Zepke Stephen: Head in the Stars. Essays on Science Fiction
Science fiction concerns the future, of course, this being its simple, organising essence. But science fiction wants to do more than just be in the future, it wants to predict the future, to reveal its horrors and beauty, its similarities and difference, and more importantly, tell us about all the cool stuff. This means that the ‘future’ science fiction explores has changed a lot over the years, and has a fascinating past, one with a twistier time-line than a Phillip K. Dick story […]. But this book is not a history of science fiction, because although historical context plays a part – the Cold War from which alien arrival films emerge, or our biopolitical present in which interface films become symptomatic – this book is most concerned with science fiction futures that crack history open, allowing something unaccountable to emerge, something singular and new. As a result, this book sees the ‘new’ and its ‘future’ in science fiction in a very different way from Darko Suvin and Frederic Jameson, whose astoundingly influential theory sees science fiction futures as forms of ‘cognitive estrangement’ that seek to reflect on the present that produces them. [from the Introduction] Layout: Dejan Dragosavac Ruta 260 pages [Paperback : 13,5 x 19 cm] Publisher: Multimedijalni institut [Zagreb, Croatia] ISBN: 978-953-7372-67-5 — the book is available via Amazon: https://www.amazon.de/dp/9537372677/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=
Science fiction concerns the future, of course, this being its simple, organising essence. But science fiction wants to do more than just be in the future, it wants to predict the future, to reveal its horrors and beauty, its similarities and difference, and more importantly, tell us about all the cool stuff. This means that the ‘future’ science fiction explores has changed a lot over the years, and has a fascinating past, one with a twistier time-line than a Phillip K. Dick story […].
But this book is not a history of science fiction, because although historical context plays a part – the Cold War from which alien arrival films emerge, or our biopolitical present in which interface films become symptomatic – this book is most concerned with science fiction futures that crack history open, allowing something unaccountable to emerge, something singular and new. As a result, this book sees the ‘new’ and its ‘future’ in science fiction in a very different way from Darko Suvin and Frederic Jameson, whose astoundingly influential theory sees science fiction futures as forms of ‘cognitive estrangement’ that seek to reflect on the present that produces them. [from the Introduction]
Layout: Dejan Dragosavac Ruta
260 pages [Paperback : 13,5 x 19 cm]
Publisher: Multimedijalni institut [Zagreb, Croatia]
ISBN: 978-953-7372-67-5
— the book is available via Amazon: https://www.amazon.de/dp/9537372677/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=
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who are against – on principle – both. Matt the cop and
Dr. Snell the scientist patrol and protect the border of the
known, and both make it clear that any attempt to open this
border will not be tolerated. This is the political problem
of the film, which pits the fidelity of John to the outside
against the “protection” by the law of the inside. Badiou
develops this conflict between the law and the event in
terms of thought: ‘The law is what constitutes the subject
as powerlessness of thought.’ (2003 83) The law is ‘statist’
according to Badiou, meaning it enumerates, names, and
controls the situation according to the pre-existing rules
defining a community, and acts against the creative thought
introduced by an event. Suppressing the event is the role of
the police, celebrated in The Blob and denounced in It Came
from Outer Space. The event challenges the law by creating a
subject existing outside of communal reality, and ‘since the
event was excluded by all the regular laws of the situation
– compels the subject to invent a new way of being and
acting in the situation’ (2001 41-2). John Putman, as subject
of the event, must step outside the law and the community
it polices in order to force it to confront the new truth of
an alien outside appearing in its midst. As a result, the
naming of the event, as Badiou puts it, ‘is essentially illegal
in that it cannot conform to any law of representation’ (2005
205). Prior to, and forever against the unified identities
policed by the law is the criminal real. John’s attempts
at communicating with, and finally helping the aliens is
what Badiou calls an ‘emancipatory project’ because ‘what
every emergence of hitherto unknown possibilities does,
is to put an end to consensus’ (2001 32). The event is an
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