New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction

New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction PDF Author: Donald M. Hassler
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570037368
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Surveying the vast expanse of politically-charged science fiction, this book posits that the defining dilemma for these tales rests in whether identity and meaning germinate from progressive linear changes or progress, or from a continuous return to primitive realities of war, death and the competition for survival.

New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction

New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction PDF Author: Donald M. Hassler
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570037368
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
Surveying the vast expanse of politically-charged science fiction, this book posits that the defining dilemma for these tales rests in whether identity and meaning germinate from progressive linear changes or progress, or from a continuous return to primitive realities of war, death and the competition for survival.

Political Science Fiction

Political Science Fiction PDF Author: Donald M. Hassler
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570031137
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
As the science fiction writer Frederik Pohl observes in the lead essay, the contributors collectively find science fiction to be either implicitly or explicitly political by its very nature.

Negotiating Political Boundaries in 'The Expanse'

Negotiating Political Boundaries in 'The Expanse' PDF Author: Allen Christopher Mankin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political socialization in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Summary: "In this paper, I [Allen] analyze the political themes in the science fiction novel and television series, 'The Expanse'. I assess how 'The Expanse' explores ideas about political boundaries between societies, and how those boundaries are influenced by economic factors and immigration.... Finally, I describe... what conclusions the series draws about political boundaries as a whole." -- Abstract.

Battlestar Galactica and International Relations

Battlestar Galactica and International Relations PDF Author: Nicholas J. Kiersey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135089698
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Looking at a television franchise like Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is no longer news within the discipline of International Relations. A growing number of scholars in and out of IR are studying the importance of cultural artifacts – popular or otherwise – for the phenomena that make up the core of our discipline. The genre of science fiction offers the analyst an opportunity that cannot be matched by more mimetic genres, namely the chance to look at how sets of widely-circulating expectations of the social serve to constrain authors as they work to introduce as yet unexplored problematiques, the fantasy aspect in much of science fiction storytelling is premised simply on a material difference. As such, while the physical setting of a science fiction tale might appear novel, its imaginative life world will likely retain many elements of the world we already live in and which we can readily recognize as similar to our own. For Critical IR scholarship then, BSG presents an opportunity to examine how these purported homologies or elements of redundancy between the fantastic and the real have been drawn and perhaps to consider, too, whether the show can teach us things about world politics, its various logics and structures, which we might not otherwise be sensitive to. Tackling some of the key contemporary issues in IR, the writers of BSG have taken on a range of important political themes and issues, including the legitimacy of military government, the tactical utility of genocide, and even the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence technologies for the very category of what it means to be 'human'. The contributors in this book explore in depth the argument that one of the most important aspects of popular culture is to naturalize or normalise a certain social order by further entrenching the expectations of social behaviour upon which our mentalities of rule are founded. This work will be of interest to student and scholars of international relations, popular culture and security studies.

Electric Sheep Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Electric Sheep Slouching Towards Bethlehem PDF Author: Harry Eiss
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443858625
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
On Monday, 8:15 a.m., August 6, 1945, the world changed forever. In the single largest act of destruction ever initiated by humans, a bomb with the equivalent force of 20,000 tons of TNT shattered Hiroshima, killing tens of thousands of civilians, people who had become used to the American war planes flying overhead, planes that were purposely not dropping bombs on their city, to the point where the rush to the bomb shelters had become lackadaisical, and the normal activities continued with little interruption – getting the children up and off to school, opening the many small retail stores for the daily customers, perhaps stopping at a local café for morning coffee or tea, perhaps joining in on the group exercise classes. This is the precise instant we entered the postmodern world, one where the easy truths of centuries no longer applied. Speculative Fiction projects real possibilities beyond the now shattered assumptions, moving through marginalized fictional landscapes – science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero comics, graphic novels, and movies, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, Cyber Punk, the New Wave, as well as related static, motion, and virtual arts, including everything from graphic novels to video games.

Media and Politics in a Globalizing World

Media and Politics in a Globalizing World PDF Author: Alexa Robertson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745689450
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Globalization and technological advances have had a dramatic impact on the relationship between media and politics. How can we understand the connection between the two in the present day? Alexa Robertson argues that we cannot understand the power of the one without taking the other into account. This exciting and accessible book provides fresh insight into our contemporary media landscape, adopting a truly comparative global approach. In Media and Politics in a Globalizing World, Robertson encourages the reader to explore the relationship from different perspectives – those of the politician, the journalist, the activist and the ordinary citizen – and how the relationship between media and politics varies across cultures. Illustrated with contemporary examples throughout, the book weighs up arguments for seeing new developments in terms of change or continuity, as empowering or debilitating, and as promoting or undermining democracy. Suitable for undergraduates and postgraduates studying politics, media and sociology, it also will be of interest to the general reader wishing to understand the complex role of the media in political life the world over. For additional support and information visit this book's companion website at http://mediapolitics.net/

The Transgressive Iain Banks

The Transgressive Iain Banks PDF Author: Martyn Colebrook
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786442255
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
This collection of 12 new essays brings together prominent literary experts to explore the importance of Scottish writer Iain (M.) Banks, both his mainstream and science fiction work. It considers Banks as a habitual border crosser who makes things fresh and new by subversive and transgressive strategies. The essays are divided into four thematic areas--the Scottish context, the geographies of his writing, the impact of genre and a combined focus on gender, games and play--and will be of particular interest to scholars of contemporary literature, Scottish literature and science fiction.

The Culture of 'the Culture'

The Culture of 'the Culture' PDF Author: Joseph S. Norman
Publisher:
ISBN: 1789621747
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
In a career that spanned over thirty years, Iain M. Banks became one of the best-loved and most prolific writers in Britain, with his space opera series concerned with the pan-galactic utopian civilisation known as 'the Culture' widely regarded as his most significant contribution to science fiction. The Culture of 'The Culture' is the first critical monograph to focus solely on this series, providing a comprehensive, thematic analysis of Banks's Culture stories from Consider Phlebas to The Hydrogen Sonata. It explores the development of Banks's political, philosophical and literary thought, arguing that the Culture offers both an image of a harmonious civilisation modelled on an alternative socialist form of globalisation and a critique of our neo-liberal present. As Joseph S. Norman explains, the Culture is the result of an ongoing utopian process, attempting through the application of technoscience to move beyond obstacles to progress such as imperialism, capitalism, the human condition, religious dogma, patriarchy and crises in artistic representation. The Culture of 'The Culture' defines Banks's creation as culture: a utopian way of doing, of being, of seeing: an approach, an attitude and a lifestyle that has enabled, and is evolving alongside, utopia, rather than an image of a static end-state.

Aliens in Popular Culture

Aliens in Popular Culture PDF Author: Michael M. Levy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 144083833X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
An indispensable resource, this book provides wide coverage on aliens in fiction and popular culture. The wide impact that the imagined alien has had upon Western culture has not been surveyed before; in many cases the essays in Aliens in Popular Culture are the first written on the topic. The book is a compendium of short entries on notable uses of aliens in popular culture across different media and platforms by almost 90 researchers in the field. It covers science fiction from the late nineteenth century into the twenty-first century, including books, films, television, comics, games, and even advertisements. Individual essays point to the ways in which the imagined alien can be seen as a reflection of different fears and tensions within society, above all in the Anglo-American world. The book additionally provides an overview for context and suggestions for further reading. All varieties of readers will find it to be a comprehensive reference about the extra-terrestrial in popular culture.

Vintage Visions

Vintage Visions PDF Author: Arthur B. Evans
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819574392
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
Vintage Visions is a seminal collection of scholarly essays on early works of science fiction and its antecedents. From Cyrano de Bergerac in 1657 to Olaf Stapledon in 1937, this anthology focuses on an unusually broad range of authors and works in the genre as it emerged across the globe, including the United States, Russia, Europe, and Latin America. The book includes material that will be of interest to both scholars and fans, including an extensive bibliography of criticism on early science fiction—the first of its kind—and a chronological listing of 150 key early works. Before Dr. Strangelove, future-war fiction was hugely popular in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Before Terminator, a French author depicted Thomas Edison as the creator of the perfect female android. These works and others are featured in this critical anthology. Contributors include Paul K. Alkon, Andrea Bell, Josh Bernatchez, I. F. Clarke, William J. Fanning Jr., William B. Fischer, Allison de Fren, Susan Gubar, Rachel Haywood Ferreira, Kamila Kinyon, Stanislaw Lem, Patrick A. McCarthy, Sylvie Romanowski, Nicholas Ruddick, and Gary Westfahl. Hardcover is un-jacketed.