• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

ICFA 34: Fantastic Transformations, Adaptations and Audiences March 20-23, 2013 Tuesday, March 19, 2013 8:30-11:00 p.m. Pre-Conference Party President’s Suite Open to all. Refreshments will be served. ******* Wednesday, March 20, 2013 2:30-3:15 p.m. Pre-Opening Refreshment Ballroom Foyer ******* Wednesday, March 20, 2013 3:30-4:15 p.m. Opening Ceremony Ballroom Host: Donald E. Morse, Conference Chair Welcome from the President: Jim Casey Opening Panel: The Transformative Fantastic Ballroom The Fantastic is constantly evolving, simultaneously relying on and rejecting its past, Borrowing from other cultures, retelling tales, highlighting alterations in gender and politics, and adapting itself to new forms of participatory reading and writing. This panel will explore some of the ways in which the Fantastic engages in exploring transformation and thus transforms itself as a genre. Moderator: Andy Duncan Neil Gaiman Constance Penley Kij Johnson ******* Wednesday, March 20, 2013 4:30-6:00 p.m. 1. (F/CYA) Gaiman: Magic, Death, and Pastiche Pine Chair: Stefan Ekman University of Gothenburg The Insightful Dead and the Insight of the Tale in American Gods and The Graveyard Book ABstract: The dead and other fantastic manifestations of death in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and The Graveyard Book serve didactic and epistemic functions rather than – as is the case in many other tales which adapt a reaper, ghosts, or similar characters – disruptive and destructive ones. Indeed, hidden aspects of life are revealed to the protagonists of the two novels, Bod and Shadow, in their encounters with manifestations of death, But while the dead can act as teachers, it is only the living who can act in the world and make use of knowledge. In order for the insight of the dead to matter and to Be truly meaningful, it needs to Be implemented in human society By those who live in it. Such interaction Between a source of knowledge and the agents who act on it reoccurs in metafictional comments on the role of tales in human society. The way the living in the two novels repeatedly learn from the dead and then act on this knowledge can Be seen as a pendulum motion, an image that can also Be applied to the novels' suggestive comments on the relationship Between stories – in the form of history and tales – and the world. Change comes only when Shadow returns from the land of the dead, only when Bod moves from the enclosure of the graveyard to the society that is Built around it, and only when we who as readers live with these characters for a short while in their fictional worlds Bring the implications of the stories with us into the world of human relations. Encounters with death thus provide Shadow, Bod, and us readers with a sense of hope and a will to act. Rut Blomqvist University of Gothenburg The Order of the Phoenix: Homage, Pastiche, and Neil Gaiman’s “SunBird” ABstract: The project of exploring Neil Gaiman’s work is well underway, with articles, commentaries, and annotated editions proliferating. Yet one major influence has gone unexplored: R.A. Lafferty. My paper takes up Gaiman’s 2005 Lafferty homage, “SunBird,” which is not only a literary adaptation But also a representation of the rewards and perils of that same process. I argue that the story itself acts as phoenix, revitalizing source material and storyteller alike—and yet, it is unavoidably haunted, even dominated By death and the still-greater terror of oBsolescence. I outline a few of the elements often found in a Lafferty story—such as his folk lyricism, sense of humor Both whimsical and Bloodthirsty, and a relish for the grotesque—to show what Gaiman appropriates wholly, what he modifies, and what he leaves out; By then comparing “SunBird” with Lafferty’s own, far less familiar phoenix story “Phoenic’,” I demonstrate the divergent uses to which these authors put their common mythological source material. Turning to this wider Body of myth, I consult Avram Davidson’s Adventures in Unhistory, which provides an ornithological disquisition that yields surprising insights into the process of adaptation and the persistence of story. Along the way, I sketch out an approach to homage and pastiche that Breaks with Frederic Jameson, drawing instead on the insights of neophenomenology, especially as formulated By Rita Felski in The Uses of Literature. While every story provides an account of the author’s experience of telling that story, few so clearly demonstrate an author in the process of incorporating another’s corpus into his own. Rather than “Blank parody,” a pastiche such as “SunBird” documents the traces left as one author reads another—and, ultimately, as he Brings new life to old texts, in order that they not Be lost to the flames. Andrew Ferguson University of Virginia 2. (SF) Cold War Science Fiction Oak Chair: Robert von der Osten Ferris State University The Bios is Falling! The Bios is Falling!: Chicken Little as Political Animal in Fredrick Pohl and C.M. KornBluth’s The Space Merchants ABstract: Fredrick Pohl and C.M. KornBluth’s The Space Merchants depicts a dystopian vision of an America run By corporations. The Space Merchants expresses societal anxieties of Communism and consumerism in the 1950s, from Both internal and external sources. Like many sf texts from the period, Pohl and KornBluth’s America is plagued By dwindling food and water supplies. While “new protein,” naturally produced meat, can Be easily purchased and consumed By the elite, the consumer class lives off of “regenerated-protein.” This regenerated-protein is carved off of a “grey-Brown, ruBBery hemisphere some fifteen yards in diameter” (Pohl and KornBluth 83) named Chicken Little. Chlorella Proteins keeps Chicken Little trapped in a “nest” that Brings to mind the worst images associated with modern agriBusiness’ industrialized farming methods. This study will explore the role of Chicken Little as an intersection of Biopolitics and animal studies, examining her transformation from Giorgio AgamBen’s homo sacer (zoe) to Bios, a Being capable of political action. The Blending of zoe and bios we find in Chicken Little puts animal studies in new territory. Most of humanity, with the exception of poets, looks at the animal, Derrida insists, without considering the implications of whether or not the animal looks Back, whether or not the animal sees man (383). While sf texts have provided an avenue for imagining animals as Beings that “return the gaze,” these animals traditionally live outside of a system of politics, even if they are often victims of such a system. Chicken Little’s capacity for political judgment and action challenges traditional notions of what is unique to humans and what is unique to animals. Through this imagining of another “political animal,” Pohl and KornBluth can Be read as a fascinating critique of human exceptionalism, traditional power structures, agency, and thus, what it means to Be human. Skye Cervone Broward College The Biopolitics of Consumerism in The Space Merchants ABstract: In Frederick Pohl and C.M. KornBluth’s The Space Merchants, America is run By two competing mega-corporations: Fowler Shocken and Associates and Taunton Associates. The purpose of this examination is to examine how the authors illustrate advertising and the resulting consumerism as Biopower. Theorized By Foucault, Biopolitics has two levels of governance: controlling the Body of the individual and the collective Body of the population. The mega-corporations of The Space Merchants are able to control populations in Both of these realms through marketing copy, suBliminal suggestion, and addictive additives. Mitchell Courtenay Begins the tale in a position of power and authority as a Copywriter and executive, which affords him not only economic power But great political power. In this world, Courtenay has political power Because the ChamBer of Commerce is the highest court in the land, the president is a figurehead, and “Congress has pretty well gotten out of the habit of keeping posted of what is going on” (158). Courtenay epitomizes the sovereign as imagined By AgamBen Because he exists within the law, But he has the power to change that law when he so desires; until he falls from his position from sovereign, through bios, to mere zoe. Courtenay’s fall to the level of zoe, or mere Biological life, occurs once it is reported that he is dead in the newspapers and he is placed onto a transport ship to the Chlorella Plant. These men represent AgamBen’s idea that they accept the law’s demand that they suBmit under its force even when it fails to make sense. The law here is the corporation that controls the plant, forcing men into working contracts that they can never escape, keeping them prisoner economically and physically through the habit of consumption that is forced upon them By advertising and law. Daniel Creed Broward College Hope on The Horizon: Finding Humanity in Level 7 ABstract: There are many aspects and different manifestations of hope in science fiction, even in authors who show readers the darkest side of human nature and what will Become of humans, and By default earth, if an effort is not made to change the world’s direction. In the darkest of situations, these authors express some form of hope for humanity. In these situations, the authors whisper throughout the pages of a novella, short story or novel. By whisper I mean their intent to Bring about a way of thinking that will enable a reader to hope for change. In order to have hope, a person must Believe that there is a possiBility of a positive outcome. It is Because there is a chance to save the world that science fiction authors such as Mordecai Roshwald, tell stories about disasters, destruction, and post-apocalyptic scenarios.

Load more

  59

Copy Link