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The Melancholy Android

Author: Eric G. Wilson
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791481328
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
The Melancholy Android is a psychological study of the impulses behind the creation of androids. Exploring three imaginative figures—the mummy, the golem, and the automaton—and their appearances in myth, religion, literature, and film, Eric G. Wilson tracks the development of android-building and examines the lure of artificial doubles untroubled by awareness of self. Drawing from the works of philosophers Ficino, Kleist, Freud, and Jung; writers Goethe, Coleridge, Shelley, and Poe; and movies such as Metropolis, The Mummy, and Blade Runner, this book not only offers a range of sites from which to analyze the relationship between mind and machine, but also considers a pressing paradoxical dilemma—loving machines we want to hate.

Android Karenina

Author: Leo Tolstoy
Publisher: Quirk Books
ISBN: 1594744831
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
Leo Tolstoy meets robots in this “creepy, thrilling, and highly enjoyable” sci-fi mashup of the classic Russian novel Anna Karenina (Library Journal). “ . . . lives up to its promise to make Tolstoy ‘awesomer.’”—The Onion AV Club It’s been called the greatest novel ever written. Now, Tolstoy’s timeless saga of love and betrayal is transported to an awesomer version of 19th-century Russia. It is a world humming with high-powered groznium engines: where debutantes dance the 3D waltz in midair, mechanical wolves charge into battle alongside brave young soldiers, and robots—miraculous, beloved robots!—are the faithful companions of everyone who’s anyone. Restless to forge her own destiny in this fantastic modern life, the bold noblewoman Anna and her enigmatic Android Karenina abandon a loveless marriage to seize passion with the daring, handsome Count Vronsky. But when their scandalous affair gets mixed up with dangerous futuristic villainy, the ensuing chaos threatens to rip apart their lives, their families, and—just maybe—all of planet Earth.

Science Fiction Literature through History [2 volumes]

Author: Gary Westfahl
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 681

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Book Description
This book provides students and other interested readers with a comprehensive survey of science fiction history and numerous essays addressing major science fiction topics, authors, works, and subgenres written by a distinguished scholar. This encyclopedia deals with written science fiction in all of its forms, not only novels and short stories but also mediums often ignored in other reference books, such as plays, poems, comic books, and graphic novels. Some science fiction films, television programs, and video games are also mentioned, particularly when they are relevant to written texts. Its focus is on science fiction in the English language, though due attention is given to international authors whose works have been frequently translated into English. Since science fiction became a recognized genre and greatly expanded in the 20th century, works published in the 20th and 21st centuries are most frequently discussed, though important earlier works are not neglected. The texts are designed to be helpful to numerous readers, ranging from students first encountering science fiction to experienced scholars in the field.

Parables of the Posthuman

Author: 19122 PA
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814341446
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
A philosophical reading of video gaming that focuses on what it means to be a player. In its intimate joining of self and machine, video gaming works to extend the body into a fluid, dynamic, unstable, and discontinuous entity. While digital gaming and culture has become a popular field of academic study, there has been a lack of sustained philosophical analysis of this direct gaming experience. In Parables of the Posthuman: Digital Realities, Gaming, and the Player Experience, author Jonathan Boulter addresses this gap by analyzing video games and the player experience philosophically. Finding points of departure in phenomenology and psychoanalysis, Boulter argues that we need to think seriously about what it means to enter into a relationship with the game machine and to assume (or to have conferred upon you) a machinic, posthuman identity. Parables of the Posthumanapproaches the experience of gaming by asking: What does it mean for the player to enter the machinic "world" of the game? What forms of subjectivity does the game offer to the player? What happens to consciousness itself when one plays? To this end, Boulter analyzes the experience of particular role-playing video games, includingFallout 3, Half-Life 2, BioShock, Crysis 2, and Metal Gear Solid 4. These games both thematize the idea of the posthuman—the games are "about" subjects whose physical and intellectual capacities are extended through machine or other prosthetic means—and also enact an experience of the posthuman for the player, who becomes more than what he was as he plays the game. Boulter concludes by exploring how the game acts as a parable of what the human, or posthuman, may look like in times to come. Academics with an interest in the intersection of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and popular culture forms and video gamers with an interest in thinking about the implications of gaming will enjoy this volume.

I, Yantra

Author: Signe Cohen
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143849663X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
What does it mean to be human? I, Yantra examines ancient Indian narratives about robots and mechanically constructed beings to explore how their Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist authors approached this question. Making translations of many of these texts available in English for the first time, author Signe Cohen argues that they shed considerable light on South Asian religious notions of humanity, self, and agency. She also documents connections between ancient and modern responses to the ethical problems of what precisely constitutes a sentient being and what rights such a being should have. Situated at the intersection of humanities and bioethics, this cross-disciplinary study will be of interest to scholars of South Asian languages and literature as well as specialists in religion and technology.

The Mercy of Eternity

Author: Eric Wilson
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810126850
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
In his harrowing yet ultimately hopeful memoir, The Mercy of Eternity, the author turns an unsparing eye on his own continuing struggle with bipolar depression and finds, within the very illness that causes so much suffering, the resources for hope, forgiveness, and love. --from publisher description.

MOVING CAMERAS AND LIVING MOVIES

Author: STEVE ESOMBA, Dr.
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1291351574
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
I can say with absolute certainty that, everybody enjoys watching movies, cinema, films and television. But few, if any, know how a film is made: a film has inbuilt special effects or 'tricks'to make it appealing to audiences. MOVING CAMERAS AND LIVING MOVIES reveals to you ALL about films & Filmmaking; it is a hard and tasking enterprise involving tens of thousands of workers and millions of investment dollars. After reading MOVING CAMERAS...your love for movies will triple. Movie technicians and camera gurus have a license to mould, alter, and manipulate the screen to produce or induce rain, sunlight, snow, fire, or fly any object in space in defiance of gravity or even cause 'accidents'or 'raise' the dead to life. Learn the fascinating, exciting world of film, actresses, actors, fashion, and fictional entities.

The Doll Universe (b/w)

Author: Cheatham Robert
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0557397952
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
'The doll is a fetish of presences which have left the room, a keepsake of revenants, ghost long gone but retaining efficacy, some hexing power, some ability to monstrate, come alive and eat its young witch's famiiar hovering at the distance turning from flying monkey into military drone.'

Women Willing to Fight

Author: Silke Andris
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443804762
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Women Willing to Fight is a collection of essays that explores the presence of the fighting woman in contemporary Hollywood cinema. Drawn from a variety of genres, the authors examine the changing role, image and position of this figure in film over recent decades. The increasing dominance of this character and her repositioning as a protagonist reinvigorates discussion concerning the dynamics of film narrative and spectacle. Each contribution takes as its focus a central character from the Hollywood blockbuster era, examining in detail the motivations and implications of the fighting female. In doing so the collection raises significant questions about the place of the fighting woman in contemporary media and the relationships she forges on and off-screen. With a strong appreciation of the mixed messages inherent in images of fighting women, Women Willing to Fight seeks to draw attention to the embodied forms - physical, intellectual and emotional - through which female fighters are represented. The anthology places particular emphasis on the emergence of the physically empowered woman, a character for whom the body has become a weapon and a target. While early cinematic representations allowed women to voice their fury and frustration, today’s female fighters not only ‘speak up’ but ‘muscle up’. Putting aside the supernatural powers of many action heroines, this volume focuses on the kinds of fighting skills, abilities and desires that are engendered in characterisations of mortal women. To this end the volume implicitly addresses complex and cross-cultural notions of ‘extra-ordinary’ power. By examining the embodied arsenal that these characters possess and develop - through training, conditioning, and life experience - it considers the representation of motivation and metamorphoses into ‘the fighting woman’: how a woman fights holds implicit meaning and inevitably urges us to consider why and what she is fighting for.

Posthumanism and Education: Transgression or Interdependence

Author: Ivan Nišavić
Publisher: Transnational Press London
ISBN: 1801352585
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
This collection delves into the ongoing debates spanning decades on the intricate interplay between posthumanism, the posthuman age, and education. Featuring authors from diverse backgrounds and theoretical perspectives, the chapters explore a spectrum of themes – from technophilia to technophobia, transhumanism to humanism, and Bildung tradition to new materialism – illuminating key dimensions of education in what is heralded as a new and distinct era. At the heart of these discussions is an exploration of whether this era truly marks a radical departure and how it influences educational practices. The chapters offer arguments both supporting and challenging these ideas, advocating for critical reflection and a fresh perspective on human experience and contemporary education. The collection suggests a creative and considerate approach to children's learning and learning with children, which would not only respond to the challenges of imposed circumstances but also suggest active work on the desirable construction of new ones.