ABSTRACT:This article analyzes how Larissa Lai’s novel The Tiger Flu (2018) critically engages with (neo-) colonial oppression and a science discourse instrumentalized to aid in this process. In her dystopian world, the reign of Western science, blinded by the conviction of its own exceptionalism and superiority and fraught with neoliberal capitalist interests, has come to an end. In order to survive in a world rendered inhospitable by pollution, climate change, resource scarcity, and overwhelming inequality, adaptability becomes key. New solutions, the novel suggests, can be found in alternative, indigenous knowledge traditions that, by creatively adapting Western science and technology to their own more holistic approaches, can make life sustainable again. Lai unsettles the pervasive trope of techno-Orientalism in her novel and employs it to suggest creative postcolonial processes of syncretism, of different knowledge traditions and transgressive ways to rethink (human) identity as the way towards a more equal and egalitarian future.
{"title":"Bodies of Knowledge: Discredited Sciences and Technologies of Resistance in Larissa Lai’s The Tiger Flu","authors":"Julia Gatermann","doi":"10.1353/sfs.2023.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sfs.2023.0004","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article analyzes how Larissa Lai’s novel The Tiger Flu (2018) critically engages with (neo-) colonial oppression and a science discourse instrumentalized to aid in this process. In her dystopian world, the reign of Western science, blinded by the conviction of its own exceptionalism and superiority and fraught with neoliberal capitalist interests, has come to an end. In order to survive in a world rendered inhospitable by pollution, climate change, resource scarcity, and overwhelming inequality, adaptability becomes key. New solutions, the novel suggests, can be found in alternative, indigenous knowledge traditions that, by creatively adapting Western science and technology to their own more holistic approaches, can make life sustainable again. Lai unsettles the pervasive trope of techno-Orientalism in her novel and employs it to suggest creative postcolonial processes of syncretism, of different knowledge traditions and transgressive ways to rethink (human) identity as the way towards a more equal and egalitarian future.","PeriodicalId":45553,"journal":{"name":"SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES","volume":"50 1","pages":"102 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46806833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:This essay offers a technocentric perspective on two space operas by Stanisław Lem, The Invincible (1966) and Fiasco (1987), novels that span much of his creative career. As an evolutionary philosopher, Lem was decades ahead of his time in recognizing the idea of postbiological evolution and how technology shapes it. Pivoting around this central theory, Lem shows how our understanding of mind in the universe is narrow and anthropocentric, while engineering and the design space of evolution act as fixed Archimedean points.
{"title":"“Not Welcome Here”: Biological versus Postbiological in Lem’s Space Operas","authors":"M. Ćirković","doi":"10.1353/sfs.2023.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sfs.2023.0002","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This essay offers a technocentric perspective on two space operas by Stanisław Lem, The Invincible (1966) and Fiasco (1987), novels that span much of his creative career. As an evolutionary philosopher, Lem was decades ahead of his time in recognizing the idea of postbiological evolution and how technology shapes it. Pivoting around this central theory, Lem shows how our understanding of mind in the universe is narrow and anthropocentric, while engineering and the design space of evolution act as fixed Archimedean points.","PeriodicalId":45553,"journal":{"name":"SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES","volume":"50 1","pages":"34 - 65"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41672130","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Extreme Fabulations: Science Fictions of Life by Steven Shaviro (review)","authors":"Roger Luckhurst","doi":"10.1353/sfs.2023.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sfs.2023.0011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45553,"journal":{"name":"SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES","volume":"50 1","pages":"126 - 129"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48380862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Josephine Ren, L. Norris, M. Ćirković, Donna T. Tong, Julia Gatermann, Anna McFarlane, D. Higgins, P. Kincaid, P. Alexander, Lorenzo Andolfatto, Kumiko Saito, Roger Luckhurst, Michael Fuchs
ABSTRACT:As global social and environmental conditions deteriorate, growing ranks of scientists, environmentalists, and writers have pointed toward population growth and resource scarcity as primary conditions of ecological catastrophe. Studying the “Future War” subgenre of Late Victorian science fiction, I search for the origins of this contemporary concern with so-called “overpopulation” and resource scarcity. By examining George Chesney’s The Battle of Dorking (1871) and H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1889), this paper explores how late Victorian anxieties about the relative decline of the British Empire, constellated around scarcity, continue to frame contemporary understandings of social and environmental crisis today.
摘要：随着全球社会和环境状况的恶化，越来越多的科学家、环保主义者和作家指出，人口增长和资源稀缺是生态灾难的主要条件。通过研究维多利亚晚期科幻小说的“未来战争”亚类，我寻找这种当代关注所谓“人口过剩”和资源稀缺的根源。通过考察乔治·切斯尼（George Chesney）的《多尔金之战》（The Battle of Dorking，1871）和H.G.威尔斯（H.G.Wells）的《世界大战》（The War of The Worlds，1889），本文探讨了维多利亚时代晚期对大英帝国相对衰落的焦虑是如何继续构成当代对当今社会和环境危机的理解的。
{"title":"“An End to Our Iron and Coal”: Resource Anxiety in Late Victorian Science Fiction","authors":"Josephine Ren, L. Norris, M. Ćirković, Donna T. Tong, Julia Gatermann, Anna McFarlane, D. Higgins, P. Kincaid, P. Alexander, Lorenzo Andolfatto, Kumiko Saito, Roger Luckhurst, Michael Fuchs","doi":"10.1353/sfs.2023.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sfs.2023.0000","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:As global social and environmental conditions deteriorate, growing ranks of scientists, environmentalists, and writers have pointed toward population growth and resource scarcity as primary conditions of ecological catastrophe. Studying the “Future War” subgenre of Late Victorian science fiction, I search for the origins of this contemporary concern with so-called “overpopulation” and resource scarcity. By examining George Chesney’s The Battle of Dorking (1871) and H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1889), this paper explores how late Victorian anxieties about the relative decline of the British Empire, constellated around scarcity, continue to frame contemporary understandings of social and environmental crisis today.","PeriodicalId":45553,"journal":{"name":"SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES","volume":"50 1","pages":"1 - 102 - 105 - 110 - 111 - 115 - 116 - 119 - 119 - 120 - 121 - 124 - 124 - 126 - 126 - 129 - 129 -"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49207841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:Rupert Sanders’s live-action adaptation Ghost in the Shell (2017) is singular within the franchise for manifestly bringing into focus the sociocultural and political dimensions of subjectivation and interpellation through casting. This film crystalizes entanglements of race, gender, and sexuality in both narrative and production. This article argues that the red-robed geisha illuminates the méconnaissance of surface and embodiment, thereby providing a lens through which we can interrogate not just the re-presentation of race but also its spectrality and paradoxical dis/embodiment. Actor Rila Fukushima’s performance serves as a double projection: as a performer, her enactment is a projection on film; as the red-robed geisha, the film re-presents her as a “yellow” woman, literally masked as a “perfected” version of herself. Her Asianness is ornamental and made infinitely wearable, pinpointing her imbrication not only in objectification, but also in the convoluted symbiosis between ornamentation as racialization (and vice versa) and racial melancholia. By focusing on the film’s production and re-presentation of Fukushima, this article posits that her double projection shows how the shifting surfaces of racial formation and the pathology of racial melancholia are clearly intertwined.
{"title":"Oriental Ornaments: Yellowface and Painful Object(ification)s in Sanders’s Ghost in the Shell","authors":"Donna T. Tong","doi":"10.1353/sfs.2023.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sfs.2023.0003","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Rupert Sanders’s live-action adaptation Ghost in the Shell (2017) is singular within the franchise for manifestly bringing into focus the sociocultural and political dimensions of subjectivation and interpellation through casting. This film crystalizes entanglements of race, gender, and sexuality in both narrative and production. This article argues that the red-robed geisha illuminates the méconnaissance of surface and embodiment, thereby providing a lens through which we can interrogate not just the re-presentation of race but also its spectrality and paradoxical dis/embodiment. Actor Rila Fukushima’s performance serves as a double projection: as a performer, her enactment is a projection on film; as the red-robed geisha, the film re-presents her as a “yellow” woman, literally masked as a “perfected” version of herself. Her Asianness is ornamental and made infinitely wearable, pinpointing her imbrication not only in objectification, but also in the convoluted symbiosis between ornamentation as racialization (and vice versa) and racial melancholia. By focusing on the film’s production and re-presentation of Fukushima, this article posits that her double projection shows how the shifting surfaces of racial formation and the pathology of racial melancholia are clearly intertwined.","PeriodicalId":45553,"journal":{"name":"SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES","volume":"50 1","pages":"66 - 79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43890735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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