Science Fiction

Ursula K. Le Guin a écrit de nombreux cycles de fantasy et de science-fiction, imaginés dès son plus jeune âge. Son oeuvre prolifique, foisonnante, a été traduite en français depuis 1971, avec La Main gauche de la nuit (The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969), et son succès populaire ne s'est jamais démenti depuis lors, avec près d'une centaine de titres traduits et réédités, ainsi qu'un solide lectorat. Ce dernier est pourtant resté discret dans le monde académique. Le présent dossier de la revue ReS Futurae cherche à combler cette lacune en choisissant comme fil conducteur la question du féminisme, qui permet d'aborder des aspects théoriques, poétiques et idéologiques indispensables à la compréhension de l'oeuvre de la romancière. En la resituant dans ses contextes de création et de réception, l'angle d'étude entend ainsi explorer quelques-uns des enjeux d'une oeuvre riche par sa portée éthique et esthétique, ses questionnements disciplinaires et ses significations plurielles.
Quel est l’apport spécifique de la science-fiction au message et aux représentations féministes, parmi les nombreux genres que Ursula K. Le Guin a pratiqués ? Dans quelle mesure le monde des possibles de la fiction spéculative permet-il de reconfigurer la situation de l’individu «femme», du genre et de ses avatars ? En quoi les textes de Ursula K. Le Guin ont-ils accompagné des vagues de féminisme et trouvé un écho au sein d’un lectorat spécifique ?
En se concentrant sur les univers science-fictionnels de la romancière, l’objectif de ce dossier est aussi de situer le genre et son potentiel social, non pas seulement en tant qu’utopie mais comme agent rassembleur, fiction créatrice, émancipatrice et dotée d’une puissance virtuellement auto-réalisatrice.

Japanese animation, or anime, has been growing in popularity and has been integrated into popular culture internationally.  As a growing phenomenon, anime has received a substantial amount of scholarly interest in a number of areas.  However, there are still limited examinations of the discourses in anime and other Japanese telecinematic  texts (e.g. television dramas, feature films). Corpus linguistic studies of telecinematic texts have so far been limited to English-language texts (e.g. Bednarek, 2015; Quaglio, 2009). In this paper, a newly constructed corpus of the science fiction anime series, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (2006-2007) is used to analyse the discursive construction of the character, Lelouch Lamperouge. The case study focuses on how social meanings indexed by first person pronouns in the real world are recontextualised in the anime to construct and convey different aspects of character identity. Combining corpus linguistics with sociocultural linguistics (Bucholtz and Hall 2005), this study shows that first person pronouns in the target character’s established linguistic repertoire index, in addition to gender, salient aspects of identity such as his leadership attributes and his ability to appeal to the masses. More broadly, the study highlights that corpus linguistics can be used effectively to examine characterisation and contributes to the still under-represented areas of Japanese telecinematic discourse studies and Japanese corpus linguistic research.

In the voiceover during the opening credits for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Patrick Stewart intones “Space, the final frontier.” However, as the series progressed, it became clear that time, not space, was the final frontier. Time was a constantly shifting landscape that could be traversed forward or backward. It could loop around and overlap. Its distant peaks could be mapped onto the human mind. The frontier was always delimited by “now,” but “now” was diffuse, multiple, and overlapping.

Given the complexity of the landscape of time in The Next Generation, it is not surprising that the problems and concerns arising from time travel were more complex and the responses to the concerns more nuanced than those arising from time travel in The Original Series. The Original Series maintained the Western myth of progress, suggested in part by the fact that the crew ventured backward, but not forward, from their twenty-third century “home,” signifying that their moment in time was the culmination of technological and human progress.

In this essay, I expand on the idea of time travel in Star Trek: The Next Generation as engaging both a postmodern landscape and a frontier. I use specific examples from the series and from The Original Series, as well as the work of Frederic Jameson and Craig Owens to illustrate how time acts as the “undiscovered country,” which must be acknowledged, explored, and understood rather than conquered.

The article Cannibal Cities: Monstrous Urban Bodies in Contemporary Fantasy
discusses the literalization of the metaphor of the body politic in contemporary
urban fantasy. The body politic is one of the master tropes through
which urban experience has been traditionally represented in literature, political
discourse, and social studies. Urban fantasy transforms this metaphor
into part of the fictional world of the text, thereby laying bare its cultural
connotations, which are predominantly negative and dystopian. Thus
a monstrous body is created, which is not that of an individual but rather of
the city as a whole. The paper discusses three main registers of representing
the monstrous urban body in fantasy: the dark city; the city-as-machine;
and the city-as-organism. Each register is illustrated with a range of literary
and cinematic examples.

Science Fiction has a lengthy history of irreligion. In part, this relates to its titular association with science itself, which as both methodology and ontological basis, veers away from revelatory forms of knowledge in order to formulate hypotheses of reality based upon experimental praxis. Equally, SF as a genre emerged in part from a tradition of anti-religion in general (and anti-Catholicism in particular) which had been a trait within Anglophone fantastikal literature since before the Gothic period.
In recent decades, while SF's attachment to the scientific method has not waned, religion as a cultural practice has begun to be rehabilitated within the genre, sometimes iterated as alien faiths, and on other occasions as a form of multicultural signification. However, during SF's long antipathy to faith, Buddhism has occupied a unique and sustained position within the genre.
This paper seeks to chart an outline map of SF's engagement with Buddhism, from Sam, the Buddhist messiah in Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, via the crypto-Buddhism of Arthur C. Clarke, to the outbreak of reincarnated Buddhist artificial intelligences in works by authors including Dan Simmons, Paolo Bacigalupi and Lavie Tidhar.
As bodies and bardos begin to become effaced in a transhumanism with distinctly Buddhist traits, the question arises whether SF is entering an ontology envisaged by Clarke in his Childhood's End novel, where only Buddhism remained after the eradication of all other religions. Or, to put it another way, is Buddhism the religion it's okay for SF to like?

Questo contributo utilizza le suggestioni del romanzo Woman on the edge of time per riflettere sugli intrecci tra scienza, politica e desideri. Mette in luce il carattere ambivalente delle tecnoscienze per mostrare come la gestazione per altr* possa sia rafforzare le strutture patriarcali che sovvertirle e come sia necessario trovare nuove forme di alleanza per comprendere come utilizzare queste tecniche senza lasciarsene ingabbiare.

If you like intrigue, conspiracy, and trivia tinged with quirky originality, then "Travails with The Alien" is the book for you. The latest print offering from the Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Archives, Travails with The Alien: The Film That Was Never Made and Other Adventures with Science Fiction is provoking, insightful, and fun.

MSc Dissertation in Outer Space Anthropology

The following dissertation draws upon 10 weeks of ethnographic fieldwork with Spaceport America. It seeks to answer the questions; What types of risks are those who envisage commercial human space exploration and specifically the members of Spaceport America and affiliate companies, dealing with? What drives scientists, military personnel, and civilians alike to interact with these risks and what reward do they envision that would outweigh such potential for sacrifice? Why are so many willing to sacrifice their Earthly possessions, friends, family, time, money, and potentially their lives, to participate in outer space ventures? To answer these questions, this dissertation divides the risks witnessed and encountered throughout fieldwork into five “zones”. It uses vignettes, excerpts from formal and informal interviews, and literature on the subject of human interactions with space, to argue that those who envisage commercial space exploration undergo tremendous physical, emotional, financial, and political risks for the sake of something they believe far superior; progress and the perpetuation of humankind. I argue that the risk involved in the creation of Spaceport America, and the creation of the Spaceport itself, became symbolic of sacrifice for “the greater good” (the greater good meaning for the benefit of technological progress and the perpetuation of the human species). This sacrifice was a reflection of love and passion for all things related to space, a sort of heroism that my participants were proud of; an astrophile’s mite.