusion, the collapse is total, and Forster's closing image offers a condemnation of the world they had built, and a hopeful glimpse of the world that might, in their absence, return: “The whole city was broken like a honeycomb. […] For a moment they saw the nations of the dead, and, before they joined them, scraps of the untainted sky” (2001: 123). In physically breaking apart the city, there is an extent to which Forster is literalizing the device of the broken society, but it is also the case that the infrastructure of the Machine is so inseparable from its social structure that the failure of one causes the failure of the other. The city has—in the vocabulary of present-day engineers—“failed badly.”

Children of Men in an Era of Apocalyptic Anxiety

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Dan Dinello
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Four Horsemen

This chapter looks at Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men in terms of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — Pestilence. It explains how Children of Men is described between apocalyptic and dystopian, two concepts that are often used interchangeably, but are actually different. It points out that dystopia suggests the perfection of a pernicious order, such as the rise of a dictatorial regime and oppression of minorities, while the apocalypse suggests the End-of-the-World. The chapter discusses the End-of-the-World fiction that exploded in the wake of 9/11 as it revealed breaches in security. It mentions Kirsten M. Thompson, who states that apocalypticism has a close connection to the science-fiction genre.

scholarly journals Cognition on the Relation between the “Ego” and the “Other” in Science Fiction Movies

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Yan Jun
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

Mankind is always trapped in the introspection in one’s identity and the relationship with others, about which, many philosophers and psychologists like Feud and Lacan, have established various theories. Many science fiction movies can function as allegorical stories for the interpretation of those theories about the two concepts and their relation. Deep probing and comprehensive analyses of those movies in light of Feud’s and Lacan’s theories about the “ego” and the “other” make it easy to see that the “ego” has an intricating relation with the “other”, which symbolizes both other people, the world and the ego itself. The “other” is intimidating to the “ego”, but the integrity with it is also what the ego pursuits. So, for the harmony between the “ego” and the “other”, the “ego” should pursuit its integrity with the “other”, while confirming its own identity.

scholarly journals Urban Tourism of Yogyakarta

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Soekadri Soekadri
Keyword(s):  
Economic Value ◽  
Urban Tourism ◽  
Rural Tourism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Rural People ◽  
City Tourism ◽  
The World ◽  
Near Future ◽  
Urban Activities ◽  
Yogyakarta City

Yogyakarta city principally be able to develop as an urban tourism. The international altraction i.e. Malioboro has been growth over the world, and being the first nesessary objet for paying attention beside the other tourism object as an old Cina building, old Europe building, and Javanese traditional houses also classical Javanese musi (gamelan) and dancing, and not to be forgotten is the special various Javanese food (gastronomi). The serious problems up till now exist is city transportation specially tourism transportation not supporting efficienly and also nicely mode for getting all potential city tourism location. Uplevelling rural tourism (rural – urban) potential more or less was still forgetted, so the socio economic, value losses by feelingness way. In the near future programme and planning for supporting the Yogyakarta City to the urban tourism is very strategic and very importance especially develop the tourism attraction object as well as seriously by linking all urban activities tourism to rural area tourism at the surrounding Yogyakarta special teritorry. Rural urban linkages model will be the nicely tool, with more special attention to all attraction potential tourism object are develop who supported the local rural people and special policy programme.

Moving in Circles: Kinetic Elite and Kinetic Proletariat in ‘End of the World’ Films

2018 ◽  
pp. 183-198
Author(s):  
Ewa Mazierska
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
End Times ◽  
Near Future

This chapter considers two science fiction films, Elysium (2013) by Neill Blomkamp and Snowpiercer (2013) by Joon-ho Bong, which  utilize the motif of journey and take us to the near future. What is specific about them is that the journeys take place on Earth or near the Earth. In the future they present there is no escape from our planet; the Earth appears to be a limit even for the privileged. They convey a sense of the end of history, when there is nothing new to discover or conquer and the conflict is around finding the best place within the existing economic and social structures.  This investigation draws on the concepts of the ‘end times’, and ‘fast and slow lanes of social life’ and ‘kinetic elite’ to examine how mobility reproduces and exacerbates social inequalities caused by the hegemony of neoliberalism.

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