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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animates the entire novel, and provides a utopian but
nevertheless practical formula for living that is universal
and timeless. This gives the status of future developments
described in the book quite a different sense, according to
whether they are social or technological. On the one hand,
various wider social changes are directly related to the
utopian forces at work in the Dump (a gay black woman
Governor of Georgia (533), a liberal woman President
(583), and the ‘multiple partner referendum’ over legalising
group marriage (741)), while on the other Shit and Eric are
unapologetic Luddites ignorant or antagonistic towards
technological innovations. The novel thereby figures the
future in terms of continuity with, rather than difference
from the present, which is quite different from the usual
sci-fi employment of the ‘novum’ of futurity. 115 In this
sense, José Esteban Muňoz has argued that heterosexual
culture sacrifices its present for a fantasmatic future that
will be enjoyed by its children, whereas a queer future is a
future lived in the present. He goes on to discuss aspects of
Delany’s autobiographical The Motion of Light in Water in
these terms, but they could equally be applied here: ‘To call
for this notion of the future in the present is to summon
a refunctioned notion of utopia in the service of subaltern
politics.’ (2009 49) Perhaps we could call this the utopian
future of the ‘faggot-nigger avant-garde’, the repressed
and denied but nevertheless ever-present communities
based on the generous and free exchange of pleasure.
These communities always form according to their specific
conditions of emergence, but what they distribute is the
timeless experiences of joy and happiness. In this sense,
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