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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in order to instrumentalise and exploit the bios and its
libidinal drives. These simulations form a ‘symbiosis of
desire’ (2008 64) (or interface) between technological and
biological realms, capturing libidinal forces and siphoning
off surplus value through selling images, but as well,
and just as importantly, by renting out the necessary
technological infrastructure. Every click is money. In this
sense, both ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ worlds are defined by their
‘hardware’. Pasquinelli insists on this materiality of the
digital parasite, which he positions ‘against the autonomy
of the digital sphere’ (2008 65) and its ideology ‘digital
idealism’ (the idea that reality can be entirely ‘re-coded’
and subsumed within a virtual world) that dominates both
academic and popular representations of the interface.
Once more, Matrix makes the point: the hardware is
what siphons off the biological energy that keeps the
technological systems going, and the ‘virtual’ story – a
conflict played out on the level of software – is just a
fantasy obscuring the ‘real’ political process. According
to Pasquinelli ‘digitalism’ is accompanied by an idealistic
politics, a politics we have already seen interface films
embrace, where ‘Internet based communication can be free
from any form of exploitation and will naturally evolve
towards a society of equal peers’ (2008 66). The outburst
of communal joy and defiance in the dance party in Matrix
is the archetypal image of this young and sexy ‘freedom’
of the future. 30 Digitalism perfectly describes this naive
belief in freedom, and the inevitable affirmation of hackers
and/or open source software, and the democratic right to
information that accompanies it (eg., War Games (Badham,
74
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