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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too often and precisely for this to be true, but by embracing the
Nietzschean ‘meaning’ of the film it is possible to affirm it in the
highest possible terms, as an ontological revaluation of science fiction
that contributes a new concept of the future. Or at least this is what
the rest of this essay shall attempt to argue.
66 This line seems to have escaped Jerold Abrams, who claims that ‘we
know who our creators and designers really are – namely, the aliens’
(2007 251) to support his argument that 2001 draws on Nietzsche’s
proclamation of the death of God. Neither claim is sustainable
because at no point of the film is anyone aware of the monolith’s
function.
67 The first four spacecraft we are shown in the sequence are all atomic
weapons circling the globe, a point not immediately obvious in the
film, but made clear in the book.
68 As Chion accurately points out, the warfare of the apes has been
superseded by mutual surveillance (2001 146).
69 This process, once more, is that of the techno-scientific economy,
which Kubrick presents, in a vision as prescient as Nietzsche’s, as a
logical extension of our own state of globalised capital. Nietzsche’s
words could be Kubrick’s: ‘It is clear, what I combat is economic optimism:
as if increasing expenditure of everybody must necessarily
involve the increasing welfare of everybody. The opposite seems to
me the case: expenditure of everybody amounts to a collective loss: man
is diminished – so one no longer knows what aim this tremendous
process has served. An aim? A new aim? – that is what humanity
needs.’ (1967 866) Kubrick will show us its aim – HAL – and the new
aim it serves – HAL’s overcoming.
70 Dave Bowman is in fact asked this question in the course of the
interview. To which he answers: “Well, he acts like he has genuine
emotions. [...] But as to whether or not he has real feelings, I don’t
think anyone can truthfully answer.”
247
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