Science fiction or future fact? Exploring imaginative geographies of the new millennium

In this article, we examine the imaginative geographies of the new millennium through a critical reading of cyberfiction. This fiction, we argue, through its use of estrangement and defamiliarization, and its destabilization of the foundational assumptions of modernism, provides a cognitive space in which to contemplate future spatialities given the present postmodern condition – a cognitive space which is already providing an imaginal sphere in which present-day individual and institutional thought and practice are partially shaped. Using a detailed reading of 34 novels and four collections of short stories, we illustrate the utility of this cognitive space, and its appropriation, through an exploration of fictional visions of postmodern urbanism in the early twenty-first century. We assess the viability and utility of these visions by comparing them to academic analyses of the sociospatial processes shaping present-day urban form and spatiality

Ficção científica e medicina: elaborando uma framework para auxiliar o desenvolvimento de artefactos médicos

With technological advances, the human being becomes more and more reliant on technology. We use technology to work, to improve our social experiences, to learn, among many other activities. Medicine is no exception to this. It is common to hear about concepts originated on Science Fiction coming to life in areas such as spatial exploration or even communication. It is important to realise how Science Fiction helps teams working in those domains, as well as understand what consumers expect for the future. However, we rarely hear about Science Fiction directly influencing Medicine. Has this field also benefited from Science Fiction to create new or enhanced existing artifacts? This literary and cinematic genre pushes the boundaries of what is thought "possible" by idealizing artifacts that go beyond what is conceivable in their time. It is an outlet for those who want to imagine what the future might hold, without forgetting to distinguish the possible or plausible from the fantastical. In this dissertation, we go through how Science Fiction can be used as a guide to developing Medical Artifacts, as well as devise a framework that has the potential to help their developers make more informed decisions about the characteristics of those artifacts. MADIS - Medical Artifact Design Inspired by Science Fiction - is a framework that incorporates the knowledge acquired during the research and interviews with medical professionals to create a tool which supports the development of Medical Artifacts through the lens of Science Fiction.Com o avanço tecnológico, o ser humano torna-se cada vez mais dependente da tecnologia. Usamo-la para trabalhar, para melhorar a nossa experiência social, para aprender, etc. e a medicina não é uma exceção. É comum ouvirmos falar de conceitos originários da Ficção Científica ganharem vida em áreas como a exploração espacial ou até a comunicação, e ver como ajuda as equipas a saber o que os consumidores esperam do futuro. No entanto, raramente ouvimos falar da sua influência nas tecnologias que nos mantêm vivos. Terá sido a medicina também beneficiado dos mundos de Ficção Científica na criação ou aperfeiçoamento dos seus artefactos? Este género literário e cinematográfico supera as barreiras do que é pensado como “possível” ao idealizar artefactos que vão para além do que é concebível no seu tempo. É um escape para aqueles que querem imaginar o que o futuro nos espera, sem esquecer de distinguir o possível ou plausível do fantástico. Nesta dissertação, vamos ver como a Ficção Científica pode ser usada como um guia para desenvolver artefactos médicos, bem como elaborar uma framework para ajudar os seus criadores a tomar decisões mais informadas. MADIS - Design de Artefactos Médicos Inspirados pela Ficção-científica - é uma framework que incorpora o conhecimento adquirido durante a pesquisa e as entrevistas feitas a profissionais médicos para criar uma ferramenta que suporta o desenvolvimento de Artefactos Médicos através da Ficção Científica.Mestrado em Comunicação Multimédi

Extreme Fabulations: Science Fictions of Life

With this book, Steven Shaviro offers a thought experiment. He discusses a number of science fiction narratives: three novels, one novella, three short stories, and one musical concept album. Shaviro not only analyzes these works in detail but also uses them to ask questions about human, and more generally, biological life: about its stubborn insistence and yet fragility; about the possibilities and perils of seeking to control it; about the aesthetic and social dimensions of human existence, in relation to the nonhuman; and about the ethical value of human life under conditions of extreme oppression and devastation. Shaviro pursues these questions through the medium of science fiction because this form of storytelling offers us a unique way of grappling with issues that deeply and unavoidably concern us but that are intractable to rational argumentation or to empirical verification. The future is unavoidably vague and multifarious; it stubbornly resists our efforts to know it in advance, let alone to guide it or circumscribe it. But science fiction takes up this very vagueness and indeterminacy and renders it into the form of a self-consciously fictional narrative. It gives us characters who experience, and respond to, the vagaries of unforeseeable change

Science fiction in the public library : essence and selection

The selection of science fiction was researched to determine how science fiction should be evaluated and selected in the context of the public library. The first sub-problem to be researched concerned the cultural, societal and literary origins of this genre, after which its distinct phases of development were studied as well as the characteristic essence of science fiction which would affect its selection per se, specifically whether conventional literary criteria are suitable for the evaluation of items of science fiction during selection. The next sub-problem focused on, was whether theory can explain the process of fiction selection, The succeeding sub-problem was to empirically Study current practice in science fiction selection. Survey research was conducted amongst selected major urban/regional public library services in the USA. Final research results indicated that science fiction is a sophisticated, multi-textured genre which differs significantly from fellow popular genres, Science fiction is viewed by some critics as being on the cusp of post-modernism, a significant body of work in contemporary literature, and a supreme expression of late capitalism. Research further showed that no satisfactory evaluative criteria exist. It was also established that theory of fiction selection is not always capable of explaining or guiding the process of fiction selection. There is no model for the selection of science fiction. Finn guiding principles for science fiction selection could be formulated by the aid of this study. The study concluded with a specially-designed model for the selection of science fiction (including a scorecard with specially-compiled criteria for evaluating items), as well as a suggested core collection. A structured approach should be followed by the science fiction selector. The guiding principles and core collection which were formulated in this study, the set of special criteria as well as the model, together demonstrate that the selection of science fiction can be structured, controlled and guided within established parameters.Information ScienceD. Lit. et Phil. (Information Science

Living as if God exists: Looking for Common Ground in Times of Radical Pluralism

This paper offers some comments on some metaphysical and epistemological claims of theological realism from the perspective of continental philosophy of religion, thereby taking the work of Soskice and Hick as paradigmatic for this kind of philosophical theology. The first comment regards the fact that theological realism considers religious and theological propositions as ways to depict or represent reality, and hence aims to bring them as much as possible in line with scientific ones. Some contemporary French philosophers criticize such a representing, depicting knowledge of God, because it encapsulates the divine reality in mundane, specifically scientific categories. eventually, theological realism runs the risk of annihilating God’s radical transcendence and reducing religion to an alternative scientific theory. The second comment tries to explore whether one can affirm God’s reality from a practical perspective, as a postulate of reason, and whether such an approach could serve as a common ground for religious and secular ways of life in times of radical pluralism. This comment begins by investigating the regulative character of Kant’s idea of God as the highest idea of reason, which not only orientates our theoretical enquiries, but also our moral actions. Although this idea is only a heuristic fiction for theoretical reason, God’s existence has to be affirmed on practical grounds, as a symbolic reality that gives orientation to people’s lives

Body Language: Reading the Corpse in Forensic Crime Fiction .

Our purpose in this article is to explore the fascination, over the last decade, with crime narratives that centre on the figure of the forensic pathologist. Principally this involves a reading of Cornwell�s Scarpetta series, but we also discuss a growing number of other novels that confront readers with the �reality� of the dead body. In some cases (for example, Kathy Reichs and Priscilla Masters) writers use, as Cornwell does, the figure of the forensic pathologist; in other instances, such as Nicci French�s The Red Room (2001) and Jan Burke�s Bones (1999), the female protagonist�s reading of the crime is determined by alternative forms of first-hand access to the �underworld� of the grave or autopsy room, such as that of the crime journalist or criminal psychologist. In contrast to the kind of police procedural novel that gives centre-stage to the psyche of the serial killer, the forensic pathology novel aims instead to evoke the �appalling human messiness� of actual crime through a perspective nearer to that of the victim. By providing readers with not only a body of experts but an expert on the body the novelist allows them to listen to the voices of the dead

The Philosophy of Science Fiction: Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip K. Dick

The Philosophy of Science Fiction: Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip K. Dick explores the deep affinity between two seemingly quite different thinkers, in their attempts to address the need for salvation in (and from) an era of accelerated mechanization, in which humans' capacity for destroying or subjugating the living has attained a planetary scale. The philosopher and the science fiction writer come together to meet the contradictory imperatives of a realist outlook-a task which, arguably, philosophy and science fiction could only ever adequately undertake in collaboration. Their respective approaches meet in a focus on the ambiguous status of fictionalizing, or fabulation, as simultaneously one of mechanization's most devastating tools, and the possibility of its undoing. When they are read together, the complexities and paradoxes thrown up by this ambiguity, with which both Bergson and Dick struggle on their own, open up new ways to navigate ideas of mechanism and mysticism, immanence and transcendence, and the possibility and meaning of salvation. The result is at once an original reading of both thinkers, a new critical theory of the socio–cultural, political and ethical function of fictionalizing, and a case study in the strange affinity, at times the uncanny similarity, between philosophy and science fiction

Reality Is Not a Solid. Poetic Transfigurations of Stevens’ Fluid Concept of Reality

The main aim of this essay is to show that, for Stevens, the concept of reality is very fluctuating. The essay begins with addressing the relationship between poetry and philosophy. I argue, contra Critchley, that Stevens’ poetic work can elucidate, or at least help us to understand better, the ideas of philosophers that are usually considered obscure. The main “obscure” philosophical work introduced in and discussed throughout the essay is Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism. Both a (shellingian) philosopher and a (stevensian) poet search for reality. In order to understand Stevens’ poetry better, I distingush several concepts of reality: initial reality (the external world of the common sense), imagined reality (a fiction, a product of one’s mind), final reality (the object of a philosopher’s and a poet’s search) and total reality (the sum of all realities, Being). These determinations are fixed by reason (in the present essay), whereas in Stevens’ poetic works, they are made fluid by the imagination. This fluidity leads the concept of reality from its initial stage through the imagined stage to its final stage. Throughout this process, imagined reality must be distinguished from both a mere fancy and its products. Final reality is, however, nothing transcendent. It is rather a general transpersonal order of reality created by poetry/the imagination. The main peculiarity of final reality is that it is a dynamic order. It is provisional at each moment. Stevens (and Schelling too) characterizes this order as that of a work of art which is a finite object, but has an infinite meaning. Stevens calls this order “the central poem” or the “endlessly elaborating poem”. If ultimate reality is a poem created by the imagination, one may ask who is the imagining subject. I argue that this agent is best to be thought as total reality, that is, as Being. Stevens, however, maintains that if there were such an agency, it would be an inhuman agency, “an inhuman meditation”. The essay concludes, in a Derridian manner, with the claim that this agency cannot have any name; it is the “unnamed creator of an unknown sphere, / Unknown as yet, unknowable, / Uncertain certainty” (OP: 127). It is best thought as an X, as an unknown variable. Being has no name

Writing and the zeitgeist

Have contemporary writers anything to say about their times and, if so, have they the nerve to say it? This article argues that there is much failure of vision and failure of nerve on the part of today's writers. Because they lack the clarity and courage to come to terms with the times, they succumb to its deceptions and seductions. Its thesis is is that the power and value of writing is in the scope and depth of its engagement with the zeitgeist; in how perceptively a writer captures the spirit of the age, expresses the temper of the times; in how much of what is there in the air, throbbing in the collective psyche, pulsing in the ever shifting social order, a writer gathers up and expresses in accurate and resonant images, in provocative and paradigmatic stories. This is pursued in reflection on attitudes expressed at two international writers conferences and in polemic against the prevailing views expressed

Ethics of artificial wombs: missing angles and special concerns

Artificial womb technology (ectogenesis) is commonly associated with visions of science fiction societies where babies are manufactured and grown outside the woman’s body; however, ectogenesis is well on its way to becoming a reality. We reviewed literature related to the artificial womb and the discourses around this technology. Literature was collected from the following databases: ScienceDirect, Compendex, IEEE, Communication Abstracts, Scopus, OVID(All), EBSCO(All), Academic One File, Web of Science, and JSTOR. Out of 194 articles, 133 were included (based on relevance to the topic). Current literature on artificial wombs mainly focuses on feminist issues of whether or not this technology will liberate or oppress women, and in the context of the abortion debate. However, the use of artificial wombs has implications for gender relations and women’s rights on a global scale. For example, what affect will ectogenesis have on women’s autonomy, social well-being, and status in low- and middle-income countries? What will be the effect on family structure and gender imbalances that are already present in countries like India and China? We outline several future possibilities and implications of artificial womb technology. Furthermore, the ethical, legal, economic implications go beyond those impacting just women, globally. They have meaning on a national and international level, in regards to population dynamics, social structure, international competition and development, etc, and are just logical steps away from becoming reality