Early science fiction (SF) is noted for, among other things, its conservatism and lack of interest in ecology. Brian Stableford, a well-known SF writer and critic, writes that "there are very few early stories with ecological themes" (1993, 395). This article shows that, in fact, many early SF works (those written between the Enlightenment and World War II) employ ecological themes, especially as applied to questioning our anthropocentrism. These works suggest that humans are but one species among many, that we are not the end of nature/history, that the natural world may be better off without us, and, in some cases, that humanity is fated to go extinct, the result of its own hubris. Such views are undoubtedly pessimistic, yet these works may also be read as warnings for humans to seek a more humble view of ourselves as members of what Aldo Leopold calls the land community.
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In Nature and Culture
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2014
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 45–65 (21 total)
Loneliness and Love
The Potential of Human-AI Relations as Explored by Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema
Abby Lauren Kidd
When thinking of science fiction films about artificial intelligence, we often recall enduring images, characters, and plots from a handful of iconic movies, such as Lana and Lilly Wachowskis’ Matrix ( 1999 ) and James Cameron's Terminator
Eric S. Rabkin
Frankenstein and Dracula represent two different genres in print but only one in film. The emergence of science fiction from the Gothic exemplifies normal public genre development. The translation of the written Frankenstein and Dracula into film exemplifies genre development as an adaptation both to historical moment and to medium. In both the print and film cases, we can see the same mechanisms by which a genre is not only established in the public sphere but in the mind of a reader or viewer, a dialectic process in which the genre forms and informs reading and viewing and potentially, as a genre, is reformed by reading and viewing. Consideration of cognitive mechanisms involved in verbal and visual cognition shows both the interaction and the typical dominance of the visual, although genre, and hence individual works, can be modified by increasing our focus on the verbal.
Raphaël Baroni
tales, animal fables, science fiction, and so forth) are not unnatural, Alber’s definition is broader: On the one hand, there are the physical, logical, or epistemic impossibilities found in postmodernist narratives that have not yet been
In European Comic Art
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 5–23 (19 total)
Predator or Prey Who Do You Think You Are?
The Dystopian Interpretation/Adaptation of Titus Andronicus in the animation PSYCHO-PASS
Kyoko Matsuyama
Abstract
In the Japanese animation PSYCHO-PASS, the setting is a future Japan where every citizen's mental health is monitored and analysed, and where they can sometimes be terminated according to the state of their mental health. In such a dark and dystopian setting, the motifs from the many bloody quotations of Shakespeare's bloodiest play Titus Andronicus are used in the three-episode multiple murder case of young schoolgirls. The animation shows how Shakespeare is used to stylise and elaborate the serial murder case. This article discusses how Titus Andronicus is used to give relevance and sophistication to serial murder, and how the bloodiness of a serial murder can give a different impression to audiences by the use of literature.
In Critical Survey
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 119–131 (13 total)
Starting the Conversation
Transforming the World One Word at a Time
Deborah Kahn-Harris
books was a small but vibrant collection of feminist science fiction, which now sits in my office, available as a sort of very modest lending library at Leo Baeck College for students and faculty and anyone who asks nicely and will return the books
Home and Away
The Politics of Life after Earth
Micha Rahder
Earth itself. Outer space has long served as a canvas for sociopolitical imaginations, calling up the worlds of science fiction and fantasy long relegated to the “genre” peripheries of literature and considered irrelevant to “serious” scholarly work
In Environment and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2019
- Article Type:
- Review Article
- Pages:
- 158–177 (20 total)
A Woman Would Marry a Woman
Reading Sifra on Lesbianism
Laliv Clenman
a sort of science fiction, a mirror into a world so Other and so contrary but also eerily similar, a reflection upon the imbalance in our own. It is perhaps no accident that in all of her ravenous reading Rabbi Sheila Shulman was inordinately fond of
The Face of the Future
An Ethical Examination of Lucrecia Martel's AI
Abby Sacks
schizophrenia, and 69 percent were averse to “have the person [with schizophrenia] marry into their family.” Though AI may be read inconsequentially as a science fiction film, the ways in which Martel chooses to portray her subject and her own quotes about the
Thomas Klikauer, Norman Simms, Marcus Colla, Nicolas Wittstock, Matthew Specter, Kate R. Stanton, John Bendix, and Bernd Schaefer
European, diasporic, and global frameworks. Kate R. Stanton University of Oxford Ingo Cornils , Beyond Tomorrow: German Science Fiction and Utopian Thought in the 20th and 21st Centuries (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2020). Science fiction
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2022
- Article Type:
- Book Review
- Pages:
- 104–131 (28 total)