DOCSLIB.ORG

Proquest Dissertations

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Proquest Dissertations "SOMETIMES IT FEELS LIKE THE WHOLE WORLD IS SMEARED WITH VAZ": THE CHAOTIC FICTION OF JEFF NOON A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts in English University of Regina By Andrew Carter Wenaus Regina, Saskatchewan March 2009 Copyright 2009: Andrew Carter Wenaus Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-55052-6 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-55052-6 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada UNIVERSITY OF REGINA FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH SUPERVISORY AND EXAMINING COMMITTEE Andrew Carter Wenaus, candidate for the degree of Master of Arts in English, has presented a thesis titled, "Sometimes it Feels Like the Whole World is Smeared with Vaz": The Chaotic Fiction of Jeff Noon, in an oral examination held on February 18, 2009. The following committee members have found the thesis acceptable in form and content, and that the candidate demonstrated satisfactory knowledge of the subject material. External Examiner: Dr. Charity Marsh, Department of Media Production and Studies Supervisor: Dr. Nicholas Ruddick, Department of English Committee Member: Dr. Lynn Wells, Department of English Committee Member: Prof. Samira McCarthy, Department of English, Campion College Chair of Defense: Dr. Robin Ganev, Department of History i ABSTRACT The present work examines the fiction and poetry of contemporary experimental British writer Jeff Noon through the critical lens of chaos theory. For Noon, chaos theory is not only a scientific theory but also an epistemological philosophy and a legitimation for artistic and literary experimentation, an aesthetic move Noon feels will be the savior of contemporary British literature. A study of two novels, Vurt (1993) and Falling out of Cars (2002), and the experimental book of prose and poetry, Cobralingus (2001), demonstrates that Noon's writing project celebrates the artistic poignancy of finding meaning in disorder. In the first chapter, I study Noon's unique application of the metaphors of fractal geometry in Vurt and how his use of this new spatial concept has an effect on literary content and form. I examine Noon's fascination with wordplay and the malleability of language through a writing game called the Cobralingus Engine in the chapter on Cobralingus. The aesthetic process of this game whimsically appropriates concepts associated with communication theory to create a remarkable, complex, and beautiful kind of poetry and prose called "metamorphiction." In the final chapter on Falling out of Cars, I look at Noon's use of the concept of "noise" in communication theory as a metaphor for the contemporary anxiety concerning the precariousness of memory and perception in an increasingly disordered world. Ultimately, this study concludes that not only are Noon's literary experiments masterfully successful, they represent a passionate and sincere desire to reevaluate and reinvigorate the experimental spirit in British literature. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe countless thanks to Samira McCarthy and Lynn Wells for their astute criticisms, observations, and invaluable insights. For making the study of science fiction literature such a cogent intellectual pursuit, I thank my mentor and thesis supervisor, Nicholas Ruddick, with whom it has been a prestigious privilege to work. I am also particularly grateful to the University of Regina Department of English for offering me a teaching assistantship. For this, I express thanks to Ken Probert and Nils Clausson. I would also like to thank Andrew M. Butler for generously providing me access to his article, "Journeys beyond Being." Also, I thank the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Regina for their assistance and guidance. I express special gratitude to Jeff Noon for his generous permission to use images from Cobralingus. Finally, my greatest thanks go out to my family and friends who have supported me both financially and with kind patience. iii POST DEFENSE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to offer warm thanks to my external examiner, Charity Marsh, for making the defense such an informative, stimulating, and enjoyable experience. IV DEDICATION For Christina With heartfelt gratitude and love V TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii POST DEFENSE ACKNOWLEDGMENT iii DEDICATION iv TABLE OF CONTENTS v INTRODUCTION , 1 FRACTAL NARRATIVE, PARASPACE, AND STRANGE LOOPS: THE PARADOX OF ESCAPE IN VURT 9 METAMORPHICTION, INFORMATION THEORY, AND THE SEMIOTICS OF CHAOS IN COBRALINGUS 38 FALLING OUT OF CARS: THE CHAOTICS OF PERCEPTION AND MEMORY 70 CONCLUSION 99 WORKS CITED 104 APPENDIX 112 1 INTRODUCTION In 1994, Jeff Noon was awarded the Arthur C. Clarke Award for his boldly original debut novel, Vurt (1993). In the subsequent year, he won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Since Vurt, Noon has published five novels,1 one collection of short stories,2 a collection of avant-garde poetry,3 and a hypertext novel/writing game in partnership with Steve Beard,4 and is currently coauthoring a hypertext novel/labyrinth with Susanna Jones, Alison MacLeod, and William Shaw.5 Born in 1957 in Droylsden, "a little town some eight miles outside of Manchester" (Noon, "Biography"), Noon's artistic career has also encompassed painting, music, and play writing. Indeed, Noon's entrance into the literary world was through the theatre;6 his play, Woundings1 (1986), won the Mobil Prize. Upon the success of Woundings Noon "decided to give up painting and music, and to concentrate purely on play writing, working mainly on [Manchester's] local fringe theatre scene" ("Press Biography"). After taking a job at a Waterstone's bookshop in Manchester to support himself, Noon was urged by Steve Powell, an ex- o colleague who had recently set up an independent publishing company, to write a novel. Thus began Noon's professional writing career. 1 Pollen (1995), Automated Alice (1996), Nymphomation (1997), Needle in the Groove (2000), and Falling Out of Cars (2002). 2 Pixel Juice (1998). 3 Cobralingus (2001) 4 Mappalujo (2002); Noon notes in "Transmission>Reception: The Modern Word Interviews Jeff Noon" that he and Beard "are trying to do some more pieces, with a view to a book and all that. Mappalujo''s natural home is a book, I think, rather than the Web. The structure and process of the work becomes much more obvious on paper, with the ability to flip through the pages" (Santala). 5 217 Babel Street (2008). 6 Noon's interest in theatre remains active; four short stories were dramatized to form the play Alphabox which appeared on a BBC Radio 4 program titled "1000 Years of Spoken English," Vurt was adapted for the stage in 2000, The Modernists appeared in 2001, and the radio play Dead Code-Ghosts of the Digital Age aired on BBC Radio 3 in 2005. 7 Woundings was also adapted for the screen by Roberta Hanley in 1998. It was released in the US under the title Brand New World. 8 Ringpull Press. 2 Noon's fiction is marked by virtuosic wordplay, Borgesian9 themes, Carrollian10 whimsy, and the ability to handle chaotic contemporary themes with profound elegance. Manchester features prominently in the majority of Noon's fiction—Falling out of Cars is unique as it is Noon's only novel that does not take Manchester as its setting. The process and philosophy of electronic music11—particularly the process of the remix— also play a central role in Noon's aesthetic and creative approach to writing. Most notable, however, is Noon's ability to take a central abstraction and, through spiraling repetition and rigorous aesthetic and linguistic creativity, develop "something akin to a private vocabulary... a chamber of echoes where everyday words embrace new layers of meaning and association" (Santala, "Introduction"). Yet despite the increasingly experimental, nuanced, and elegant developmental path Noon's writing has taken in the relation between chaotics and literature, his literary output remains critically neglected. Exceptions to this critical disregard include Andrew M. Butler in 2008; a bio-critical essay by David Ian Paddy in 2003; and Ann Weinstone's "Welcome to the Pharmacy: Addiction, Transcendence, and Virtual Reality" (1997), a study of the link between addiction, Baudrillardian "hyper-real transcendence," epistemological epiphany, and virtual reality in the work of Noon, William S.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 1: for Me, It Was Personal Names with Too Many of the Letter "Q"
    1: For me, it was personal names with too many of the letter "q", "z", or "x". With apostrophes. Big indicator of "call a rabbit a smeerp"; and generally, a given name turns up on page 1... 2: Large scale conspiracies over large time scales that remain secret and don't fall apart. (This is not *explicitly* limited to SF, but appears more often in branded-cyberpunk than one would hope for a subgenre borne out of Bruce Sterling being politically realistic in a zine.) Pretty much *any* form of large-scale space travel. Low earth orbit, not so much; but, human beings in tin cans going to other planets within the solar system is an expensive multi-year endevour that is unlikely to be done on a more regular basis than people went back and forth between Europe and the americas prior to steam ships. Forget about interstellar travel. Any variation on the old chestnut of "robots/ais can't be emotional/creative". On the one hand, this is realistic because human beings have a tendency for othering other races with beliefs and assumptions that don't hold up to any kind of scrutiny (see, for instance, the relatively common belief in pre-1850 US that black people literally couldn't feel pain). On the other hand, we're nowhere near AGI right now and it's already obvious to everyone with even limited experience that AI can be creative (nothing is more creative than a PRNG) and emotional (since emotions are the least complex and most mechanical part of human experience and thus are easy to simulate).
    [Show full text]
  • Nicoletti Emma 2014.Pdf
    Reading Literature in the Anthropocene: Ecosophy and the Ecologically-Oriented Ethics of Jeff Noon’s Nymphomation and Pollen Emma Nicoletti 10012001 B.A. (Hons), The University of Western Australia, 2005 Dip. Ed., The University of Western Australia, 2006 This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia School of Humanities (English and Cultural Studies) 2014 ii Abstract This thesis examines the science fiction novels Nymphomation and Pollen by Jeff Noon. The reading brings together ideas from the eco-sciences, environmental humanities and ecocriticism in order to analyse the ecological dimensions of these texts. Although Noon’s work has been the subject of academic critique, critical discussions of his oeuvre have overlooked the engagement of Nymphomation and Pollen with ecological issues. This is a gap in the scholarship on Noon’s work that this thesis seeks to rectify. These novels depict landscapes and communities as being degraded because of the influence of information technologies and homogeneous ideologies, making them a productive lens through which to consider and critically respond to some of the environmental and social challenges faced by humanity in an anthropogenic climate. In order to discuss the ecological dimensions of these novels, the thesis advances the notion of an “ecosophical reading practice.” This idea draws on Felix Guattari’s concept of “ecosophy,” and combines it with the notions of “ecological thinking” developed in the work of theorists Timothy Morton, Lorraine Code and Gregory Bateson. While Morton’s work is extensively cited in ecocritical scholarship, with a few exceptions, the work of the other theorists is not.
    [Show full text]
  • Virtual Catastrophe: the Ecologically-Oriented Ethics of Jeff
    Virtual Catastrophe: The Ecologically-Oriented Ethics of Jeff Noon’s Pollen Emma Nicoletti Jeff Noon's “Vurt” novels—Vurt , Pollen , Automated Alice , and Nymphomation—occupy an unusual niche within the science fiction subgenre of cyberpunk. 1 Typically, cyberpunk texts are set in near-future dystopian worlds, which are dominated by advanced virtual technologies and powerful corporations, and against this backdrop the skilled computer hacker uncovers conspiracies (often for financial profit). While Noon’s “Vurt” novels certainly include these broad aspects of cyberpunk, their execution of this “formula” differs from the typical cyberpunk mould. In these novels, the action is restricted to Manchester rather than the more cyberpunk-esque urban sprawl settings of North America or Japan, their featured “vurt” technology has an organic rather than mechanistic basis, 2 and, furthermore, they are about “looking reality in the face” rather than fleeing the messiness of the material world to the sterile safety of cyberspace. 3 For Val Gough, this last peculiarity sees Noon's novels constituting an instance of feminist cyberpunk fiction because “for Noon … the meat world constitutes an ethical challenge and a promise of redemption every bit as important as those of virtual reality or cyberspace.” 4 On the other hand, I see in all three cyberpunk-oddities of Noon's novels the promise of an ecologically-aware cyberpunk fiction: Manchester's history of industrialism and redevelopment as a haven for COLLOQUY text theory critique 23 (2012). © Monash University. www.arts.monash.edu.au/ecps/colloquy/journal/issue023/nicoletti.pdf 32 Emma Nicoletti ░ “yuppie” consumers situate it squarely in the environmentalist discourses on pollution and mass consumerism; 5 the depiction of technology as grounded in material reality acknowledges the dependency of all technology on the earth's resources; and, registering our inability to fully escape our bodies or our world nods to the importance of accepting the existence of a material reality that supports all life.
    [Show full text]
  • Transreferentiality: Mapping the Margins of Postmodern Fiction
    Transreferentiality: Mapping the Margins of Postmodern Fiction H De G Laurie 10079718 Thesis submitted for the degree Doctor Philosophiae in English Literature at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University Supervisor: Prof AM De Lange September 2013 i Acknowledgements I hereby acknowledge with gratitude the financial assistance of the National Research Foundation, the Research Focus Area for Languages and Literature at the North-West University’s Potchefstroom Campus, The Open Window School for Visual Communication, and the North-West University‘s Research and Development Programme. Views expressed and conclusions reached in this study should be ascribed to the author and are not necessarily shared by any of these institutions. I would also like to thank the following people: My supervisor, Prof AM De Lange, for his support through complicated times and his willingness to stick out his neck. The Department of Academic Literacy in the School for Languages at the North-West University’s Vaal Triangle Campus, for granting me the time to finish this version of the thesis. My grandmother. My parents. All the friends and colleagues who, knowingly and unknowingly, provided inspiration and support and suffered during the writing of this thesis. ii Abstract Keywords: Postmodern, fiction, postmodernist fiction, science fiction, sf, possible-worlds theory, worlds, narratology, focalisation, immersion, reader experience, M. John Harrison, William Gibson, Jeff Noon This thesis starts from the observation that, while it is common for commentators to divide postmodern fiction into two general fields – one experimental and anti-mimetic, the other cautiously mimetic, there remains a fairly significant field of postmodern texts that use largely mimetic approaches but represent worlds that are categorically distinct from actuality.
    [Show full text]
  • 2020 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award Submissions Information A-Z by Author Surname
    2020 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award Submissions Information A-Z by Author Surname Abbott, Rachel Rachel Abbott began her career as an independent author in 2011, with Only the Innocent, which became a No.1 bestseller on Kindle, topping the chart for four weeks. Since then, she has published ten further psychological thrillers, plus a novella, and sold over 4 million copies in the English language. She is one of the top-selling authors of all time in the UK Kindle store (published and self- published), and her novels have been translated into over 20 languages. Her latest novel, THE MURDER GAME, publishes in April 2020. And So It Begins WHO WILL BELIEVE YOUR STORY IF THE ONLY WITNESS IS DEAD? Cleo knows she should be happy for her brother Mark. He's managed to find someone new after the sudden death of his first wife - but something about Evie just doesn't feel right... When Evie starts having accidents at home, her friends grow concerned. Could Mark be causing her injuries? Called out to their cliff-top house one night, Sergeant Stephanie King finds two bodies entangled on blood-drenched sheets. Where does murder begin? When the knife is raised to strike, or before, at the first thought of violence? As the accused stands trial, the jury is forced to consider - is there ever a proper defence for murder? Anderson, Lin Lin Anderson is a Scottish author and screenwriter known for her bestselling crime series featuring forensic scientist Dr Rhona MacLeod. Four of her novels have been longlisted for the Scottish Crime Book of the Year, with Follow the Dead being a 2018 finalist.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Szeged Institute of English & American Studies
    University of Szeged Institute of English & American Studies Literatures and Cultures in English Doctoral Program Doctoral Dissertation Fantastic Place and Space in China Miéville’s Fiction Rhetorics of Emancipatory Spatial Changes in the Miévillean New Weird By András Fodor Supervisors: Anna Kérchy PhD, DEA, dr. habil, Zoltán Dragon MPhil PhD Szeged, 2021 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Biography ......................................................................................................................... 4 1.2 Focusing on Approaches .................................................................................................. 9 1.3 Method and System ........................................................................................................ 11 1.4 The Brief Results - Close readings ................................................................................. 15 2. The Weird ............................................................................................................................. 20 2.1 The Weird as Concept .................................................................................................... 20 2.1.1 The Literary Weird .................................................................................................. 21 2.1.1.2 Mile Posts in the Mist - Historical Background, Timeline, Monstrosity and Process of the Weird (Fiction) .....................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • “Losing the Moments of the World” in Jeff Noon's Falling out of Cars
    LITERATURE Journal of 21st-century Writings Article How to Cite: Vergara, T., 2020. “Catatonic Cultural Dominant: “Losing the Moments of the World” in Jeff Noon’s Falling out of Cars (2002).” C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings, 8(1): 5, pp. 1–25. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.16995/c21.970 Published: 14 August 2020 Peer Review: This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings, which is a journal of the Open Library of Humanities. Copyright: © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Open Access: C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings is a peer-reviewed open access journal. Digital Preservation: The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS scholarly archive service. The Open Library of Humanities is an open access non-profit publisher of scholarly articles. Vergara, T., 2020. “Catatonic Cultural Dominant: “Losing the Moments of the World” in Jeff Noon’s Falling out of Cars LITERATURE Journal of 21st-century Writings (2002).” C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings, 8(1): 5, pp. 1–25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.970 ARTICLE Catatonic Cultural Dominant: “Losing the Moments of the World” in Jeff Noon’s Falling out of Cars (2002) Tomas Vergara The University of Edinburgh, GB [email protected] What does late capitalism’s mode of temporality reveal about the logic linked to its mode of production? This article establishes a dialogue between theoretical works concerned with this question and Jeff Noon’s speculative fiction novelFalling out of Cars (2002).
    [Show full text]
  • Speculative Fiction for the Future of Man and Civilization
    Speculative Fiction for the Future of Man and Civilization Bogdan Trocha1 Doctor of Science (Philology), Professor, University of Zielona Góra (Zielona Góra, Poland) E-mail: [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2348-4813 The main thesis of the article is the comparison of speculative fiction with the challenges facing modern man. Introductory questions are two issues. How can fantasy become the subject of cultural reflection on the future of human civilization? Can contemporary speculative fistion act as an instructional story about the unknown? The author indicates several basic models of using speculative fiction. However, it limits itself to creating an introductory canon, which is associated with literary speculations regarding the impact of man and technology on the future of civilization. Keywords: myth, speculative fiction, political fiction, space opera, postapocalyptic fiction, ecological science fiction Received: September 11, 2019; accepted: October 5, 2019 Future Human Image, Volume 12, 2019: 104-114. https://doi.org/10.29202/fhi/12/9 In the face of the unknown — in search of model stories: myth, fantasy, speculative fiction The notion of speculative fiction has been firmly established in popular culture for many years. However, while it is very easy to point to the essential features of the poetics of this type of novel, it is much more difficult to point to the cultural paradigm from which both speculative fiction and the need to use this type of poetics stems. The foundations of this type of cognitive and creative procedures should be found in two aspects of the human condition. The first one is certainly the aspiration to discover the sense of everything that man experiences in various ways in the world around him.
    [Show full text]
  • Vector 274 Worthen 2013-Wi BSFA
    VECTOR 274 — WINTER 2013/14 VVectorector The critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association David Hebblethwaite on Alternate Worlds Joanne Hall Interviews Andy Bigwood Bibliography: Law in Science Fiction No. 274 Winter 2013/14 £4.00 page 1 VECTOR 274 — WINTER 2013/14 Vector 274 The critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association ARTICLES Torque Control Vector Editorial by Shana Worthen ......................... 3 http://vectoreditors.wordpress.com Letters to the Editor .................................... 4 Features, Editorial Shana Worthen Doctor by Doctor: Dr. Philip Boyce and Letters: 127 Forest Road, Loughton, and Dr. Mark Piper in Star Trek... Essex IG10 1EF, UK by Victor Grech ............................................ 6 [email protected] Book Reviews: Martin Lewis So Long, And Thanks for all the Visch [email protected] Douglas Adams and Doctor Snuggles Production: Alex Bardy by Jacob Edwards ....................................... 10 [email protected] Fishing for Time: Alternate Worlds in Nina Allan’s The Silver Wind and David British Science Fiction Association Ltd Vann’s Legend of a Suicide The BSFA was founded in 1958 and is a non-profitmaking organisation entirely staffed by unpaid volunteers. Registered in England. Limited by David Hebblethwaite ............................. 14 by guarantee. Bibliography: Law in Science Fiction BSFA Website www.bsfa.co.uk by Stephen Krueger .................................... 17 Company No. 921500 Registered address: 61 Ivycroft Road, Warton, Tamworth, Stark Adventuring: Leigh Brackett’s Staffordshire B79 0JJ Tales of Eric John Stark President Stephen Baxter by Mike Barrett ............................................ 20 Vice President Jon Courtenay Grimwood Joanne Hall interviews Andy Bigwood Chair Donna Scott by Joanne Hall .............................................. 24 [email protected] Treasurer Martin Potts 61 Ivy Croft Road, Warton, RECURRENT Nr.
    [Show full text]
  • C 2008 Laura A. Diehl ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
    c 2008 Laura A. Diehl ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ESTRANGING SCIENCE, FICTIONALIZING BODIES: VIRAL INVASIONS, INFECTIOUS FICTIONS, AND THE BIOLOGICAL DISCOURSES OF “THE HUMAN,” 1818-2005 by LAURA ANNE DIEHL A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program of Literatures in English Written under the direction of Harriet Davidson And approved by _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2008 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Estranging Science, Fictionalizing Bodies: Viral Invasions, Infectious Fictions, and the Biological Discourses of “the Human,” 1818-2005 LAURA ANNE DIEHL Dissertation Director: Harriet Davidson In 1818, Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein causes science and literature—two different discourses, two different signifying systems, two different realities—to collide. As it addresses the givenness, or “naturalness,” of “the human,” Frankenstein reimagines the putative boundary between the human and the nonhuman, a fictive border made perceptible by contemporary scientific investigation. Catalyzing a new genre, science fiction, Shelley estranges the enlightenment discourse of “reason,” revealing it as a highly regulative structure through which societies are forged and bodies governed. “Estranging Science, Fictionalizing Bodies: Viral Invasion, Infectious Fictions, and the Biological Discourses of ‘the Human,’ 1818-2005, posits a mutually infective relationship between science and literature. It both exposes the logic of purification that delimits “modern” forms of knowledge as discursively distinct (science v. literature) and considers how this distinction informs the evolutionary/philosophical shifts in how we think about the possible, the human, and the novel.
    [Show full text]
  • Design Fictions and Beekeeping
    This is a repository copy of Beebots-a-lula, Where's My Honey?: Design Fictions and Beekeeping. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/106823/ Version: Accepted Version Proceedings Paper: Edwards, L., Maxwell, D., Pillatt, T. et al. (1 more author) (2016) Beebots-a-lula, Where's My Honey?: Design Fictions and Beekeeping. In: NordiCHI '16: Proceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. NordiCHI '16: Game-Changing Design, 23-27 Oct 2016, Gothenburg, Sweden. ACM New York , New York . ISBN 978-1-4503-4763-1 https://doi.org/10.1145/2971485.2993924 Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version - refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher’s website. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Beebots-a-lula, where’s my honey?: Design Fictions and Beekeeping
    [Show full text]
  • Seven Beauties of Science Fiction ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍
    The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ THE SEVEN BEAUTIES MMMOF MMM SCIENCE FICTION MMMMMMM ß)STVANß#SICSERY 2ONAY ß*R M Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut For etti & sacha Amor est plusquam cognitiva quam cognitio. ❍ csicsery00fm_i_xii_correx.qxp:csicery 9/24/10 5:27 PM Page iv Published by wesleyan university press Middletown, CT www.wesleyan.edu/wespress Copyright © by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. All rights reserved First Wesleyan paperback Printed in United States of America isbn for the paperback edition: 978-0-8195-7092-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr. The seven beauties of science fiction / Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8195-6889-2 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Science fiction—History and criticism. 2. Science fiction—Philosophy. I. Title. pn3433.5.c75 2008 809.3Ј8762—dc22 2008029054 Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. Contents Preface ix introduction Science Fiction and This Moment 1 first beauty Fictive Neology 13 second beauty Fictive Novums 47 third beauty Future History 76 fourth beauty Imaginary Science 111 fifth beauty The Science-Fictional Sublime 146 sixth beauty The Science-Fictional Grotesque 182 seventh beauty The Technologiade 216 concluding unscientific postscript The Singularity and Beyond 262 Notes 267 Bibliography 295 Index 317 Preface I wanted to have a bird’s eye view; I ended up in outer space. ❍ This book began with a pedagogical purpose. I had hoped to map out some ideas about the historical and philosophical aspects of science fiction (sf), and through these ideas to outline the concepts I felt were most useful for study- ing sf as a distinctive genre.
    [Show full text]