The Monstrous Fantastic Conference Paper Abstracts - International ...

who challenge the order that the British wish to establish in this part of “Greater Britain” are both human heathens opposing chivalric virtuesand demons attempting to bring darkness and chaos to the land. This paper proposes to explore how Marshall’s depictions of the Beowulfmonsters compare and contrast with her depictions of the subaltern in British India. Although Marshall’s discourse appears to rely on thedichotomies of knightly vs. monstrous and good vs. evil, monstrosity becomes for Marshall increasingly difficult to define with exact precision.As historian Catherine Hall reminds us in her study of British imperialist discourse about Jamaica (a work that itself employs Gayatri ChakravortySpivak’s use of Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance), “the mapping of difference” should be seen as “the constant discursive work ofcreating, bringing into being, or reworking these hieratic categories.” Marshall’s occasional, and perhaps unconscious, sentimental sympathyfor the Beowulf monsters and her depiction of “almost British” colonized subjects who fight alongside their imperial leaders reflect what oftenhappened in colonial discourse: attempting to establish clear boundaries between the “legitimate” imperial self and the Other becomes toocomplex to rely on mere binaries, problematizing nineteenth-century British self-imagining as civilized and chivalric guardians of order incontrast to the “monstrous” colonized.Never-Never Land: A 21 st Century Experiment in Mythos and MetaphysicsErika LundahlIthaca CollegeThe purpose of this research is to identify “Never-never Land” within the story of Peter Pan and analyze the mythos it has generated since J.M.Barry’s play first appeared on stage and his novel in print. I argue, using Nietzsche’s essay “On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense” and Plato’scosmology of forms and the heavenly bodies as de-lineated in Timaeus, that Never-never Land is a concept that refers to a manifestation of anindividual’s Utopia in physical space. I will trace the etymology of the word “Never-never Land” to its aboriginal-austral roots in westerncivilization as that of a philosophical concept and of physical space, established several decades before J.M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan in 1911(lastyear was its 100th anniversary). I will examine, using the biographical texts of R.D.S. Jack and Andrew Birkin, the forces that fueled J.M. Barry’sunique creation of the fictional location “Never-never Land” in Peter Pan. I will argue that the writings of Nietzsche inspired J.M. Barrie’s visionof Never-never Land as a place unique to every individual, and that while all Never-never Lands share certain characteristics - the absence oftime, a mitigation or suspension of consequences, and freedom from responsibility- its predominant characteristic is that of irregularity. I willargue that Never-never Land is a trope you can see all over modern culture – explicitly through Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch andimplicitly in the popularity of highly personalized video games and socially sanctioned alternate realties. Ultimately I will call into question whyindividuals need to create Never-never Lands to fully understand and experience their world.112. (SF) Sciences and Philosophies of Body, Mind, and Perception Vista BChair: David FarnellFukuoka UniversityMedusa to Slake-moth: The Neurobiological Basis of Hypnagogia, Paralysis, Hallucinations, and Other Magical Abilities of Literary MonstersRoby DuncanCalifornia State UniversityBradley VoytekUniversity of California, San FranciscoMany literary monsters—be they mythic, modern, or technological—possess some manner of magical or wondrous ability that makes themsuperior to the average human. From the hypnotizing gaze of the vampire to the fascination attributed to the slake-moth, powers that workthrough the medium of vision abound. While these fantastic abilities are often magical (or fictional technological) in nature, there is aburgeoning scientific understanding of the neurobiology underlying hypnagogia, paralysis, and hallucinations, and some of the ways thesephenomenon relate to hypnosis and the seizures found in epilepsy. In this paper we explore the possible bases of these abilities from aneuroscientific perspective. It is our intention in this paper to move past the purely fantastic “it’s just magic” level of description used in mymuch of literature, and to instead explore reasonable possibilities for what these “weird actions at a distance” might be doing once they reachthe visual sensory field of the nervous system. Through discussion of the hypnotic gaze of historical vampires in fiction, the visual infectionvector in Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and the paralyzing effect of the slake-moth in Miéville’s Perdido Street Station, we intend to provide somebasic education on contemporary neurobiology as well as an entertaining examination of interesting phenomenon within SF and genreliterature.Perception across Selected Science Fiction TextsAllen HeadUniversity of AlabamaHuman beings are an example of a sapient creature that uses its mechanisms of perception to observe its environment. An example of a humanin science fiction is Paul- Maud’dib , the protagonist in Frank Herbert’s Dune series. In Ted Chiang’s Exaltation, we are exposed to a race ofbeing whose body is profoundly different than that of an organic human: a race of mechanical beings that have “brains” not made of organicnervous tissue, but of precisely tuned mechanisms that respond to fluctuations in air pressure. Another relevant race of entities granted theability to perceive are the digients, beings who were created by humans and reside in the digital world in Ted Chiang’s The Lifecycle of SoftwareObjects. The mental representation of what digients observe is one created through the processing of sensory data encoded in the binarycomputer language. Given the variety of perception mechanisms, a need to investigate the various similarities and differences between themarises, along with the question of which being’s perception mechanisms give it the clearest and most accurate mental representation of itsenvironment. The human brain, the digient’s core processes, the air-pressure being’s brain; all are bastions in which a being’s consciousnessresides. Due to human physiology, Paul-Maud’dib is not in complete control over the processes occurring within his brain. He is also subject toperception manipulation through the ingestion of organic compounds. The air-being is not in control of the processes occurring in its brain;