Academic Track

Confusion 2021 – Academic Track Friday 2nd April 2021 Session One: String Theory Made Easy Presented by: Maciej Matuszewski String theory is often considered to be one of the most difficult branches of modern physics. However, it is far from an impenetrable subject and the basic ideas can be readily understood by a layperson. String theory is the result of a long-time trend in physics to attempt to arrive at unified theories of seemingly distinct phenomena. The great successes of twentieth century physics have been general relativity – which explains how gravity behaves at large scales – and the standard model – which explains the subatomic world. However, it has been difficult to see how these two theories work together – for example, we do not know how gravity works for subatomic particles. String theory was created to describe subatomic particles called mesons – however it was also found to naturally ‘predict’ gravity. It is therefore hoped that it can be the missing ‘Theory of Everything’. Even if it is not correct as a fundamental theory in and of itself, the mathematics of string theory is very interesting. The so-called AdS/CFT correspondence is a trick that uses this new mathematics to simplify complicated calculations in areas such as high energy physics and solid state physics. My work has, in particular, looked at how the AdS/CFT correspondence can be used to make simpler, but hopefully still accurate, models of how mesons decay. This presentation will provide an accessible but detailed historical and scientific background which led up to string theory and the AdS/CFT correspondence, and then briefly outline the specifics of these theories themselves. Bio: The same as many other people working in STEM subjects, my interest in science was first stoked by watching and reading SF. I completed an MSci in Physics with Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London in 2014 and a PhD at the Durham University Department of Mathematical Sciences and Centre for Particle Theory in 2019. I have remained at Durham University, where I work as an Assistant Teaching Fellow and Research Facilities Manager. While my work now mainly focuses on teaching and providing support for the Math Department's computer network, I have retained an interest in the string theory work that was the focus of my PhD. I have attended many SF conventions, including multiple Worldcons, but this will be my first Eastercon. https://www.dur.ac.uk/mathematical.sciences/people/profile/?mode=staff&id=13117 Session Two: Games, Frames, & Flames: Utopian Worldmaking While the World is Burning Presented by: Francis Gene-Rowe, Avery Delany, and Jo Lindsay Walton a) Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Have Fun: Generative Play in Dystopian Times Already a thriving (sub)genre across sf media, dystopias have proliferated in recent years. It’s no wonder: doomy trends and developments abound in both world politics and our awareness of unfolding climate disaster, to say nothing of Covid-19’s exacerbation of existing inequalities. Dystopian imaginings can be parsed in a variety of ways – as proleptic visions, as calls to arms, as painfully honest social realism, as fetishised commodities – and I find my thinking lingering on suggestions that dystopian imaginaries may be counterproductive, even figments of a privileged gaze. To have the luxury to contemplate representations of oppression may be to enjoy a comfortable distance. It is important to centre the reality that for those in marginalised communities and identity positions, dystopia and ‘the end of the world’ are past or recurring events. The generative response to the dawning realisation that it was All Dystopia All Along may be to invest our energies into seeking to instigate and build different futures. The distortions of pandemic life have not been evenly distributed. With that said, common experiences for many include restriction, compelled exposure to danger and impoverishment of pleasure and sociality. The pandemic has also foregrounded the importance of mutual aid and our ties to each other. Among the more pressing concerns of how to keep living, Coronareality also asks questions about the ways we choose to play and imagine together. This highlights the importance of utopianism in gaming, of channelling experiences of play in order to escape alienated pessimism, to better know the kind of work we need to be able to do. I don’t, however, want to give up on dystopianism, but will instead submit these ideas to a stress test by asking questions about how dystopian gaming can provide generative fun. The latter part of this presentation will consist of a critical evaluation of Paranoia RPG. Featuring an irredeemably dystopian setting, it is my view that Paranoia’s ramshackle-by-design worldbuilding and disregard for heroism opens up a liberating form of play, a way of gaming dystopia that escapes teleology and mastery. The road to utopia is deeply uncertain, but I hope to show that dystopian play can fit inside whatever hopeful Le Guinian carrier-bag we sf fans may assemble. Bio: Francis Gene-Rowe is a PhD student at Royal Holloway. His doctoral thesis investigates the work of Philip K. Dick and William Blake. Other areas of research and interest include Ursula Le Guin, Walter Benjamin, tabletop gaming, decoloniality, petrocultures, ecocriticism, contemporary poetry and goblin futures. He codirects the London Science Fiction Research Community (lsfrc.co.uk) and is one of the Science Fiction Research Association’s UK representatives. He also serves on the editorial board of Palgrave Science Fiction and Fantasy’s A New Canon series. b) Welcome to the Future: Inclusion, immersion and belonging in video game futures and worlds In many ways, video games allow players to escape from their "AFK" (Legacy Russell, 2020) selves/lives/worlds by allowing players to virtually experience/inhabit/play in and with other bodies, lives, stories and worlds. This capacity for escapism vis-a-vis avatars and worlds has proven crucial during Covid-19, as more people than ever from all over the world have immersed themselves in video games such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons, The Sims 4, Among Us and Hades. At a time when much of the world was under lockdown and people were left feeling isolated, unable to physically venture past their own front doors or connect with others, these games allowed players to escape into, communicate with and co-create other bodies/lives/stories/worlds. However, the opportunity to ‘escape’ into these virtual realities is not possible for everyone, and neither do players experience escapism equally. In this talk, I unpack the notion of ‘fun’ asking who is fun for and explore how video games create immersion for some groups whilst occluding it for others. I focus specifically on video games which construct and transmit ideas about imaginaries of the future, examine who these futures and worlds are for, and linger on what it means to build and play in these futures/worlds. I look firstly at video games which are based on futures and worlds built upon appropriation, exclusion and inequality. I then turn to examples which provide both players and developers opportunities to co-create more inclusive futures/worlds which envision futures and worlds where marginalised folk don’t just belong but thrive. In doing so, this talk aims to highlight why inclusive worldbuilding in video games matters, how video games provide a unique medium in which players and developers can co-create futures/worlds together, and their liberatory potential to craft and communicate futures and worlds of belonging. Bio: Avery Delany is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths University. Their thesis examines historical and social constructions of what it means to be “human”/”non-human” through narratives about and characters of artificial intelligence in single-player science fiction video games. Throughout their work, Avery explores personhood and the body, imaginaries of the future, worlding, decolonising and decentering, video games, and practices of care. Avery is a codirector of the London Science Fiction Research Community (lsfrc.co.uk), member of the Beyond Gender research collective, and on the editorial board for Decol Anth @ Gold (decolanth.co.uk). Avery tweets @redrocketpanda and blogs at fieldnotesfromthefuture.com c) ‘Liliputopia: Being and becoming little, from The Borrowers to J. Balvin’ This paper explores a rich tradition of science fiction and fantasy about miniaturization. The animals of Brian Jacques’ Redwall series (1986-2011) are discreetly resized as the series progresses, until mice, otters, hares and badgers can comfortably feast together in Redwall Abbey. In Adam Roberts’s ‘David, Goliath, Adam’ (2020) we see how zooming in never just produces quantitative shifts, but qualitative transformation. From the crumbs collected by Mary North’s Borrowers and Terry Pratchett’s nomes, to the dangerous dollops of ketchup dodged by the rapper J. Balvin and the townsfolk of Judi and Ron Barrett’s Chewandswallow, shrinking in the presence of food can spark new ways of thinking through scarcity and post-scarcity. Such fantasies of miniaturization are also often encounters with dark ecology, fraught with dangers, as normally innocuous nonhuman agencies unveil their latent violence. Works such as Alexander Payne’s Downsizing (2017) explicitly connect miniaturization with the politics of planetary limits, voluntary simplicity, and degrowth economics, and what Timothy Clark terms the Anthropocene’s “scale framing” problem, the challenges of conceptually integrating articles as infinitesimal as a microfiber or a carbon atom with the vast sweep of human and more-than-human history. Speculative miniaturization also has a special relationship with the speculative and critical affordances of play. The toys of Julie Taymor’s Titus and Peyton Reed’s Ant-man (co-written by Joe Cornish, and prefigured by the parodic toy Hollywoods of The Adam and Joe Show) can express a strange hybrid violence, simultaneously real and virtual.

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