- Guest Speaker Robin Nagle, Liberal Studies
Media
Miéville, China. 2007. Un Lun Dun. New York: Del Rey.
OR
Okorafor, Nnedi. 2015. Lagoon. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Theory and Commentary (2 of these 3)
Childs, Mark C. 2015. Learning from New Millennium Science Fiction Cities. Journal of Urbanism 8(1): 97-109.
Kochin, Rob & James Kneale. 2001. Science fiction or future fact? Exploring imaginative geographies in the new millennium. Progress in Human Geography 25(1):19-35.
Milner, Andrew. 2004. Darker Cities: Urban Dystopia and Science Fiction Cinema. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7(3): 259-79.
Geek of the Week
Casey, Edward S. 1996. “How to Get From Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Philosophical Prolegomena.” In Senses of Place, edited by Steven Feld, and Keith H. Basso, 13–52. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. (Alex)
George Miller, The Road Warrior(Kennedy Miller Productions, 1981). (iTunes, Amazon, Hulu) (James)
Mark C. Childs in “Learning from New Millennium Science Fiction Cities” posits that science fiction reflects as much as it shapes popular culture. The extensive world-building in science fiction creates a public perception of the city as well as allows for imagining the cityscape in a different context than the one in which it exists. Can SF be used as a model to accurately predict the future of urbanization? With the imaginative capacity of SF, can we one day have a technologically advanced city that floats?
Kochin and Kneale suggest that cyber fiction is becoming a reality. How do we conceive the city as virtual? Does the increasing invasion of surveillance technology imply that cities, as we know them to be, have become an actual work of cyber fiction?
Nnendi Okorafor’s “Lagoon” consists of beautiful language and striking visuals. I found myself completely immersed in the plot and invested in the cast of characters. Varying POVs intersect at key moments. To the president, Ayodele says the following: “We do not want to rule, colonize, conquer, or take. We just want a home. What is it you want?” With this in mind, is it possible for us (every single living being) to coexist peacefully? Why do we find cohabitation to be so frightening? Also, why the inconclusive ending?
In “Darker Cities,” Milner states “the architecture of the dystopian cityscape functions as a synecdoche for the wider catastrophe that has overcome their respective populations.” In Un Lun Dun, the abcity is made from discarded items, playing on dangers of pollution and unsustainability. But how, also, might a city created from these objects subvert the very fears it projects? Does the fact that UnLondon does not dismantle and join London, but remains its own thriving location once the threat of the Smog is defeated, suggest that UnLondon is not a dystopian cityscape? What then would it be?
In “How to Get from Space to Place,” Casey states “that space and time come together in place. Indeed, they arise from the experience of place itself.” If place is how we measure space and time, what parameters measure place? And who measures place? Thinking specifically of SF time travel stories, would the specifics of ‘place’ be measured by the individuals who inhabit that particular space and time? How does the disruption of a time traveller who can experience the same “space” at different points in “time” effect perception of “place”?
In The Road Warrior, cities have become obsolete and instead humanity exists as roving nomadic riders. And yet the story is set in the Australian outback, a stretch of land already uninhabitable that possessed no cities to begin with. What does this distinct lack of an urban space mean? That people have abandoned urban civilization and moved into uninhabitable land and forced it into something just barely habitable. In what ways does the breakdown of the city lead to the breakdown of the civilization?
How does the inclusion of a novum enhance a reader’s immersion when reading science fiction?
The Road Warrior depicts a post-apocalyptic, dystopian society laden with barbarism in the pursuit of scarce resources. The on-screen desert landscape is barren and brittle. There’s dust on everything. It is pure filth and grit and dieselpunk heaven. How does the film’s high contrast color grading and unique visual aesthetic enhance the world presented here? Would this have worked in the same way if the movie was shot in black and white?
In Lagoon, what is the archetypical significance (if any) of the 3 main protagonists being a scientist, a soldier, and an artist?
China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun is a fun book to read, but what do people think about the “change” of the “protagonist” from Zanna to Deeba in the middle of the book? What is the author’s intention to shift the weight from “the Shwazzy” Zanna the chosen one, to “the unchosen” Deeba, and let Deeba carry on the adventure?
In M.C. Childs’s “Learning from new millennium science fiction cities,” he discusses how science fiction can inspire or shape “urban design and architectural theory,” which is very fascinating to think about. Would it contradict the ideas in Kitchin and Kneale’s “Science fiction of future fact” that “using this gaze to make predictions is problematic?”
It is true that cyberfiction and cyberpunk work often portrays an urban environment in decay, in what way would it be beneficial, used positively for sparkling future urban design ideas? “Using the work of cyberpunk for prediction makings is a ‘very dangerous way to look at science fiction,'” how is this dangerous and what are some examples?
Regarding the two critical texts, “Learning from new millennium science fiction cities” and “Science fiction or future fact? Exploring imaginative geographies of the new millennium”, it struck me how much they are invested in trying to find a “useful use” for science fiction. From future prediction to urban planning, science fiction, it seems, is still not enough to be considered literature alone.
China Mieville’s novel seems to challenge everything we though we knew about science fiction and expand its border to embrace the more problematic genre of fantasy. I know this is a science fiction class, but do we consider this book science fiction? At the same time, however, the novel questions the fantasy structure as well, busting its conventions with the failure of the chosen one and the rise of the “unchosen one”. Almost as consciously resisting classification…
In “Darker Cities,” Milner comments on the disconnect between the way gender relations are portrayed in SF films in the late 20th century, and the way they’re portrayed in written SF texts during that same time period. How do you account for this phenomenon? Do you think it’s a reflection of those in power in each industry, respectively? (Beyond Milner’s assertion that film promotes sexualized effect over idea)
In “Learning from New Millennium Science Fiction Cities,” Childs makes the argument that setting in SF, in contrast to setting in other genres, takes on additional significance. How does this argument align with his understanding of what cities represent?
While this is less relevant to the discussion of Urban Cities, specifically, I was struck by Kithcin and Kneale’s assertion in “Science fiction of future fact?” that only SF, in contrast to Fantasy, “domesticates the implausibility” produced by estrangement by explaining it within a cognitive framework. Fantasy does in fact account for this estrangement, but the novum (in this case, fantasy elements) in question is usually built into the metaphysics of the fantasy world. In SF, by contrast, the novum is accounted for by scientific rationalism. With this in mind, why do we privilege scientific rationalism over alternative forms of explanation?
Miéville’s construction of the Uncity seems to be a characterisation of what a space and palce are in the minds of citizens that feel constricted and limited in a place without walls. While UnLondon is a city it seemes to me completely enclosed. I wonder why and if anybody else felt the same way.
The construction of Lagos as a city in Lagoon seemed to me rather secondary to its presentation as a cultural space where colonialism and its effects seem to have permeated into every person at once a citizen and a victim of this state of citizenship. Is this spatial sublation to space the reason wy the aliens chose the city to make contact?
While science fiction is definitely a means to explore the “what ifs” of cities their construction always seems to be on the soul of a people and their place of living rather than on the city itself. I wonder if there’s a literary genre rthat is purely spatial, in which the city itself is the main character and where the culture is not of man’s action but of the slow progression of time in a place made to last forever.
Many of our texts this week have been concerned with imagining dystopia, a genre known for producing many of the most enduring works of the last 100 years, but none — and, as far as I can tell, none of the texts we’ve read so far — actively deal with imagining utopia. Obviously the cultural discourse of our moment is more cynical than that of the early 1800s, 1920s, or (portions) of the 1960s, but what do we, as a class, think of the task of imagining new utopias? Is that worthwhile? Are dystopia fundamentally more effective experimental exercises than optimism?
To what extent do we feel that Un Lun Dun, with its defiance of ‘traditional’ fantasy hero tropes, may have influenced other current successful fantasy writers — like J.R.R. Martin, for example — who explore shifting protagonists mid-narrative? Moreover, do we feel that this betrayal of our expectations is effective or does it waste narrative time?
I recently rewatched Mad Max: Fury Road, and I’m curious how our class feels about the different representations of Mad Max in Road Warrior (Mel Gibson) as opposed to Tom Hardy playing the role in Fury road? How are the character’s values different, and how do they play that in their physicality? While each is a product of its time, does either offer substantial substance in comparison to each other?
Okorafor’s Lagoon offers a refreshing first contact with extraterrestrials that isn’t set in New York or SF or even Tokyo or Beijing. The aliens in the novel also make first contact with a swordfish—note: not human—re-centering what it is to be an “earthling” and devaluating human exceptionalism. While not overgeneralizing mainstream media representations, there is definitely a trend to set important (though fictive) events mainly in “important” cities, fueling memes of other, lesser known places being safe from alien or other supernatural danger. How else is place/space politics manifested in imaginative worlds and what does our science-fictive world-building say about our perception of place/news?
Dystopian cities are able to illustrate Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence by projecting present environmental, political, and social concerns into the future, as seen in Mad Max, The Windup Girl, and numerous SF texts. Childs discusses the reciprocal relationship between the fictive/imaginative and urban planning. Reading cities as text (both real/present and fictive/as possible futures), can architecture and urban planning help address present hegemonic concerns? Do we see this in more optimistic SF works and how can the SF imagination be realized for the better?
In “Darker Cities” Milner quotes Raymond Williams’ thinking about the shifting of man’s capacity for transformation: “Man did not go to his destiny… [instead he finds] his own capacity for collective transformation of himself and his world”(6). As our postmodern worlds become increasingly embedded in the digital/cyber space while control over these spaces is predominately corporate, is it possible that we have lost this sense of our own collective capcity for transformation? That we are approaching a point of complete fracture and abstraction?
Kitchin and Kneale indirectly capture this fracture by naming estrangement as the appeal of SF. Where do we take this estrangement when it can no longer be “contained by scientific explanation”? (3). What do we do when estrangement can no longer be cordoned by the boundaries of SF/culture/art/science? What happens when that estrangement is the lived experience? (particularly in the cyber realm)
Finally, the question is left unanswered through all the texts of the effect of interface upon the experience of each urban location and space more generally. Without an interface (infrastructure, social structure, norms, cultural values, etc) what is left for one to experience the world with?
All the cars in the “Mad Max” series act as extensions of the self and elaborations on the resistant spirit of humans, even in the most destroyed futures. Mad Max’s V8 Interceptor stays with him and changes throughout the series to match the character undergoing physical and emotional transformations. The Interceptor is a hero vehicle that is as necessary to Max’s survival as any weapon or physical substance, except it’s even more important because it’s personalized to fit the basic needs and aesthetic of the hero himself. I think the series highlights vehicles as high commodities with extreme personalization because cars have always been just that for so many societies. Since living in this city and using public transportation every single day, which is the complete opposite of where I’m from in Texas, I’ve become super aware of the way people influence car-culture and vice versa. My first car was a golden ‘76 Plymouth Feather Duster, and that’s how I presented myself to others for years cause it was an extension of my self and provided a safe space for necessary travel.
The futures imagined in the “Mad Max” series remain heavy car-culture examples because that’s how things are in Australia and many other countries that have wide stretches of land between locations. It’s almost not just a rural vs city theme since vehicles are part of nearly every character’s existence no matter their circumstance. Vehicles literally are the way people exist with the “Mad Max” environment, but the environment is ironically damaged because of the substances required for constructing and maintaining vehicles. So, how can we care about the future of our environment if we still treat the vehicles that damage it with more respect?
1. The L.A. 2013 document is fascinating because it demonstrates, even with the presence of cyberpunk and dystopic cityscapes in 1988, the idea of the futuristic city was still optimistic, still forward thinking. While we can look at Los Angeles and see what changed between 1988 and the actual 2013, it seems that our ideas of cities in the future have become far more pessimistic. What do we think has changed since then?
2. One of the things that stands out about THE ROAD WARRIOR is its status as an iconic work of post-apocalyptic science fiction. It occurs to me, perhaps obviously, that post-apocalyptic science fiction is decidedly exurban or rural, whereas “mainstream” science fiction places a lot of emphasis on the city and its place in society. In turn, think about the idea within post-apocalyptic cinema that society has, through their own self-destructive behaviors or through no fault of their own, rejected the urban environment (especially when you consider that the clustered nature of cities allows diseases to spread or for millions to be wiped out via nuclear attack). This to me feels like a very “conservative” ideal that favors the rural over the urban. Why is this a motif within post-apocalyptic fiction, or is it just because sweeping, devastated landscapes are just more striking? But is there something within post-apocalyptic fiction that makes (or doesn’t make) it one of the more conservative sub-genres of an already conservative genre, and if so, what are they?
3. New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Lagos. Time and time again, four of these cities have been re-imagined and re-envisioned and brought forward into the future. Yet others, like Lagos, remain less used in fiction. While the answer as to why some cities are favored over others is simple (Western-ism/Euro-centrism), I wonder what characteristics these cities all share that make them useful for envisioning their future. How important is history to the future conception of these cities – the fact that we have records of the city’s past, making it easier to envision their future? And how can we apply the techniques used when imagining the future of places like London or New York to a less Euro-centric futurism?
In considering urban/spaces and a person’s relationship with that landscape, does Max’s manipulation of space in The Road Warrior reveal certain truths about his identity? Should media like The Road Warrior, the comic and movie Tank Girl, and the film Bio-Dome be looked at as cautionary tales about humanity’s mistreatment of the environment? Are there ways to create urban spaces that are more ecologically-minded, and how is that reflected in science fiction?
Un Lun Dun is such a brilliant text and is very Miéville, but what’s the point?
No really, what’s the point?
Is the main issue communication? Is it the failure of globalism? Un Lun Dun develops these theories and technologies based off of misunderstood information / these theories and technologies are created to combat problems that are fully translated and rendered completely from that same other world where the misunderstood information originated. Is it a metaphor for the relationship between the developed and the developing world?
Or is it just because London has shit weather because all I remember about the book is umbrellas and that seems very right.