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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main themes are established; inter-racial sexual relations,
father–son relations, and the necessity of following your
desires. This last is the lesson Bill Bottom attempts to teach
Eric at the beginning of the book, but being offered in the
form of a rather camp metaphor, it flies over Eric’s 16 year
old – and rather butch – head. On the day of his departure
from Atlanta Eric has returned home after an unsuccessful
early morning attempt to fuck homeless men underneath
the highway, and finds Bill awake in his neighbouring flat
wearing a leather jacket, a gorilla mask, and drinking hot
chocolate. Bill is a white accountant, an educated, ironic
and effeminate gay man (the exact opposite of Bull) who
has been watching the original King Kong – the ‘uncut
version’ that includes the scenes removed or censored at
various points after its release. As well, Bill explains, he
has watched Peter Jackson’s reconstruction of one of these
scenes (put back into his restoration of the original) – the
lost spider-pit sequence – ‘25 times’. Eric offers to have sex
with Bill, who rejects him explaining ‘I do not shit where
I eat!’ (15) Eric doesn’t understand Bill’s figure of speech,
and after describing some of his more colourful sexual
encounters rather petulantly claims; ‘So I ... do eat shit or
whatever the fuck you said. Right?’ (21) Eric’s affirmation
not only rejects the norms of sexual activity, but of the
normalised, responsible version of ‘gay’ Bill represents.
‘I don’t even like gay guys’ (17) he explains to Bill, neither
their camp effeminacy, nor their desire to live ‘normal’
monogamous married lives. Eric wants ‘about a yard of dick
every day’ (19) and he isn’t fussy about it, a fact already made
abundantly clear during these first pages of the book.
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