ZNAK SAGITE — više od fantastike — edicija, časopis, knjižara...

The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism (http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387)

By  Jonathan Lethem (http://www.harpers.org/subjects/JonathanLethem)

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. . . .
—John Donne

Taman htedoh nešto reći o veštini sa kojom barata referencama, ali na vreme shvatih da sam izmešala stavove Lethema i Lathama...  xrotaeye

Interesantno ovo...

Neće dugo potrajati pa će da tuže i ako napišeš mišljenje/prikaz/štagod o knjizi/filmu/čemugod, a nisi tražio+dobio pravo da na taj način pomeneš to delo.

Često na ovom forumu ne znam gde šta da turim (a i van foruma, har har har), pa ću ovo da stavim ovde:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/18/fifty-literary-life-robert-mccrum (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/18/fifty-literary-life-robert-mccrum)

Fifty things I've learned about the literary life, Roberta Mekram.

Odličan članak! Najviše mi je ovo palo za oko: Some of the best contemporary writers are working in American television.

Ms Tomalin, author of the book Charles Dickens: A Life, said major themes in   his work reverberated in 21st century Britain, including the "great gulf   between the rich and poor, corrupt financiers, corrupt Members of   Parliament, how the country is run by old Etonians". But she said key failings in the education system – combined with the   influence of modern technology – meant many children could not fully   appreciate his books.
"What Dickens wrote about is  amazingly relevant," she said.
"The only caveat I would make is that today's children have very short   attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television   programmes which are flickering away in the corner.
"Children are not being educated to have prolonged attention spans and   you have to be prepared to read steadily for a Dickens novel and I think   that's a pity."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9062356/Modern-children-lack-the-attention-to-read-Dickens.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9062356/Modern-children-lack-the-attention-to-read-Dickens.html)

The highest grossing film of all-time is James Cameron's science fiction epicAvatar. My wife, who is not by any consideration a fan of science fiction, loved the movie. As we left the theater after first seeing Avatar she raved on and on about the characters and special effects and emotional storyline. "Yes," I replied. "It was a very good science fiction film."
That stopped my wife in her tracks. "Science fiction?" she asked. "Avatarwasn't science fiction."
My mind was literally blown. I pointed out that the film involved aliens on an alien world, along with spaceships, futuristic technology, and so on. But my wife was adamant. The film had appealed to her because of the romance between the main characters and the political and environmental undertones of the human/native conflict. "Avatar might technically be science fiction," she finally admitted, "but the film worked despite this fact." (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/03/guest-post-jason-sanford-asks-where-are-all-the-science-fiction-readers/#more-51364)

:evil:

Ima žena pravo - ponekad i priča mora da bude dobra.

Cognitive estrangement was first presented by Darko Suvin (the man who brought SF criticism the novum) as a formalized, narrow conception of what SF does, and thus what makes the genre distinctive. In the decades since he presented this idea (in most detail in his Metamorphoses of Science Fiction), it has undergone scrutiny and development, by both Suvin and other writers. and maintains an influential position in the discourse on fantastic literature.  What Suvin wrote in 1973, that cognitive estrangement is "the basis of the literary genre of SF" is true, if more nuanced and critically-examined, today. As Patrick Parrinder noted in his introduction to Learning From Other Worlds, a volume that examines this idea from a number of angles, Suvin's conception has become "paradigmatic."

The use of this idea as a heuristic device has shaped how SF is examined academically, but has also influenced less rarified discourse as well. Suvin's idea is often presented (in its older form) as [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_science_fiction]a definition of SF (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/03/feeling-very-estranged/#more-51454), for example:

"[SF is] a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment.

"[/url]

DeNardo na Kirkusu:

Science fiction often gets a bad rap for using hard-to-understand scientific terms. Well...OK, guilty as charged. But just because science fiction has an occasional tendency to use complex language doesn't mean that it's impossible to understand—especially when you have the following glossary at the ready the next time you pick up a science-fiction book from the shelf. (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/demystifying-sci-fi-terms/)

DeNardo na Kirkusu, nastavak: Demystifying Sci-Fi Terms, Part 2. (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/demystifying-sci-fi-terms-part-2/)

"Science fiction criticism, of course, is still very much in the Formalist stage. It is often obsessed with "good" and "bad" – it is a mode of review rather than of criticism. Its effectiveness, in the majority of cases, is questionable." - Lavie Tidhar  (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/03/de-parochializing-sf-criticism-is-it-really-necessary-or-even-possible/#more-52336)

"Since it is in the nature of SF's oxymoronic fusion of the rational and the marvelous to challenge received notions of reality – sometimes seriously, sometimes playfully – critical provocation is part of SF's generic identity." – Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.

 
I am perpetually fascinated by the social and cultural stuff that is spawned by our engagement with literature. Some of this stuff – the positions, structures, and practices that constitute the literary field of production – is seen as a natural part of the field, while other elements are seen as distractions or problems within the field. But the more I read about and observe how we discuss and share our thoughts and opinions on fantastic literature, how we use our imaginations and communication skills to enjoy and interpret it, the more I see what is exceptional and troubling about how the fields around that literature work. Sociologists, anthropologists, and other academic and scientific analysts have frequently tried to theorize about and explain those workings, but most of those efforts are dense, discursively challenging (in both use of jargon and structuring of argument), and sometimes outright obtuse. One of my own goals as a writer, critic, and observer of the field is to figure out what is useful about some of those theories and explanations and apply them in ways that can get people thinking more critically and creatively about how we bring literature in our lives and what its effects are on us, and how we in turn affect the production and perception of literature.
This week, I want to sketch out some ideas of how the field works and then apply them (too briefly) to the way in which reviews and awards create focal points of struggle through the negotiation of controversy. (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/04/reviews-awards-and-controversies-a-few-thoughts-on-the-dynamics-of-struggle-in-the-fantastic-literary-field/#more-53591)

 
The more recent and emotionally charged the history, the more complicated the work is for the writer. History is edited and smoothed out over time. That has yet to happen with current events. For example, ask any police officer how many witnesses to a crime they prefer to have and they'll tell you... one. Why? Studies have shown that human beings perceive events differently in subtle ways. So, if five witnesses step forward, there are five separate versions of what happened. Each and every version is valid. Remember we're talking about personal events, not a distant, far-flung history. If lives have been lost, and generally they have been in this type of event, then the stakes are quite high. In many ways, the approach is connected to writing about Other. The same caution, attention to detail, patience, respect, and concern are required. If you ask me, the first step is in listening to those who have lived the events you're writing about — really listening with an understanding that the witness to the event is the expert, not yourself. You'll never know what it was like to live through what another human being has. You can only guess. So it is that without the ability to listen with an ego-less ear, a writer is doomed to fail. (http://www.fantasybookcafe.com/2012/04/women-in-sff-month-stina-leicht/)

Da li ste ovo negde stavili?


Interview: William Gibson[size=0.85em]by THE GEEK'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/authors/geeks-guide-to-the-galaxy/)[/size][size=0.85em][/color]PUBLISHED APRIL 2012 | 2483 WORDS[/size]
William Gibson is the author of the novel Neuromancer, which defined the cyberpunk subgenre. Recent novels include Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. His latest book, Distrust That Particular Flavor, collects his best nonfiction pieces from the past twenty years.
This interview first appeared on [/color]The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy (http://www.geeksguideshow.com/) podcast, which currently airs on Wired.com and is hosted by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley. Visit geeksguideshow.com to listen to the entire interview and the rest of the show, in which the hosts discuss various geeky topics.


***

Your new book is called Distrust That Particular Flavor. What does that title refer to?
It's a phrase from the piece in the collection called "Time Machine Cuba," and the "particular flavor" is futurists in immediate apocalyptic mode, like, "the world is ending right now, so pay attention to me" . . . it comes after I quote H.G. Wells hitting that particular note in a very particularly shrill way. It's akin to the "after us, the deluge" rant, which is something I watch for in other science fiction writers, because it's usually a bad sign.
Futurists get to a certain age and, as one does, they suddenly recognize their own mortality, and they often decide that what's going on is that everything is just totally screwed and shabby now, whereas when they were younger everything was better.
It's an ancient, somewhat universal human attitude, and often they give it full voice. But it's been being given voice for thousands and thousands of years. You can go back and see the ancient Greeks doing it. You know, "All that is good is gone. These young people are incapable of making art, or blue jeans, or whatever." It's just an ancient thing, and it's so ancient that I'm inclined to think it's never actually true. And I've always been deeply, deeply distrustful of anybody's "golden age"—that one in which we no longer live.
Your new book opens with a photo of a young William Gibson. When was that photo taken, and why did you decide to include it in the book?
I'm not sure when it was taken. It would have been very late '80s or very early '90s, and I liked it because it was emblematic of the fact that beautiful women actually can marry guys who look like Dr. Seuss characters.
Many of the pieces in the book were written for Wired magazine. How did you first get started writing for Wired, and how did you end up writing so many articles for them?
I had met Kevin Kelly via the Global Business Network, and then Kevin and whoever else started Wired, back when it was a crazy, indie San Francisco thing. So, although I don't actually remember, I'm sure Kevin called me up and started suggesting gigs, and it was easier and more fun to do that sort of thing with Wired than anybody else, because they weren't the product of a major publishing company. They didn't have a huge, ancient culture of magazine publishing in position to make things difficult, so they would suggest genuinely crazy and interesting things to highly unlikely people. I think Bruce Sterling may have gotten in there first and that could have been a factor, too.
Obviously the media world has changed a lot since you first started writing. If you were just getting started today, do you think you'd get into podcasting, YouTube, or webcomics, anything like that?
I think about that when young people ask me what they should do to get started, because when they ask me that, I realize that I don't know, because I'm not really familiar with the news. When I began, I knew more or less what was possible with what was available then. Today I don't really know. It's one of the reasons that writers who've been established for a while actually can't give younger writers very much advice, particularly today, because . . . you know, that stuff didn't really change much for a long time. I saw advice to young writers when I was in my early teens, in the early '60s, that was perfectly valid and useful advice when I began writing in the late '70s, because things hadn't changed that much, but now things have indeed changed quite a lot.
Speaking of your early work, did you basically achieve success right away when you were first sending out your short stories, or did you accumulate a bunch of rejections, like most writers do, before you made your first couple sales?
The first story I wrote was written in a class on science fiction criticism, and then people twisted my arm and forced me to submit it somewhere, and I submitted it to the most obscure market I could find, and it was immediately purchased. That story was "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" in a little magazine called Unearth, which only published people's first stories. So the next time I wrote a short story, I sent it to that market, and they rejected it. It was some early version of whatever became "Johnny Mnemonic," and it discouraged me. I was easily discouraged. The rejection discouraged me, and I didn't go back to writing science fiction stories for a while.
Then a friend of mine, who was much more aggressive and ambitious than I was, had gone to New York and was hustling publication in Omni, and told me they were paying good money and I was a fool not to get in there. So he somehow talked me into submitting to them, and I think the idea of submitting to a bigger market created some pressure that caused me to push a little harder in the rewrite than I would have done submitting to a less big-deal market. Then they bought it. But I went from, you know, a market that paid like $27 for a story to a market that paid like $2,700 for a story of the same length.
So I did everything I could to stay in that market. That was [/color]Omni (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omni_%28magazine%29). You know, if you wrote for any of the digest-sized magazines, they'd give you—if you were lucky—a couple hundred bucks. They really didn't pay. But with Omni you got like $2,700. And that was actually enough money to make a difference. I bought my wife a television set, and I bought myself a plane ticket to New York so I could go and meet the people who'd sent me that check, which actually proved to be a very good investment. After that, I don't think my science fiction was ever rejected. Omni paid so much more than the other science fiction markets that I never wanted to go anywhere else, and as soon as I got into the novel market, I pretty much quit writing short fiction.
I listened to your Intelligence Squared interview with Cory Doctorow. From what he said, it sounds like a lot of people in Singapore sort of have a complex about you referring to their country as "Disneyland with the death penalty." Is that the most worked up that people have gotten over something you've written, or are there other examples?
No, that's the only thing I've ever written that caused a national government to make a formal complaint to the publisher [laughs] . . . and then to ban the magazine for a while.
The documentary No Maps for These Territories features conversations with you as you sit in the back of this moving car with weird psychedelic effects out the windows. I was just wondering, whose idea was it to do the film like that, and what did you think of the result?
That was Mark Neale's idea. Mark Neale was the filmmaker there. Mark Neale and I are friends. Otherwise I wouldn't have done it, because it involved being gaffer-taped to the back of the car. And since the psychedelic shit out the window was put in later, I didn't even get to enjoy that. That said, I've only seen it once. I saw it in a theater. I felt I needed to see it all, and to sign off on it. But since I seriously can't stand the sound of my own recorded voice, it's not something I'll be likely to sit through again.
Why were you gaffer-taped to the car?
Well, once I got into the back seat, they had to tape a lot of stuff together. The car was rigged with eight or 10 pencil cameras, and wires all over the place. It was extremely difficult to get me in and out of the vehicle once we got into recording mode. So it was a little awkward that way. It was as though I was taped into the back of the car.
One of the pieces in the book talks about your hobby of collecting antique watches on eBay. Could you tell us about that?
The watch thing was about . . . I eventually figured out it was really about pursuing a totally unnecessary and gratuitous body of really, really esoteric knowledge. It wasn't about accumulating a bunch of objects. It was about getting into something utterly, witheringly obscure, but getting into it at the level of, like, an extreme sport. I met some extraordinarily weird people. I met guys who could say, "Well, I've got this really rare watch, and it's missing this little piece. Where might I find one?" Then the guy would kind of stare into space for a while, and then he'd say this address in Cairo, and he'd say, "It's in the back room. The guy's name is Alif, and he won't sell, but he would trade it to you if you had this or this." And it wasn't bullshit. It was kind of like a magical universe. It was very interesting. But once I'd gotten that far . . . I got to a certain point, and there was just nowhere else to go with it. The journey was complete. Maybe one day I'll use that stuff in fiction or something.
You wrote a script for Alien 3 that was never filmed. What did you think of the direction the series took, and are you planning to see Prometheus when it comes out?
Oh, gee, I might. You know, I've never actually seen [/color]Alien 3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_3) [laughs]. I've seen the first two. But I'm always curious what Ridley Scott does. I'm more interested in Ridley than I am in the Alien franchise.
So when I first started going to science fiction conventions, I heard this funny story involving you, and I've never been sure whether it was true or if it happened the way I heard it, and I was just wondering if you knew what I was talking about. It was this story where you go to a hotel to check in, and you say, "Hi, I'm Mr. Gibson," and everyone acts all shocked at the hotel.
It was the Beverly Hills Hotel, and, I don't know, somebody had checked me in. It was something film-related. It was when I had started doing some contract screenplay work after that Alien 3 script. So I got there, and they were like, you know, I couldn't figure out what was going on. The desk people just looked gobsmacked and really unhappy. So the bellman takes me up to this very fancy suite, and in the suite there's a table lavishly arrayed with very expensive wines and liquors and floral displays, and a big thing that says: "The Beverly Hills Hotel welcomes Mel Gibson."
And so I looked at the bellman, and I said, you know, "I'm not him, you can take this stuff away." And he said, "No, no, you get to keep it." And I said, "What am I supposed to do with it?" And he said, "Call some friends, have a party."
Have you written any other recent articles or blog posts or anything that people should check out?
No, all I do is tweet. So they can go to @GreatDismal on Twitter, and there I will be.
You had a recent short story appear in an anthology called Darwin's Bastards . . .
Yeah, that's true, that's true. And you know, I wish that somebody would reprint that somewhere where it would be seen, because I quite liked it, and I hadn't done a short story for ages, you know, for 20 years or something. That was the first one, and it's quite unlike any short stories I'd done previously. It's a Canadian anthology—it's actually a very good anthology, there's a lot of really interesting fiction in that thing—but it just doesn't seem to have had much legs.
What was the story about?
It's called "Dougal Discarnate." It's about a guy who takes acid in Vancouver hippiedom in the late '60s or the early '70s, and has a really tremendous rush from doing it and leaves his body, and then he can't get back into his body. And his body is taken to the hospital and it eventually recovers and becomes a stockbroker or a real estate agent or something.
And he's just left this disincorporated, bodiless spirit haunting this particular neighborhood in Vancouver, which for mysterious reasons he discovers he can't leave—there's a sort of invisible barrier. I myself am a character in the story, and I discover this disincorporated guy and become friends with him, and take him to the movies and stuff. He becomes my film-going buddy. But the rest of the story is about how he gets rescued from this seemingly hopeless state, and actually winds up married—sort of—and very, very happy, living in Okinawa. That's all a spoiler, but you can use it anyway. Maybe it'll encourage somebody to buy Darwin's Bastards.

DeNardo:
Today at Kirkus Review Blog (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/), I've got the beginning of a 3-part article on Social Science Fiction (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/science-fiction-gets-social-part-1/).
Check out Science Fiction Gets Social (Part 1) (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/science-fiction-gets-social-part-1/)...

One of the characteristics of great literature is that it says something meaningful about life. Science fiction does that, too, except that the perspective is usually seen from an outsider's viewpoint and is often focused on society in general. Being fond of sub-categorizing as we are, science fiction fans call such fiction "social science fiction", and it's concerned less with the tropes usually associated with sf (like spaceships and technology) and more concerned with human activities and how people interact in groups. Or, to tie it back to the "science" label, it's concerned with "soft" sciences like sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, theology, linguistics, cultural studies and more.
Let's take a closer look at social science fiction.

Recently Neal Stephenson wrote an article for the World Policy Journal titled "Innovation Starvation (http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation)". In the article he discussed the serious lack of innovation in science today. Later in the article, he discusses a presentation that he made at the Future Tense conference where he said that good science fiction supplied "a plausible, fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort of compelling innovation has taken place."  One scientist that he talked to complained that SF writers are slacking off, saying that SF writers need "to start supplying big visions that make sense." With Planetary Resources (http://www.planetaryresources.com/) announcing their plan to mine the asteroids, it seems that reality may be encroaching on science fiction's "big idea" territory.

We asked this week's panelists:
Q: Are SF writers "slacking off" or is science fiction still the genre of "big ideas"? If so, what authors are supplying these ideas for the next generation of scientists and engineers?  http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/05/mind-meld-is-sf-still-the-big-idea-genre/#more-55730 (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/05/mind-meld-is-sf-still-the-big-idea-genre/#more-55730)

This week in the SF History series on the Kirkus Reviews blog, I look at the connection between American author Edgar Allan Poe and French author Jules Verne (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/strange-tale-edgar-allan-poe-and-jules-verne/), and a common story that they both worked on, decades apart, which helped to set the tone for the science fiction genre moving forward.

This was an interesting point in science fiction history, because it's an early point where there was a direct influence from one author to another, not just in one work, but stylistically as well.

Click on over and read The Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/strange-tale-edgar-allan-poe-and-jules-verne/) over at the Kirkus Reviews blog!

Writing About Race in Science Fiction and FantasyA Roundtable Interview with David Anthony Durham, Aliette de Bodard, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Ken Liu
(Continued from Part 1 (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/05/writing-about-race-in-science-fiction-and-fantasy-part-1-of-a-roundtable-interview))
Q: There is a greater deal of "non-western" science fiction and fantasy being published-successfully-right now. As a result, a sense of excitement about reading and writing works that celebrate a wider range of skin tones and cultural influences appears to permeate the current discourse. Do you think we're seeing a permanent shift in the sff literary culture, or do you think the possibility exists for it to once again restrict itself to certain perspectives? http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/06/guest-post-writing-about-race-in-science-fiction-and-fantasy-part-2-of-a-roundtable-interview/#more-55955 (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/06/guest-post-writing-about-race-in-science-fiction-and-fantasy-part-2-of-a-roundtable-interview/#more-55955)

In recent years, the ascension of several former Third World countries to a better economical and geopolitical standing (the best example of which are the like the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) has been slowly but steadily bringing a change of paradigms in the way science fiction sees the world. Could it be that novels like Paolo Bacigalupi's The Wind-Up Girl, Ian McDonald's Brasyl and The Dervish House, to name just a few, are some of the harbingers of this change? Or, as their authors are Western in origin and haven't lived in the countries they portrayed, would they still be focusing on the so-called exotic aspect of foreign countries and therefore failing to see the core of these cultures?

We asked this week's panelists:
Q: How do you Write Science Fiction on a Post-Colonial World? Do you think belonging to a Non-Western culture is essential to write a really good, convincing story about it? Is being an outsider to the culture you want to write about, an enriching or impoverishing experience (or doesn't it matter in the end)?

Pretposlenji Newyorker ima par priča i dosta članaka o SF-u.


Evo sadržaja:


http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2012/06/04/toc_20120528 (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2012/06/04/toc_20120528)


Ima ih i free:

Colson Whitehead (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/colson_whitehead/search?contributorName=Colson+Whitehead) piše o fascinaciji B-filmovima i meni dragoj The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film


http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/06/04/120604fa_fact_whitehead (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/06/04/120604fa_fact_whitehead)

 

There are lots of ways for characters to travel in science fiction stories: spaceship, wormhole, and teleportation to name a few. All of these are useful for getting characters to move across long distances in a hurry. But from the days of early science fiction (before mankind mastered the power of flight) to the steampunk books found on shelves today, a particular method has persisted as being one of the most beloved modes of transport: the airship.

Look at Science Fiction and Fantasy's Love Affair With Airships (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/science-fictions-and-fantasys-love-affair-airships/).

Late last year, after John Ottinger wrote a passionate review of John C. Wright's Count to a Trillion, he was asked by Tor Books publicist Cassandra Ammerman on twitter about why, in his opinion, Space Opera, hadn't gone more mainstream, like steampunk? (her words.) The question made sense: since Steampunk was The Next Big Thing a few years ago and apparently still hasn't begun to lose its (steam) power, should science fiction writers and readers worry about its predominance as a subgenre in detriment of Space Opera, even with many new novels fresh in the market?

So, we asked this week's panelists...
Q: With the growing success of Steampunk in recent years, is Space Opera losing its appeal as a subgenre? Here's what they said...

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/06/mind-meld-has-space-opera-lost-its-luster/#more-57523 (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/06/mind-meld-has-space-opera-lost-its-luster/#more-57523)

 
MIND MELD: Celebrate Revolution and Independence in Genre Books

From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to The Quiet War, political revolutions are a common theme and staple in genre fiction. What are your favorite stories and novels exploring the themes of revolution and Independence? How do those works explore that theme?

Here's what they said... (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/mind-meld-revolution-and-independence-in-genre/#more-58000)

Pravda za KSR-a, ni Icehenge ni Marsovi...

ni ja nisam citala Icehenge...  :oops:


nego: Diving Into Pandemonium: Some Turbulent Postulations About Reading and the Fantastic

"In metaphorical terms, one could say that the processes essential to the reading mind are not mechanical or computational, but more oceanic, that is, dynamic, fluvial and fluctuating." Michael Burke. Literary Reading, Cognition and Emotion: An Exploration of the Oceanic Mind


Reading is on my mind at all times right now, not just because I (like everyone reading this) does it many times per day, but because I've been immersing myself in different scholarly disciplines and genres that try to theorize and analyze the practice. When I first started reading about reading, I had no idea that there was such a dense history of its study or that there would be so many theories about the practice that no one book could contain them all. Someone has been trying to grasp how the process works, and how best to teach and utilize it, for almost 2,500 years. From the earliest forms of Mental Discipline Theory to the latest revelations via fMRI and other scientific scanning processes, humans in literate societies have been attempting to understand just what it is we're doing and why we do it that way. This history is fascinating, but its vastness can be overwhelming without some thought about what you want to learn from it.

I am now sifting through this sea of ideas to find theories that might provide insight into how we specifically read fantastic literature and how this feeds our imagination. The focus is on how ideas of "the reader," genre, and social position within the field of literary production might be better understood using these conceptual tools, drawing from neuroscience, anthropology, literary studies, and wherever else a useful theory might be hiding. The eventual goal is to produce a book on the topic, currently entitled Excursions into Terra Ficta: Reading and Imagining Fantastika. What I want to do this week is discuss a few things that I have discovered as I review this vast body of ideas and think on "paper" about what this means for the reading of fantastic literature.

Each branch of knowledge has its own allure when discussing reading. Cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology all endeavor to produce the most empirical analyses of what the brain actually does when we read. They try to discern and elaborate the way that our brain works when we read. Some of the ideas produced by these approaches are powerful, such as the theory of a Visual Word Form Area, a sort-of clearinghouse for words that sorts them and sends them along the proper pathways to be compiled and comprehended. Stanislas Dehane's Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read goes into great detail about the various aspects of brain functions and the creation of understanding.  But the most interesting thing I have learned from this book, and other discussions of cognition, is that even as we learn more about what actually happens in the brain when we read, we almost inevitably have to metaphorize the process to grasp it.

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2F0670021105.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SL300_.jpg&hash=402553a41d942c3b113611446a5c6a9f4a1d4059) (http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0670021105/sfsi0c-20?tag=sfsi0c-20)


Dehane himself gives us an example that might please lovers of the fantastika: Oliver Selfridge's idea that "our lexicon works like a huge assembly of 'daemons' or a 'pandemonium'" (p. 42). To better see what the nervous system is doing, Selfridge concocted an elaborate metaphor for the contests of meaning that take place in our minds as we read. It is not an orderly process; it is cacophonous, ongoing, and anarchic. While neuroscientists have determined some general principles of how reading occurs in the brain, they have also realized that the process is unique of each individual. While we are all doing a similar thing, we each do it in our way. Each theorist also has their own way of conceptualizing reading, and almost all of theories that I have encountered so far rely on some sort of metaphor to codify their ideas of what reading is.

Dehane himself uses the metaphor of a "cathedral" to characterize the prefrontal cortex, which is where he feels writing and reading may have developed. He has to use that metaphor, and others, to permit the reader to make sense of his idea of the intersection between human development and the creation of higher functions such as reading. As I finished reading his book, I thought back to other books and articles I have read, and realized that many of them also rely, sometimes quite frequently, on metaphors to communicate their understanding of reading's dynamics and functions.  Not only is there a long, sometimes strange history of trying to figure out how reading works, there is also a history of coming up with apt, powerful metaphors for describing how reading works to readers. Even with the latest scientific research techniques and a millenia-deep tradition of studying reading, we still to this day have to create fantasies of the reading process to make it comprehensible. In order for us to apprehend the practice, we have to create fanciful readings of the process to make our insights into it lucid and arguable.

I see this in other varieties of reading theory too. Psychological theories often abstract the reading process from the basic practice of symbolic identification and translation and merge it with a particular psychological approach, such as conditioning theory or Freudian psychoanalysis. Social science theories perform a similar reinterpretation, bringing reading into a particular theoretical framework, instead of, say, observing how the practice of reading might influence, if not create, the underpinnings of their frameworks. Reading is usually brought into relation with an existing theory not just to illuminate the process of reading, but to add to the veracity of that theory. Rarely does reading reflect back on those theories and their metaphorical foundations.

This is significant because I believe that when critics and scholars talk about reading and fantastic literature we undertake a similar maneuver. We try to understand reading through our experience with the fantastic, and try to appropriate from other theories of reading approaches and metaphors that validate our experience and what we believe the values of fantastika to be. This is not automatically problematic, but it does plant a seed of doubt in our understandings of how fantastic literature is read, assimilated, and used in our imaginations. In our efforts to assess and speculate upon the distinctive characteristics and value of reading fantastic literature, we create understandings of reading that are subsumed by our existing assumptions about what the fantastic "itself" is. Rather than asking "what does the process of reading tell us about how our imaginations create and interpret the fantastic?' we assert that to engage fantastic literature is a unique sort of reading. As I continue to explore different ways of theorizing reading, I wonder if we need to ask new questions for an adjusted perspective.

Of course "reading" is not a singular object or simple process. To merely say that we need to proceed from reading "itself" is also a poor way to examine what we're doing when we read. Reading is a cognitive process that we can watch light up an fMRI monitor, but those mechanics, which we still barely understand, are only one part of what reading actually is. There are individual and collective psychological elements, there are aspects of feeling and motivation, and there are cultural conceits and social effects too. As Bloom and Green put  (http://books.google.com/books?id=tebt2CTsvNEC&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=bloom+and+green+1984&source=bl&ots=0FvttNOJpw&sig=BBWjYRmCa9QZRyoQjiZhOmkQI7I&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4AL1T4b0MOj50gGr5LXYBg&ved=0CE8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=bloom%20and%20green%201984&f=false)it a few decades ago, "[a]s a social process, reading is used to establish, structure, and maintain social relationships between and among people. As a linguistic process, reading is used to communicate intentions and meanings, not only between an author and a reader, but also between people involved in a reading event." Reading is not just a pandemonium in the mind; it is a pandemonium that emerges from many different angles of human action. We cannot grasp it as one thing, because it is always implicated in multiple layers of thought and practice. Thus, we have to not just create metaphors that make it easier to understand, we have to create fantasies about it that link to what we already know. The trick now is to look more carefully at those fantasies and see how they unfold when we perform particular sorts of reading activity and try to pay attention to the reading without letting our preconceptions or agendas overtake us.

By John H. Stevens (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/author/johngs/) | Thursday, July 5th, 2012       

Demystifying Sci-Fi Terms, with 10 Recommended Books (Part 3)                by John DeNardo (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/author/john-denardo/) on July 18, 2012 | Posted in Science Fiction and Fantasy (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/)

Science fiction often gets a bad rap for using hard-to-understand terms. Well...OK, guilty as charged. But just because science fiction has an occasional tendency to use complex language doesn't mean that it's impossible to understand—especially when you have the following glossary at the ready the next time you pick up a science-fiction book from the shelf.

In Part 1 (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/demystifying-sci-fi-terms/) and Part 2 (http://mobile.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/demystifying-sci-fi-terms-part-2/), we looked at scientific terms. Here, we look at words and phrases that are less scientific, but whose meanings are illuminated with a brief explanation.

Cozy Catastrophe

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What's so cozy about the end of the world? A so-called cozy catastrophe is a disaster or postapocalyptic story where the focus is not on the end of civilization, but rather on the characters who, no longer constrained by society's rules, may take advantage of it. It's "cozy" because the characters are usually not in any real danger from the destruction suffered by others.

Continue reading(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fd3eoifnsb8kxf0.cloudfront.net%2Fbetaimg%2Farrow_right.png&hash=73f952fe49593227b08ce3bb618e4f1899b5f05b) (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/demystifying-sci-fi-terms-10-recommended-books-par/#continue_reading_post)

MIND MELD: Monarchies in Fantasy


Very often, in secondary world fantasy novels, the default political setup is to have a Monarch of some sort, often one that acts in a seemingly autocratic manner. Many times, this Monarch rules by some sort of divine right or providence.


Q: Why are kingdoms with monarchs the default political setup in many secondary fantasy world novels? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such political structures? What are some exceptions to this?

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/mind-meld-monarchies-in-fantasy/#more-58731 (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/mind-meld-monarchies-in-fantasy/#more-58731)

(...) Writers formulate the words and readers interpret them but both they, and anyone involved in the process of creating or passing on a story, not only view the works through a culturally-inflected prism but enact their own anthropological analysis upon them. As I noted last week, culture is not a finely-tuned system, but is an unevenly-distributed, contingent vision of life and meaning that we have to invigorate and refashion as we go. To do that, we have to learn and apply ideas of how culture works. Like anthropologists, we are observers, we are creators of culture, all of us conjurers of worlds.


Culture and imagination are often sequestered from each other, except for instances where the "cultural imagination" is referred to. As we talked about cultural symbols at the panel I realized that this is a problem because "the imagination" is both a cultural conceit and an array of cognitive practices heavily conditioned by our ideas and assumptions about culture. There is no one spot in the brain that we can point to and call "the imagination;" it is itself a cultural interpretation of mental activities. The imagination is always cultural. At the same time, culture "itself" is a production of imagination; we carry a bundle of notions, precepts, and expectations around in our heads "that allow us to transcend. . . the immediacy of the present instant" as Crapanzano (via Jean Starobinski) puts it. Culture and imagination are made in relation to each other and exist in a rough synergy, shaping and challenging each other and the world around us.


I point this out because so much of the discourse on worldbuilding is not about how humans construct their worlds, but focuses instead on the materials and effects we use to express and enact culture. Our separation of culture and imagination and their bounded reification, treating them as somehow separate, limits our conception and utilization of them. We impose parameters on each rather than emphasizing how they inform each other. Conversely, we also imbue them with exaggerated qualities: the limited, structured, inescapable culture versus the limitless, dream-strewn imagination.



This separation creates a number of assumptions and heavily influences the worlds that many fantastic stories create. You can see it in towering piles of novels that seem to recycle the same ideas time and time again, occasionally subverting or riffing on a trope. You can see it in worlds that are defined by their statistics and ornaments, in the hunger of some readers who care more about the decorations of culture than the practicing of it. You can see it in the differing conceptions of Fantasy and SF, where Fantasy is so often culture-bound and SF is ideally innovative and mind-stretching. I'm thinking in particular about the recent Mind Meld discussion (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/mind-meld-monarchies-in-fantasy/)about monarchies in fantasy fiction. Several participants noted that monarchies proliferate in epic/high fantasy because they are culturally comfortable for many readers and are  relatively simple and useful for creating scenarios of conflict. These ideas essentially affirm the limits of imagination we have imposed (at least on secondary world fantasy) by deploying cultural assumptions about what political structures make for quick and obvious backgrounds for a story.


http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/culture-imagination-and-fantastika-more-thoughts-on-conjuration/#more-58812 (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/culture-imagination-and-fantastika-more-thoughts-on-conjuration/#more-58812)

In a 2011 blog post, Farah Mendlesohn wrote, "'Worldbuilding' as we understand it, has its roots in traditions that described the world in monolithic ways: folklore studies, anthropology, archeology, all began with an interest in describing discrete groups of people and for that they needed people to be discrete." This panel will discuss the historical and present-day merging and mingling of real-world cultures, and advise writers on building less monolithic and more plausible fictional ones."

We had a lively conversation that ranged from historical fiction to John Norman's Gor series. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and I want to thank my fellow panelists for making the discussion informative and fun. The panelists are (from left to right):

   
• James L. Cambias (http://www.jamescambias.com/)
• John H. Stevens (http://jhstevens.wordpress.com/) (me)
• Christopher M. Cevasco (http://www.christophermcevasco.com/)
• Francesca Forrest (http://asakiyume.livejournal.com/)
• Harold Torger Vedeler (http://www.readercon.org/bios/vedeler.htm)

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=PLB71F5284E77878B0&v=ENSRauHNHGY#t=0s (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=PLB71F5284E77878B0&v=ENSRauHNHGY#t=0s)

Ruth Franklin o rođenju "Čudovišta":

http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/101435/mary-shelley-frankenstein-godwin-bodleian-oxford (http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/101435/mary-shelley-frankenstein-godwin-bodleian-oxford)

The recent United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio 2012 or Rio+20, where the heads of state of 192 governments discussed sustainable development and declared their commitment to the promotion of a sustainable future, has – even if for a short while – galvanized the media attention. Science fiction, however, has never turned its back on ecology, being a constant theme, growing strong particularly in the past few years, with authors ranging from the master ecothinker Kim Stanley Robinson to younger and prolific Paolo Bacigalupi, all focusing in strategies to survival of humankind under a grim scenario of climate change.


So, we asked this week's panelists:

Q: With all the debates on global warming, the constant fear that we may be running scarce of basic resources such as potable water in the near future, what is science fiction's role in this panorama? What are your favorite SFnal scenarios for problem-solving regarding the maintenance and sustainability of ecosystems, if any? Is there any scenario science fiction could be exploring better with relation to ecology? 

Here's what they said... (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/mind-meld-ecological-science-fiction/)

John DeNardo o tome da li živimo u "naučnofantastičnom" svetu. Jedino što je tekst kratak.  :(

Quote
The second thing to note is that much of mainstream literature is not necessarily a true reflection of our high-tech times. If our present is inundated with such awesome technology, then why is mainstream literature so devoid of it? Shouldn't mainstream novels be filled with people who are addicted to Facebook; people who troll websites and forums to leave hateful, anonymous comments; and a cache of information that's no further away than the smartphone in your pocket? There's a disconnect here that quickly threatens to paint mainstream literature as outdated. At the very least, it has some catching up to do.

http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/have-we-passed-point-where-science-fiction-fiction/#continue_reading_post (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/have-we-passed-point-where-science-fiction-fiction/#continue_reading_post)

I John H. Stevens dodaje svoje mišljenje o temi:

Quote from: LiBeat on 19-07-2012, 10:08:59
MIND MELD: Monarchies in Fantasy (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/mind-meld-monarchies-in-fantasy/)

Simplicity, Drama, and Domination: On Monarchy in Secondary-World Fiction

Quote
The basic dramas of monarchy are familiar to many readers, and are not merely comfortable, but diverting. The worlds these monarchies assume can be entered into without great disruption and the fantasy thus has a well-worn familiarity to it, even if the names and clothes and geography are new. Expectations can be fulfilled or disrupted to create satisfaction or surprise.

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/simplicity-drama-and-domination-on-monarchy-in-secondary-world-fiction/#more-59005 (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/simplicity-drama-and-domination-on-monarchy-in-secondary-world-fiction/#more-59005)

Google Books Ngram: vampire, zombie, werewolf (http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=vampire%2Czombie%2Cwerewolf&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

Google Books Ngram: alien, spaceship, robot, AI (http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=alien%2Cspaceship%2Crobot%2CAI&year_start=1800&year_end=2012&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

Google Books Ngram: dragon, elf, magic, wizard (http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=dragon%2Celf%2Cmagic%2Cwizard&year_start=1800&year_end=2012&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

nesto malo o fanfiction stranputicama...  :cry: :


The Outsiders novelist S.E. Hinton took to Twitter to talk about fan fiction earlier this week. FanFiction.net counts more than 6,300 fan fiction stories (http://www.fanfiction.net/book/Outsiders/) about her beloved novel.
Hinton noted "I normally do not have a problem with fanfics," but responded to one fan fiction author who imagined an unexpected pregnancy (http://www.fanfiction.net/book/Outsiders/) (contains NSFW language) in her classic series. Hinton had an unequivocal response (https://twitter.com/se4realhinton/status/230349482452205569): "bangs head on desk ... no no no." You can read all her thoughts in the Storify post embedded below.

Earlier this year, Hinton told School Library Journal (http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/slj/home/894888-312/slj_talks_to_s.e._hinton.csp): "I have several things going on. I'm eternally wasting my time on  Twitter. I'm also in the middle of a very superficial comedic  supernatural thriller thing that I would like to finish.  Also, I'm  going to be working on webisodes in conjunction with the University  of  Tulsa film students based on my short stories."

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/s-e-hinton-responds-to-outsiders-fan-fiction_b55257 (http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/s-e-hinton-responds-to-outsiders-fan-fiction_b55257)

Is Kickstarter A Viable Tool For Writers? - s LitReactora.


http://litreactor.com/columns/on-the-pros-and-cons-of-kickstarter-as-a-tool-for-writers (http://litreactor.com/columns/on-the-pros-and-cons-of-kickstarter-as-a-tool-for-writers)

MIND MELD: Non-Fiction Books About Science Fiction That Should Be In Every Fan's Library

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/mind-meld-non-fiction-books-about-science-fiction-that-should-be-in-every-fans-library/ (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/07/mind-meld-non-fiction-books-about-science-fiction-that-should-be-in-every-fans-library/)

John H. Stevens dodaje još interesantnih misli svom prethodnom razmatranju (http://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/index.php/topic,10879.msg443112.html#msg443112) monarhističkih uređenja u fantastici.

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/08/the-fantasy-of-kingship/ (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/08/the-fantasy-of-kingship/)

Andre Seewood: Oslobađanje naučne fantastike od (crno-)rasističkog ropstva

QuoteFor example, if you as a filmmaker omit African-Americans from the science-fiction story altogether then the critical concept of "structured absence" allows your critics to use any other non-white race, animal, or object within your film as a symbol of minority otherness and then "interpret" a racial commentary where you had not intended such a commentary to exist.  One needs only to read Ed Guerrero's devastating analysis of Joe Dante's GREMLINS (1984) and GREMLINS 2: The New Batch (1990) in his book Framing Blackness.(4) 
In regards to the absence of African-Americans in the GREMLINS films, Guerrero interprets the Gremlins themselves as symbols of minority otherness and asserts that," the film's socially repressed fears have to do with non-white minorities gaining political power, as Gremlins 2, satires the political subtleties of an increasing influential "minority discourse" in contemporary American life more than it plays upon latent anxieties over racial otherness." (pg.65)  Although it could alternately be argued that many White American filmmakers were omitting African-American characters from their science-fiction films in a naïve and erroneous attempt to avoid racial issues and keep those issues from stealing focus from their central themes.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/freeing-black-science-fiction-from-the-chains-of-race# (http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/freeing-black-science-fiction-from-the-chains-of-race#)

Razvoj indijske naučne fantastike, ukratko:

http://nova-sf.de/internova/?p=382 (http://nova-sf.de/internova/?p=382)

Ovaj tekst imate u Ubiqu 9

Kako stvoriti dobru sf tv-seriju?

Chris McQuillan: Top 7 tips for creating new sci-fi in 2012.

QuoteThe amount of patience we hold for new television is dropping. Whereas decades ago, one bad episode of a TV series didn't do too much harm, nowadays it can lose you a million viewers the next week – and you may never get them back. We are cynical, as shows like Firefly have shown that even the best series can be cancelled within the next month, leaving you disappointed and with no satisfactory resolution to the storyline. Networks view shows as a game of numbers: bad ratings = cancellation. But what they perhaps do not realise is that flippant, trigger-happy cancellations damage network reputation; and, compounded, will make viewers ever-more hesitant and cautious when it comes to embracing a new show.

http://www.scifiheaven.net/index.php/2012/08/04/top-7-tips-for-creating-new-sci-fi-in-2012/ (http://www.scifiheaven.net/index.php/2012/08/04/top-7-tips-for-creating-new-sci-fi-in-2012/)

Na SF Signalu:

QuoteMike Resnick has sent along the table of contents for Resnick On The Loose, his upcoming non-fiction collection of 77 articles, introductions and editorials...

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http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/08/toc-resnick-on-the-loose-by-mike-resnick/ (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/08/toc-resnick-on-the-loose-by-mike-resnick/)

In writing, point of View matters. So we asked a large handful of authors these questions:

Q: As you see it. What are the strengths and weaknesses, for character, worldbuilding and setting in using 1st or 3rd person (or even 2nd?) Omniscient or limited? And how about the time frame of the tense, past or present or even future? (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/08/mind-meld-point-of-view-in-genre-fiction-part-i-of-ii/#more-59887)

What kinds of Point of view do you prefer to write in? What types of POV do you like to read?

Kako i zašto ubiti svoje likove - Adrian Tchaikovsky za Tor Books Blog.

http://torbooks.co.uk/2012/08/07/or-from-a-great-height-killing-off-characters-in-epic-fantasy/ (http://torbooks.co.uk/2012/08/07/or-from-a-great-height-killing-off-characters-in-epic-fantasy/)

Locusmagov okrugli sto o (prevedenim) delima fantastike van engleskog govornog područja koji su uticali na paneliste: Karen Burnham, Karen Lord, Karen Joy Fowler, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Rich Horton, Charles Tan, Theodora Goss, Fabio Fernandes i Cat Rambo.

http://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/2012/08/roundtable-on-jorge-luis-borges-and-others/all/1/ (http://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/2012/08/roundtable-on-jorge-luis-borges-and-others/all/1/)

Interesantan tred na slešdotu: koja je najdepresivnija SF knjiga/ priča/ novela koju ste ikada pročitali (http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/08/07/235239/ask-slashdot-whats-the-most-depressing-sci-fi-youve-ever-read)? Neke sjajne preporuke mogu da se nađu.  :lol:

Quote from: LiBeat on 08-08-2012, 12:39:08
In writing, point of View matters. So we asked a large handful of authors these questions:

Q: As you see it. What are the strengths and weaknesses, for character, worldbuilding and setting in using 1st or 3rd person (or even 2nd?) Omniscient or limited? And how about the time frame of the tense, past or present or even future? (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/08/mind-meld-point-of-view-in-genre-fiction-part-i-of-ii/#more-59887)

What kinds of Point of view do you prefer to write in? What types of POV do you like to read?

A evo i nastavka:

What kinds of Point of view do you prefer to write in? What types of POV do you like to read? (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/08/mind-meld-point-of-view-in-genre-fiction-part-ii-of-ii/)

A-ha!  xwink2
(... ali avaj, nisu za panel cimnuli niti jednu ril mekoj facu...  :( )

Is there any subject science fiction hasn't turned its eyes (or feelers, or antennae) to? Maybe not, but with the passage of time, habits change, mores change, worldviews change, new writers come to the fore bringing new questions, or new ways of asking old questions. There is always a flavor of the month, a subgenre favored by media or by writer's movements now and then (cyberpunks and steampunks promptly come to mind, but we can also think of the New Weird and New Space Opera, to name just very, very few). On the other end of the spectrum, however, there are always delicate subjects, things that don't give themselves easily to scrutiny, for a variety of reasons.

Bearing this in mind, we asked this week's panelists...
Q: What are, in your opinion, the themes and subjects which science fiction never have delved into properly but should have? (sex, politics, religion, sports may be part of this list – or not) Is there an author or story in particular which you feel has treated said subject in the right way and could be an example to be followed among new writers? (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/08/mind-meld-ticklish-subjects-in-sf/#more-60275) 

"Science Fiction" and Literature – or Thoughts on Delany and the Plurality of Interprative Processes

by Chris, King of Elfland's 2nd Cousin.

QuoteOne of Delany's core points ([size=-1]which he highlights in essay after essay[/size]) is that readers of science fiction apply a different set of skills to reading science fiction texts than readers of mundane fiction apply to the reading of mundane texts.
...
...
And for the past two generations, pop culture has increasingly been adopting the devices and concommitant interprative techniques native to science fiction. Whether it is Star Wars, any of the successive incarnations of Star Trek, the science fictional music of Rush ... , or the near-universal and growing interest in super-heroes doesn't matter: the net result is that as a society our imaginative vocabulary is increasing.
When Delany first wrote "Science Fiction and 'Literature'", he included an example sentence: "Then her world exploded." Back in 1979, a relatively limited population might have had the cultural vocabulary to interpret that sentence plurally as metaphor and/or literal event. But since then, at least two generations (and soon three) have grown up having seen Alderaan scattered across the stars. Don't believe me? Check out this three year old exclaiming how "They blowed up Princess Leia's planet!" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBM854BTGL0&feature=youtube_gdata_player) Our parents and grandparents do not necessarily have the same interpretative facility, as their formative cultural touchstones were perforce different.

http://elflands2ndcousin.com/2012/08/15/science-fiction-and-literature-or-thoughts-on-delany-and-the-plurality-of-interprative-processes/ (http://elflands2ndcousin.com/2012/08/15/science-fiction-and-literature-or-thoughts-on-delany-and-the-plurality-of-interprative-processes/)

Bruce Bethke: The Secret Symbiosis

iliti, esej o uticaju Adamsovog Vodiča na informacione tehnologije (sa Smart Pop Books).

http://www.smartpopbooks.com/the-secret-symbiosis/ (http://www.smartpopbooks.com/the-secret-symbiosis/)

Ha, to je onaj lik što je prvi upotrebio "cyberpunk".  :lol:

This week we asked about Revisions. I've come across a couple of examples lately of authors reissuing books with significant changes from the initial publication, or changing it relatively late in the initial publication process. With the rise of ebooks, the potential for rolling revisions to books is a very real possibility.

We asked this week's panelists the following:

Q: As a reader and as a writer, how do you feel about the practice of revising books after they have been published (or at least have reached the ARC stage)? How much revision goes into your writing process? (How clean are your drafts)?

This is what they had to say...  (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/08/mind-meld-reading-writing-and-revisions/#more-60974)

MIND MELD: Non-Anglo Presence in the Hugo Awards – Is it Possible? (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/09/mind-meld-non-anglo-presence-in-the-hugo-awards-is-it-possible/)
  By Fabio Fernandes (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/author/fabiofernandes/) |   


This year's Hugo award ceremony was a very interesting one, regarding gender and ethnicity. Most of the winners were women (congratulations to E. Lily Yu for the Campbell, and Maurine Starkey, Ursula Vernon, Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Elizabeth Bear, Catherynne M. Valente, Liza Groen Trombi, Kirsten Gong-Wong, Betsy Wollheim, Sheila Williams, Charlie Jane Anders, Kij Johnson and Jo Walton) and the Short Story winner, Ken Liu, is of Asian extraction, so maybe we can safely say the fandom has finally reached a point where writers are finally being voted for the sheer quality of their work instead of their sex or their color? Even if it's too early to tell, things are seemingly going in the right direction regarding this matter – but there are still many things to assess. One of them is the virtually invisible presence of non-Anglo writers in the Hugo Awards (also in other Awards, but hey, this is Hugo week, so let's talk Hugo as a symbol of all the other awards in Anglosphere).


We asked this week's panelists...

Q: Do you think the Hugo Awards nominations are underrepresented by non-Anglo writers? Do you think it's something to care about? If you care, what do you think could be done to change the current state of affairs?

    Here's what they said:  (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/09/mind-meld-non-anglo-presence-in-the-hugo-awards-is-it-possible/#more-61155)

MIND MELD: Directions Speculative Fiction Hasn't Taken (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/09/mind-meld-directions-speculative-fiction-hasnt-taken/)

Speculative fiction is always experimenting with new writing styles and creating new sub-genres. Some of the newish ones deal with shiny vampires, the inevitbale response to that, and steampunk. But there may be other areas speculative fiction hasn't explored yet.
Q: In your opinion, is there a direction, or directions, you are surprised speculative fiction hasn't taken yet?

 
Fantasy novels based on a roleplaying game? You betcha. There's no shortage of book series that suck money from devoted fans tie in to popular gaming franchises, such as the novels that accompany World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Warhammer 40k, and, of course, Dungeons & Dragons. Paizo (http://paizo.com/pathfinder)'s Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (http://paizo.com/pathfinder) introduces the world of Golarion which, as many fantasy worlds are, is full of monsters, magic, dungeons, piles of treasure, plenty of traps, and–most importantly–an endless stream of "adventurers" who got conned into believing that the best way to make a living is to throw themselves headlong into danger and pray they come out the other side with all their wiggly bits intact. With Pathfinder Tales (http://paizo.com/pathfinder/tales), Paizo has unleashed a growing variety of authors on the reality they've created to see what stories they can conjure.

So how do game dynamics and rule books translate into novel-length plot and characters?

Pretty durn well, actually. So strap on those boots, grab your walking stick, and prepare to journey through three such literary concoctions from the Pathfinder Tales library. Oh, and you might want to make sure your first aid kit is freshly stocked with healing potions. Just in case.

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/09/oh-the-places-youll-go-and-likely-die-tales-from-the-pathfinder-rp-game/#more-62039 (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/09/oh-the-places-youll-go-and-likely-die-tales-from-the-pathfinder-rp-game/#more-62039)

In episode 156 of the SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester (http://www.atfmb.com/) gathers a group of SFSignal folks to discuss: Are optimistic SF stories gone forever?


We've discussed this before, but, I still wonder – with so much dystopian and apocalyptic future sf out there, is the idea of a positive future gone forever? Is this just a trend? Will we see the cycle come back around to positive futures again? Soon?



This week's panel:

   
• Derek Johnson (http://daj42.livejournal.com/)
• Stina Leicht (http://www.csleicht.com/)
• Jamie Todd Rubin (http://www.jamierubin.net/)
• Jaym Gates (http://jaymgates.com/)
• Justin Landon (http://www.staffersbookreview.com/author/justin)
• Patrick Hester (http://www.atfmb.com/)

Download The SF Signal Podcast (Episode 156) (http://www.box.com/shared/static/44rrehfrb9dj1oaux8z1.mp3)

Science Fiction and the Futurist

While science fiction is not always either an accurate predictor or creator of the future, some books lend themselves particularly well to exploration of possible futures.  As someone who is both a futurist and a science fiction writer, I often delight in the careful and well-researched futures that show up as setting and story in modern SF.  I'm going to explore three books that do this well.  One is freshly out from a major publisher, anther is a bit older, and a third is a self-published collection of stories that appeared in Analog.

Read the rest of this entry (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/10/guest-post-brenda-cooper-on-science-fiction-and-the-futurist/#more-64033)

What happens when society begins to fracture—not along political fault lines, but through seismic shifts in technology compounded by corporate malfeasance? What happens when incompetent governments stumble in the chaos, and disillusioned citizens give their loyalty to their employers instead? In the upheaval, will rampant libertarianism bleed into anarchy?
Is this the future? Can this be our future?

Dystopia is, of course, the foundation of cyberpunk. This neglected stepson of science fiction is often misunderstood by mainstream readers, tangentially recognized as "like that Blade Runner movie." Yet it still has a certain resonance with contemporary culture. Take a step back from the Earth and turn an eye at our civilization. What do you see? A world where mobs of people line up for the latest iGadget, yet ignore the fact that the individuals making them live in poverty. Where civility in politics has degenerated to men and women pointing fingers at one another like children in a school yard. Where money flows in the wrong direction, making the rich richer, while the poor get yesterday's leftover Spam.

This is progress?

Jeff LaSala Looks at Your Cyberpunk Future (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/10/guest-post-jeff-lasala-looks-at-your-cyberpunk-future/#more-64358)

Napisano je dobro napisano, ali nema blage veze sa sajberpankom. :(

This week, just in time for Halloween, we asked our distinguished panelists about Gothic and Urban Fantasy...

The theme of this year's World Fantasy Convention is "Northern Gothic and Urban Fantasy". The thesis (http://www.wfc2012.org/theme01.html) is that Urban Fantasy represents the new Gothic; castles and haunted locations have been replaced by the Modern City.
Q: How do you see the intersection between Gothic Horror and modern Urban Fantasy? How connected are these two genres in your mind?This is what they had to say...

MIND MELD: The Intersection Between Gothic Horror and Urban Fantasy (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/10/mind-meld-the-intersection-between-gothic-horror-and-urban-fantasy/)

Like discussions of genre and relevance, there is a perennial resurgence in the discussion of criticism in the field of fantastic literature. In fact, it seems to arise whenever a particularly sharp review or post makes the rounds. The recent flurry of writing about the "exhaustion" of SF comes right to mind, but the question about how we should examine and debate literature is asked constantly. Fans, authors, and others in the field frequently inquire as to the proper nature of criticism, its bounds, and its utility to the field.

I think all of these questions fail to see what criticism often is, and what it can do.

Jonathan McCalmont's notion of criticism, as encapsulated above, is also for me the core of criticism. While criticism can be enlightening, startling, or intricately analytical, those are the results of critical discourse,  of the pursuit of examining a text or texts and creating a reflection of it, that conceptual edifice. It is the act of a critic, but not just one who "judges" a work, but one who takes it apart and sees that values and ornamentations lie within. The work of literary criticism has been one of judgement, but particularly in relation to SF it has been more a pursuit of the word's core meaning (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=critic&allowed_in_frame=0), "'to separate, decide.'" Critics decode, analyze, and present their vision of the material to readers. That vision, as McCalmont also notes, is an art itself.

This gets lost in the broader idea of the critic as one who renders judgement and determines what is good or bad. Certainly value judgements arise in criticism because of its intense subjective qualities, but this should be expected rather than be cause for alarm. Criticism emphasizes some meanings of a text, explores some connections, and look for ways to envision the text with a different, particular set of eyes. Critics often uses theories and approaches designed to unpack the possible meanings woven into a text and look for implicit notions and associations within and between the representations created by reading the text. The point is that critics are readers who engage a text to understand its multitude of messages and use those to weave a response to the text that may highlight its positive and negative qualities but that also accentuates the concerns and insights of the critic his/herself.

We come back time and time again to the question of what a critic is "supposed" to do. This question arose in Mark Lawrence's recent diatribe (http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.com/2012/11/strangely-narrowed-horizons.html) against what he calls the "hammer" approach to critique; he takes to task "intellectual criticism" of fantasy works that are too preoccupied with "societal deconstruction." As he puts it:

"There is a mentality that expects (nay demands) that each SFF book is a tightly wrapped social commentary, a distorting mirror of our society crafted with the sole point of making socio-political points, usually to educate the unwashed masses through parable in the business of how society should be."

His concern is that this approach misses other opportunities in the text. "it seems to me that the critiques that try to reach beyond the plot in genre critting are looking for social messages rather than for the 'open questions asked about the human animal' that literary fiction poses." He contrasts philosophical critiques ("existential stuff") with examining "the transitory business of social structure" with the former being less of a blunt tool of analysis than the latter.

Lawrence's call to diversify critical approaches is one I can get behind; the critical history of fantastic literature has often been one of polemical or proselytizing criticism that tried to focus more on those themes of philosophy and the spirit of man (and often only man) and the values of SFF as a way to examine the human condition from a different angle. More recently (in roughly the last 40 years or so) that trend has been interrupted by an array of often academically-trained critics engaging the literature with the theories and tools of literary criticism. Some of those tools are, indeed, deconstructive, and some do examine the social worth of a text, but to condense all articulations of gender, race, and other representations to something called "societal deconstruction" does not adequately look at "what we really are."

Lawrence separates philosophy from identity and makes it eternal and catholic while gender, etc., are situational and fleeting and hold "far less meaning for me." That is certainly clear from reading Prince of Thorns, and is why some readers love the book and others find it problematic. But this is not just a proposal for diversity, because for Lawrence "societal deconstruction" misses "[t]he deeper themes in much good fantasy" and is actually a petty sort of criticism. As he asserts at the end of his piece, "I do realise of course that the very first and most predictable response would be to turn all those devices upon my own work and parade it as lacking in all other regards too," which implies that such criticism is about tearing down stories and their deeper meanings. "Societal deconstruction" is used to denigrate authors rather than uncovering the greater philosophical implications of their works. The solution is for the critics to use other, gentler tools that uncover what's really going on in a work rather than focusing on ephemera like identity.

This argument rests heavily on the idea that criticism is a service, not an art, and that it is supposed to support literature rather than examine the range of meanings that emerge from texts and that relate to the world around us. Criticism is supposed to distill essential issues of philosophical merit and elevate the text. But that is not what criticism is about, why it is performed. Criticism is precisely the articulations of one's concerns discovered in a text or texts and the distillation and presentation of issues of concern to the critic. Critics are positioned readers who fashion their interpretations of and observations about the workings of a text into their own formulation. Critics serve themselves, and present their findings to others to engender responses and to exchange perspectives. Critics create their conceptual edifices to show them off to other readers hoping to stimulate discussion and to get other readers to look at texts from another viewpoint.

Critics examine literature by creating frames around their subject and superimposing their own picture on what the text is doing. Sometimes they clarify aspects of the text, sometimes they twist them to see if they will hold a new shape. They plumb texts for unobvious meanings, link representations to the world outside of the text, re-envision what the text seems to be doing, and uncover quandaries, inconsistencies, and revelations that course through the read words.  That crashing into the text tries to set off a reaction that reaches out to the reader and dares them to look at the text anew, to find new appreciations or complications, to see the text through another's eyes and expand, or question, their experience of it.


http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/11/achieving-critical-mass-some-thoughts-on-the-art-and-use-of-fantastic-criticism/#more-65548 (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/11/achieving-critical-mass-some-thoughts-on-the-art-and-use-of-fantastic-criticism/#more-65548)

Horror, Hybrids and Contagion: Why the Messiness of Genres is a Good Thing

We all know the easy distinctions that people tend to make, when reaching for the quick-and-dirty, between science fiction, fantasy and horror. The latter two deploy the supernatural and the impossible. The former makes use of, if not the possible, at least the plausible. Put another way, science fiction is the literature (and cinema) of the rational, while fantasy and horror are the art of the irrational.

But I am more than a tad guilty of setting up a straw man here, for it is just as true that we all know the exceptions and the complexities that render this distinction dubious at best. For example, in Danse Macabre, Stephen King writes that "Alien...is a horror movie even though it is more firmly grounded in scientific projection than Star Wars." Now, this is true, but it is also guilty of some of the same kind of error as the initial assertion. The problem is this: to claim Alien as either science fiction or horror is a mistake. It is both. The two forms are not incompatible, and this is the point I want to make about the easy distinction in the previous paragraph: not that there are so many exceptions as to make this distinction untenable, but rather that we should be careful about how and whether we make the distinction at all, at least as far as the standing of horror is concerned. We are not dealing with overlapping genres, because, as I have stated elsewhere (most recently in the Urban Fantasy Mind Meld (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/10/mind-meld-the-intersection-between-gothic-horror-and-urban-fantasy/)), horror is not a genre. It can make use of the conventions of any number of actual genres, including science fiction, and we recognize it, I would argue, when we confront a work whose primary purpose is to cause fear in its audience.


Read the rest of this entry (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/11/guest-post-david-annandale-on-why-the-messiness-of-genres-is-a-good-thing/#more-65690)

(najzad malo i o stvarno retkoj zverci - optimisticnom SFu: )


You hear new stories every day: humans are ruining the planet. If we don't do something now, we'll certainly destroy the world for our children. Dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction is wildly popular, and for good reason! These scenarios, while bleak, are also exciting and offer the opportunities for lots of what-ifs. However, in the spirit of optimism, I wanted to explore some future scenarios that offer hope and a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

We asked this week's panelists...Q: It's not unusual to hear negative things about what the future might bring for the Earth and humankind, and dystopian narrative certainly makes for entertaining futuristic sci-fi scenarios (environmental disaster, overuse of technology, etc). In the spirit of optimism and hope, what are a few of your far future scenarios that speak to the possible positive aspects of our evolving relationship with our world?

Here's what they said...  (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/11/mind-meld-optimistic-scenarios-for-our-future-world/#more-65964)

Da li je neko možda čitao Neala Ashera (Polity universe)? Iz opisa a i njegovog teksta na linku gore čini mi se da bi moglo da mi bude zanimljivo.

Samo pricu-dve i stekao sa isti utisak, moglo bi biti zanimljivo. Ali onda me uplasi ziva vaga pa odustanem iako ga uredno nosam na tabletu. Ista stvar i za Peter F. Hamiltona.

Videću da spakujem nešto od toga u mobilni pa možda i dođe na red.

Najtoplije vam preporucujem Africa Zero, tu ziva vaga ne moze cak ni mene da strecne a cini mi se kao veoma reprezentativna proza.

Nerd DeNardo u punom sjaju :) :


How Space Travel Almost Killed Science Fiction

(https://d3eoifnsb8kxf0.cloudfront.net/blog/lead_art/Nov_21_DeNardo_JPG_210x1000_q85.JPG)

Within the science fiction community, people mark their calendars not with the cycle of seasons, but with a handful of rotating, perennial discussions that usually ignite mailing lists and blogs. One of the most heated of these arguments is whether "science fiction is dying." There are some who believe it to be undoubtedly true, others who believe it to be ridiculous, and still others who are so tired of the subject constantly rearing its ugly head, that to even give it utterance evokes a disgusted eye roll. Some of the more seasoned fans of science fiction have reason to be skeptical of the claim: this same discussion has been going on for decades (which itself is evidence of the truthfulness of the claim). There was even a point in the late 1950s where the advent of the space program was being blamed for the demise of science fiction.

Here's why.

Continue reading(https://d3eoifnsb8kxf0.cloudfront.net/betaimg/arrow_right.png) (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/how-space-travel-almost-killed-science-fiction/#continue_reading_post) 

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2FB008HALOEQ.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SL300_.jpg&hash=54c76502803879fe3556a755468aafa7571e6727)

In this video, N.K. Jemisin talks about the impact and significance of Octavia E. Butler's classic science fiction novel Dawn (http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B008HALOEQ/sfsi0c-20), the first novel of the Xenogenesis trilogy (also known as Lilith's Brood (http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B008HALOMI/sfsi0c-20), which also is comprised of Adulthood Rites (http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B008HALPTU/sfsi0c-20) and Imago (http://www.sfsignal.com/amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B008HALNJW/sfsi0c-20)), which was first published 25 years ago (http://www.openroadmedia.com/blog/2012-11-21/Celebrating-the-Twenty-fifth-Anniversary-of-Octavia-E-Butler-s-Dawn.aspx).
In case you haven't read it, here's what it's about:

Lilith Iyapo has just lost her husband and son when atomic fire consumes Earth—the last stage of the planet's final war. Hundreds of years later Lilith awakes, deep in the hold of a massive alien spacecraft piloted by the Oankali—who arrived just in time to save humanity from extinction. They have kept Lilith and other survivors asleep for centuries, as they learned whatever they could about Earth. Now it is time for Lilith to lead them back to her home world, but life among the Oankali on the newly resettled planet will be nothing like it was before.
The Oankali survive by genetically merging with primitive civilizations—whether their new hosts like it or not. For the first time since the nuclear holocaust, Earth will be inhabited. Grass will grow, animals will run, and people will learn to survive the planet's untamed wilderness. But their children will not be human. Not exactly.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author's estate.

>Celebrating Dawn by Octavia Butler (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJKwxdsxklM#ws)

 :shock: xrofl
No Bark and No BiteWhat Science Fiction Leaves Out of the Future #4by Gary Westfahl (http://www.irosf.com/user/show.qsml?loaduser=14966)

After one discusses how science fiction futures appear to omit such major aspects of life as the profession of journalism, concern for the future, and the pursuit of pleasure, analyzing the typical pets of the genre might seem a descent into the trivial. On the other hand, people can be passionate indeed about the animals they love, and venturing to suggest that science fiction prefers one favorite pet in its futures while disdaining another may arouse more furor than anything else I have written during a career often marked by controversies. Further, I do not approach this topic without bias because, as a lifelong cat-lover and lifelong dog-hater, I most definitely, so to speak, have a dog in this race. Still, with as much objectivity as I can muster, I wish to argue that dogs represent another conspicuous omission in the futures of science fiction.

In our past and our present, humans have enjoyed the company of both cats and dogs as household companions, in roughly equivalent numbers: according to one recent survey, there are now more cats than dogs in our houses, but more of our houses have dogs (since cat owners are more likely to have more than one cat). Yet, in examining science fiction visions of tomorrow, we encounter a strange dichotomy. Cats are virtually ubiquitous: they are central figures in Robert A. Heinlein stories like "Ordeal in Space" (1948) and The Door into Summer (1957); travel in spaceships in Arthur C. Clarke's "The Haunted Spacesuit" (1958), Gordon R. Dickson's Mission to Universe (1965), the film Alien (1979), and the series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994); are intelligent aliens in the Star Trek episode "Assignment Earth" (1968) and the film The Cat from Outer Space (1978); and employ enhanced powers to function as heroes in Cordwainer Smith's "The Game of Rat and Dragon" (1956) and Andre Norton's The Zero Stone (1968). There are also numerous stories about humanoid cats or catlike aliens, including the infamous film Cat Women of the Moon (1953), Smith's "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" (1962), and Fritz Leiber's The Wanderer (1964). And it is not only in literature and film that one frequently finds cats: as anyone who has walked through the art show at a science fiction convention can testify, science-fictional or fantastic cats are a regular theme in the paintings, sketches, and sculptures on display. Indeed, cats are so common in the genre that there was actually a panel at the 2008 Los Angeles Science Fiction Convention on the topic of "Are There Too Many Cats in Science Fiction?"

Dogs, in contrast, appear to be relatively rare in the science fiction futures of all media, with few examples coming to mind. As one piece of evidence, I found that a Google search for the exact phrase "cats in science fiction" yielded 368 hits, while a similar search for "dogs in science fiction" yielded only seven. Could the reason be simply that most members of the science fiction community, like myself, tend to like cats better than dogs? Or is there some logical reason for this curious imbalance in the genre's predictions?

One must begin by acknowledging that there is one type of science fiction future in which dogs remain prominent: prophecies of either a forced or voluntary return to a pre-technological existence. After all, before the development of modern civilization, dogs were unquestionably valuable companions: in a world of constant danger, it was useful for vulnerable humans to have animal companions with superior hearing who could alert their masters to the approach of predators or enemies and, when people were attacked, a loyal dog could be an effective ally in fighting off assailants. Thus, in pessimistic science fiction stories depicting futures in which our advanced civilization has been destroyed or abandoned—like George R. Stewart's Earth Abides (1949), Harlan Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog" (1969), or the film I Am Legend (2006)—it is not surprising to find that dogs remain important friends to humanity; in one such story, Clifford D. Simak's City (1952), intelligent dogs have even replaced humans as the rulers of a pastoral future world where cats are curiously absent. Similarly, one would naturally expect to find dogs on Earthlike planets or space habitats where human settlers are leading a rustic lifestyle; for example, an adorable dog named Nixie plays a central role in Heinlein's "Tenderfoot in Space" (1958), as he accompanies his young master and his family when they emigrate to Earth's newest frontier, the jungles of Venus.

However, a majority of science fiction stories envision futures distinguished by ongoing scientific advances, on Earth and on other worlds, and in such environments, as is already the case today, dogs might be regarded as nothing more than obsolete technology: we now have burglar alarms to detect intruders, and we now have mace and pepper spray to ward off assailants. Nobody in a futuristic society is going to need a dog around the house as much as their ancestors did.

Of course, one can argue with equal force that cats represent obsolete technology as well, since today, we also have other ways to rid our households of rodents and other small pests, the traditional function of cats. Yet, cats can readily justify their continuing presence in our homes, not only because they, like dogs, can still be lovable friends, but also because they have proven to be remarkably adaptable to our modern, cramped, urban styles of living. Cats are happy to stay indoors all of the time, to spend most of their time sleeping in some comfortable location, and to use litter boxes when they have to relieve themselves. For such reasons, it made perfect sense for Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation to have a pet cat on board the Enterprise—such an animal would be no trouble at all on a starship.
In contrast, dogs regularly wish to go outdoors and, if kept indoors too long, they can become rambunctious and destructive, running around rooms, knocking over furniture, chewing on shoes, and so on. For dog-owners on Earth, now and in the future, this problem can be solved by the daily chore of walking the dog. Yet, dogs accompanying humans who venture into space would instantly die if they went outside of their spaceships or their outposts on airless planets. Moreover, even if one could keep a dog happy in a spaceship or on the Moon by giving it a special spacesuit to wear for outdoor excursions, there remains the indelicate reason why dogs always have to go outdoors, a sort of business that cannot be taken care of while wearing a spacesuit in a vacuum. True, systems for eliminating waste could be built into doggy spacesuits, as they are now built into human spacesuits, but what about those times when dogs are indoors and their needs are urgent? It seems that dog-owners in space would be obliged either to force their dogs to wear spacesuits all of the time, or to routinely deal with unpleasant messes on board.

Thus, when you are cataloging all of the innumerable mistakes that doomed the television series Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005), do not forget to include the bizarre decision to have Captain Archer bring a dog along on board his starship Enterprise. Indeed, if it seems that the crew of this series never quite bonded the ways that other Star Trek crews bonded, if these characters never seem quite as comfortable carrying out their duties as the characters from the other series, consider the fact that these crew members are living and working in a starship that must have been permeated with the faint-but-constant odor of dog poop.

All right, you say, we can certainly posit that scientists of the future will come up with some convenient, unobtrusive method to solve this particular problem, but the excretory habits of dogs represent only one aspect of a broader issue. Whatever other characteristics we wish to observe in our future worlds, there is an almost-universal desire for a future that will be clean—indeed, almost antiseptically clean. As I have noted elsewhere, the buildings of today that most resemble the buildings of science fiction futures are hospitals, where everything is always spic-and-span; in the towering skyscrapers and starships of tomorrow, we never observe spider webs, smudges, or piles of clutter. This is another reason why cats can so easily fit into the future, for they are obsessed with being clean, and indeed, may devote hours every day to meticulously licking and grooming themselves.

However, whatever else one might say in defense of dogs, it must be conceded that they are not by nature clean. In addition to the random manner in which they dispose of their waste products, dogs are never disinclined to get dirty, and never do anything to keep themselves clean. One of the ordeals of dog ownership is the need to regularly give the dog a bath, a task that, given the dog's persistent refusal to cooperate, may not get any easier with advanced technology. Thus, in visions of an immaculate future ranging from Things to Come (1936) to Gattaca (1997), it is almost impossible to imagine dogs running freely down their corridors; they would be fiercely incongruous in such pristine settings. However, a cat lying on a shelf somewhere and observing passers-by would not seem out of place.

Writers and filmmakers have other motives for excluding dogs from their future worlds. In years to come, we like to imagine, humans will be more mature, more sedate, more like our parents, and conspicuous displays of emotion will be frowned upon. And cats represent the epitome of cool, always determined to observe strange events with no sign of a reaction save for widened eyes. When their masters come home after a long absence, cats typically will first ignore them, then casually stride over near them and present themselves for a little petting. Given their constant air of calm and worldly wisdom, it is hardly surprising that the ancient Egyptians chose to worship cats, for they truly comport themselves like superior beings.

While cats are always under control, however, dogs are always out of control, reacting in a wildly-physical manner to any provocations; when their owners come home, they run madly toward them, panting with joy, and may even knock them over with the exuberance of their welcome. While cats always act like adults, in other words, dogs always act like children, and no sane person could ever contemplate worshiping a dog. Such creatures that perpetually display immature behavior, then, would inevitably seem inappropriate in the setting of an advanced future world. Consider another example, the briefly-glimpsed future world of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), wherein our descendants sit calmly on thrones, listening to the world-transforming music of the Wyld Stallyns; one can readily envision a cat sleeping in one of their laps, but a dog that runs up and yaps at the heels of Bill and Ted would utterly spoil the mood.

In sum, I would argue, when writers are crafting their future worlds, they find it easy to include cats, since these animals would appear to epitomize the predicted future of the human race—indoors, clean, and sedate. Conversely, since they see dogs as epitomizing humanity's outdoor, dirty, and rambunctious past, they think of them only when developing futures that resemble early, pre-industrial societies. To answer the question that those panelists at Loscon wrestled with: no, there are not too many cats in science fiction, because it is reasonable to assume that cats will become our principal companions in the future, accompanying humans as they construct and inhabit the soaring metropolises of the future, and as they travel in spaceships to explore and colonize other worlds.
Interestingly, there are clear signs that scientists on the frontiers of technology share this attitude and are working hard to better prepare cats for their future role as humanity's best friends. To address the main reason why people today do not have cats—because they are terribly allergic to them—a company has developed and is now selling allergen-free cats; they are rather pricey at present, but are sure to become more affordable in the years to come. To increase their value as the perfect home decorations, some South Korean scientists announced a few years ago that they had bioengineered a fluorescent cat that attractively glows in the dark. And to maintain continuity in their relationships with animals that unfortunately rarely live more than fifteen or twenty years, people now can also pay large sums of money to have their cats cloned, so that they can effectively enjoy the company of the same cat throughout their lives.

In contrast, I am not aware of any parallel efforts to develop scientifically-improved dogs—say, dogs that would use a litter box or dogs with an added instinctive desire to keep themselves clean—probably because practical-minded scientists, in light of all of the issues I have raised, suspect that there would be in the future little profit to be made from such projects. Indeed, the major focus of the current research I have heard about is not to improve dogs, but rather to replace dogs—with robot dogs, which can provide needed companionship without the liabilities of biological dogs, since they do not have to go to the bathroom, and since they can be turned off whenever their activities would be problematic. Common enough in science fiction as to be satirized in Woody Allen's Sleeper (1975), robot dogs of several varieties can now be purchased and are becoming better and better at emulating the real things. (I believe they are especially popular in Japan.) Yet, I know of no efforts to build robot cats—probably because, I would argue, scientists recognize that cats will fit right in to our futures, so that no artificial substitutes will be required. Thus, the evidence could not be clearer that the scientific community, by and large, has reached the same conclusion as science fiction—that cats are better suited than dogs to be integral members of the human households of the future.

---

I trust it is clear that I am not calling upon people to abandon their dogs, and I am not predicting that dogs will become less common in the future. People have long demonstrated a willingness to cling to customs and beliefs that most would regard as relics of the past, such as tattoos and astrology, and many people will probably still want to have dogs even while inhabiting the sorts of futuristic environments where, I have maintained, dogs would be incongruous. All I am asserting is that, when science fiction writers build future worlds with advanced technology, they characteristically sense that dogs would not really belong there, for the reasons outlined above, and hence tend to omit them from their stories. Whether people will ever respond to their deductions in the real-life decisions they make about household pets is another question altogether, and one I am not qualified to answer.
As a final thought: if science fiction writers have indeed taken sides in the ancient debate between cats and dogs, one might fault them for a failure of imagination since they so rarely consider another alternative: the emergence of a new sort of pet that might, in some situations, be even more appealing than a cat or dog. These could include an existing animal newly popularized as a pet—like the bush baby requested by Heywood R. Floyd's daughter in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); a bioengineered modification of a terrestrial species—like the mutated cockroaches that serve as space pets in Bruce Sterling's "Spider Rose" (1982); or an alien creature introduced into human company—like the Martian "flat cats" in Heinlein's The Rolling Stones (1952) and their cousins, the tribbles, in David Gerrold's Star Trek episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles" (1967). The relative paucity of such examples, and the ubiquity of cats, indicates that science fiction writers, even while creating bizarre new future worlds, can also be stubbornly traditional in their ways of thinking, forever devoted to old friends and unwilling to transfer their affections to new friends. And in this respect, they ironically resemble dogs more than cats.


http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10639 (http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10639)

Annoyed With The History of Science Fiction
Jonathan McCalmont's Criticism


0.    Ways of Seeing, Modes of Blindness
There are many ways of seeing a text and every one of them is as valid and beautiful as the last. Some people read a novel and lose themselves in the minds of its characters. Others approach the very same novel and respond only to the themes woven around the characters and buried in the plot. There are many ways of seeing a text and yet some are more popular than others.
One of the most popular ways of approaching a text is from a historical perspective that traces both the streams of influence that went into the creation of the text and the river of influence that flows out towards the next generation of works. Critics working in the field of science fiction are particularly fond of this approach as it allows them to step back from the text and make sweeping statements such as the one put forward by Gary Westfahl in a recent essay (http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2012/11/the-joke-is-on-us-the-two-careers-of-robert-a-heinlein/) for Locus Online:

The science fiction section may have only a few books by Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, or even Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, and there may be few signs of their influence on other writers. But the works of Robert A. Heinlein are still occupying a considerable amount of shelf space, and the evidence of his broad impact on the genre is undeniable.

Even though I often write about films in historical terms, I must admit that the historical approach to writing about science fiction leaves me completely cold. My objection to the historical approach is two-fold:

Firstly, I believe that science fiction must either speak to the world as it is today or remain forever silent. I think that talking about science fiction in purely historical terms reduces contemporary works to little more than genetic vehicles, means of transforming influence past into influence future with little regard for either the vehicle itself or the world that gave birth to it.

Secondly, I believe that the historical approach to science fiction lacks the critical apparatus required to support the sweeping claims made by people who use this approach. Far from being a rigorous analysis of historical fact, the historical approach to genre writing is all too often little more than a hotbed of empty phrases, unexamined assumptions and received wisdom.



http://ruthlessculture.com/2012/11/28/annoyed-with-the-history-of-science-fiction/ (http://ruthlessculture.com/2012/11/28/annoyed-with-the-history-of-science-fiction/)

Free Online References for Science Fiction & Fantasy Readers (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/free-online-references-science-fiction-fantasy-rea/)

Flawed forecasting – when science fiction gets it wrong

(...)

Although it's fun to see predictions come true, I am in fact fascinated by examples where SF get things completely off, where obsolescence creeps into an otherwise futuristic setting and pops your suspended disbelief like a soap bubble. It tells you as much about contemporary life and attitudes of the author as it does about our futures. The otherwise gritty realism in the film Until The End of The World, in which the characters communicate in payphones with video screens, seemed amazingly high-tech when I saw it first in 1991. I even remember thinking that the payphones being grotty and clapped out was a nice touch– somehow much more realistic than any glittering, silvery Jetson's-style affair.  But now, when payphones are extinct, the entire concept seems misjudged. Yes, we have video messaging, but nobody makes calls from public boxes anymore – we have our mobile communication devices. Gene Roddenberry got it right, but not Wim Wenders.

An even more glaring bubble-pop happened when I was watching Blade Runner (The Director's Cut) the other day. I could forgive Rick Deckard slouching against a wall reading his (paper) newspaper – it somehow worked in the retro ghettoized futurescape of LA's Chinatown. But the smoking! Indoors! In your place of employment! It seems clear by the costumes and hairstyles that Ridley Scott was going for a 1940s noir look, but in 1982 he utterly failed to foresee that particular cultural revolution, which is now so entrenched that watching the characters puff away, especially in the high-tech office spaces of the Tyrell Corporation, seems more alien than little green men on the moon.
(...)

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/occams-corner/2013/jan/24/science-fiction-sciencefictionandfantasy)

Neologisms, Pseudowords, & The Pleasures of Deviant Language in Fantastika (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/02/neologisms-pseudowords-the-pleasures-of-deviant-language-in-fantastika/)


"All fantastic genres make some use of fictive neology. Heroic fantasy invents words to evoke the archaic origins of its worlds. Phantasmagoric satire delights in wordplay that simultaneously masks and insinuates the objects of its derision. Gothic and supernatural tales invoke esoteric and folkloric terms to create the sense of a concealed or forgotten past. SF is distinct, in that its fictive neologies connote newness and innovation vis-à-vis the historical present of the reader's culture. They are fictive signa novi, signs of the new." – Istvan Csiscery-Ronay, Jr., The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction, p. 13)

Putujući Edinburški Književni Festival stigao do  (https://www.youtube.com/feed/UCxk5fjYOlJe50hTx4y7Evvw)Красноярск-a. (https://www.youtube.com/feed/UCxk5fjYOlJe50hTx4y7Evvw)


A evo kako su Čajna i ekipa govorili u Edinburgh-u:



CHINA MIEVILLE -- Will the novel remain writers' favourite narrative form? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTb_CCukdnU#ws)

Langdon Winner: Why are there so few genuine utopias in science fiction cinema? (http://www.technopolis.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-so-few-utopias-in-science-fiction.html)

Ceo program kursa o kome piše je ovde (http://www.technopolis.blogspot.com/2012/08/science-fiction-cinema-and-social.html).

Utopija u sebi ne nosi dramu i to je sve šta o tome treba znati.

Quote from: Irena Adler on 18-02-2013, 18:16:51
Langdon Winner: Why are there so few genuine utopias in science fiction cinema? (http://www.technopolis.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-so-few-utopias-in-science-fiction.html)

Učinilo mi se da sam negde (na drugom mestu) već čitao ovaj tekst. Ili mi se učinilo ili nije isti tekst samo veoma sličan. Solidno.

Evo jedan sličan, Hunter Liguore: Bracing for a Brave New World. Nikako da ga nađem. Bio je na sajtu Periheliona. Doduše može da se pročita iz guglovog keša.

@scallop
U utopiji kao takvoj nema drame i s tim bih mogla da se složim. Ali bih takođe mogla i da zamislim scenario u kome je, recimo, utopija ugrožena pa treba da se odbrani. Hoću reći, potpuno mi je zamislivo da neko o tome pravi film. Samo što neće, jer (i čini mi se da je to ključni razlog) generalno nismo više u stanju da utopiju shvatimo ozbiljno, to jest bez nekog ironičnog odmaka (koji, mora se priznati, ponekad proizvodi superfenomenalne priče poput Šeklijeve "Savršene planete").

@Gaff
Hvala, zanimljiv je ovaj tekst, a i saznala sam šta je tektologija. :)

Ovde mi trenutno najpogodnije da napisem, ako nekog zanima, Zoran Paunovic trenutno na kanalu studio b govori o engleskoj knjizevnosti.

Springer's Science/SF Initiative



Springer (http://www.springer.com/?SGWID=0-102-0-0-0), a leading science publisher, is seeking titles for a new series that will explore the "narrow frontier" between science and science fiction —

A unique new book series.In many respects the intellectual challenges of discovering new science and creating plausible new fictional worlds are two sides of the same coin. They both demand an understanding of the way the world is and, based on this, an ability to imagine how it might be.

The characteristics Springer's looking for are books that:>

   
• Indulge in science speculation – describing, in accessible manner, interesting, plausible yet unproven ideas
• Exploit science fiction for teaching purposes and as a means of promoting critical thinking
• Analyze the interplay of science and science fiction – throughout the history of the genre and looking ahead
• Publish essays on related topics, probably with a philosophical tenor
• Publish short works of fiction where (i) the scientific content is a major component and (ii) the text is supplemented by a substantial summary of the science underlying the plot

Gregory Benford is a member of the editorial and advisory board. I asked him what existing works might be considered examples of what Springer hopes to publish. Benford says:

They cited

Beyond Human that I did with Elisabeth Malartre, and Deep Time from 1999... plus some writings of Zebrowski and Asimov and Clarke's Profiles of the Future, much Dyson, Rees Our Final Hour, Time Travel by Gott, Nahin's Time Machines, a lot of Paul Davies — a wide range on the mutual inspirations of science and sf.
The Editorial and Advisory Board is loaded with prestigious scientists and writers.

Mark Alpert (http://www.markalpert.com/), author of Final Theory, The Omega Theory, and Extinction, is a contributing editor at Scientific American.

Philip Ball (http://www.philipball.co.uk/) worked at Nature for over 20 years, first as an editor for physical sciences (for which his brief extended from biochemistry to quantum physics and materials science) and then as a Consultant Editor. His writings on science for the popular press have covered topical issues ranging from cosmology to the future of molecular biology. Ball's latest is Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything (Bodley Head, 2012)

Gregory Benford (http://www.gregorybenford.com/), in addition to being one of our most honored sf writers and the author of over 20 novels, is a professor of physics at UC Irvine. He conducts research in plasma turbulence theory and experiment, and in astrophysics. He has published over a hundred papers on topics including condensed matter, particle physics, plasmas and mathematical physics, and biological conservation.

Michael Brotherton (http://www.uwyo.edu/physics/faculty-directory/mike-b-bio.html), an astronomer on the faculty at University of Wyoming, studies the supermassive black holes in the centers of  galaxies. He is also the author of Star Dragon (2003) and Spider Star (2008), and founder of the NASA-funded Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers, which brings a dozen award-winning professional writers to Wyoming every summer.

Victor.Callaghan (http://victor.callaghan.info/) credits his love of "SciFi" for drawing him into "Science and Engineering and, ultimately, to teaching and researching in a university .... the best job in the world." Callaghan and his colleagues have made many contributions, a couple examples being the development of a novel real-time self-programming fuzzy-logic based genetic algorithm for robot control, and the development of the world's first network camera (NetCam – a spinoff of robotics work).

Amnon Eden (http://www.eden-study.org/) is a computer scientist and the co-editor of a forthcoming collection of essays on the singularity hypothesis.

Geoffrey Landis (http://www.geoffreylandis.com/) is a NASA scientist who works on Mars missions and developing advanced concepts and technology for future space missions. His sf has won two Best Short Story Hugos and a Nebula, and as a poet he has won a Rhysling Award.

Rudy Rucker (http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/about/) is a mathematician who worked for twenty years as a computer science professor. He's the author of 30 published fiction and nonfiction books, including 2 Philip K. Dick Award winners.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch (http://www.sees.wsu.edu/Faculty/SMakuch/index.html)'s researchs the interaction of microbes with their natural geological environment in an aqueous medium. He is interested in the presence of liquid-rich environments on other planets and moons inside and outside of our Solar System and how these environments can serve as a potential habitat for microbial life.

Rudy Vaas (http://www.springer.com/?SGWID=0-102-24-0-0&searchType=EASY_CDA&queryText=Rudy+Vaas) is editor of Beyond The Big Bang: Competing Scenarios for an Eternal Universe and cod-editor of The Arrows of Time: A Debate in Cosmology.

Ulrich Walter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Walter) is a physicist/engineer and a former DFVLR astronaut and a professor of astronautics.

Stephen Webb (http://www.springer.com/?SGWID=0-102-24-0-0&searchType=EASY_CDA&queryText=Stephen+Webb) has written on such cosmological subjects as If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life.

Summing up the project, Benford says: "I hope this can be a new vehicle for such approaches. Plainly as we accelerate into this turbulent century, facing unprecedented problems like climate change and the population/resource crunch (see The Windup Girl), we need all the thinking we can get."

http://file770.com/?p=11676&cpage=1#comment-116898 (http://file770.com/?p=11676&cpage=1#comment-116898)

Planet of the Apes franchise and religion (http://www.theofantastique.com/2013/02/18/planet-of-the-apes-franchise-and-religion/)

(via TheoFantastique)

Junot Díaz - What we like to read and what we like to write?!


http://www.youtube.com/embed/X3vDbXwLg7g?start=6136&end=6483 (http://www.youtube.com/embed/X3vDbXwLg7g?start=6136&end=6483)

Krzysztof K. Kietzman: Constructs of Innocence in Selected Works of Cyberpunk Fiction (M.A. Thesis) (http://www.mediafire.com/view/?zit8wajc6t8d6ul)

(via SF Signal)

Realism, (Male) Rape, and Epic Fantasy (http://lizbourke.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/realism-male-rape-and-epic-fantasy/)

This post contains discussions of sexual violence, including anal rape and sexual mutilation.

Sad će ceo svet da navali sa proučavanjem ovog teorijskog rada. Engleski je čudo. Forum će par dana da cvate.

Veronica Belmont, Daniel Wilson i John Scalzi o međusobnom uticaju džidža-bidža i naučne fantastike na Expand Endgadget panelu (http://www.engadget.com/video/viddler/890bb2bc/)

via endgadget

http://www.irishtimes.com/the-new-future-of-sci-fi-1.1335557#.UVAEyJXDHYY.twitter (http://www.irishtimes.com/the-new-future-of-sci-fi-1.1335557#.UVAEyJXDHYY.twitter)

Rumunska naučna fantastika (http://scifiportal.eu/romanian-science-fiction-fantasy-translated-into-english/)

via Europa SF

Filozofija i Matriks


Philosophy and the Matrix (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgkBE4Kgq5Q#ws)

Recently, a group of futurists predicted that artificial intelligence is a deadlier threat to humanity than any sort of natural disaster, nuclear war, or large objects falling from the sky. In an article by Ross Anderson at AeonMagazine.com (http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/ross-andersen-human-extinction/), David Dewey, a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute says, concerning the human brain and probability "If you had a machine that was designed specifically to make inferences about the world, instead of a machine like the human brain, you could make discoveries like that much faster." He stated that "An AI might want to do certain things with matter in order to achieve a goal, things like building giant computers, or other large-scale engineering projects. Those things might involve intermediary steps, like tearing apart the Earth to make huge solar panels." He also talked about how programming an AI with empathy wouldn't be easy, that the steps it might take to "maximize human happiness", for example, are not things that we might consider acceptable, but to an AI would seem exceedingly efficient.
Of course, this leads into much more complex discussion, and the possibilities with AI are vast and varied.

We asked this week's panelists...
Q: What is your take on the future of humans and AI? Is it positive, negative, both?

Here's what they said...  (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/04/mind-meld-the-future-of-humans-and-ai/#more-74387)

Quote from: Gaff on 07-04-2013, 11:38:50

Rumunska naučna fantastika (http://scifiportal.eu/romanian-science-fiction-fantasy-translated-into-english/)

via Europa SF

QuoteThe major authors of this period were: Sergiu Farcasan, Radu Nor, Ion Marin Stefan, Victor Kernbach, Ion Manzatu, Romulus Barbulescu and George Anania, Constantin Cublesan, Mircea Oprita and Vladimir Colin.

Legende Vamove zemlje! :-|

Sarah Wanenchak: Expanding the Sociological Imagination: Teaching Sociology with Speculative Fiction (http://www.thesociologicalcinema.com/4/post/2013/04/expanding-the-sociological-imagination-teaching-sociology-with-speculative-fiction.html#.UWhxmsqzeS0)

200+ eseja o Modernom Prometeju (http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/)


via UPenn

bas se nekako prakticno poklopilo :)

The last time I wrote about escapism (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/05/diversion-and-immersion-escapism-and-the-reading-of-fantastika/) I was trying to get a better handle on the term and its implications. As a response to that column, Carl V. Anderson asked a very pertinent question about  the literary idea of escape: what are we escaping to? I've thought about this on and off but it wasn't until I read Foz Meadows' article at A Dribble of Ink (http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/04/a-rule-of-thumb-for-escapism-by-foz-meadows/)why."

All too often the why is taken for granted as inseparable from the what of escapism, as if the motive for it was inherent and uncomplicated. Escapism is generally characterized and applied as common-sensically unproblematic and often caricatured as deviant or mesmerizing. Meadows' discussion strips away some of this sensibility and asks us to examine both why we invoke escapism as we do and just what various readers might be doing with it other than escaping from the everyday. The homogenizing application of the term deflects a consideration of why by giving it the appearance of being self-evident. Meadows asserts that it is not, and that if we want to grasp what escapism does, we need to move past binary formations and look at what readers are actually doing when they "escape" through a story.

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2F0312890362.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SL300_.jpg&hash=0618caff5fddd302a34fe551b4042a9fad894996) (http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312890362/sfsi0c-20)
The usual definition of escapism as a method for leaving one's reality behind (temporarily) is not even a useful starting point. Human beings constantly tell and re-tell the story of their actuality, while there are always factors that we cannot ignore or accommodate.  "Escaping" into literature is just one application of a universal human cognitive practice. At an essential level it is no different than losing oneself in a math problem or daydreaming or planning a vacation. We spend a great deal of our time engaged in imagining things that are not present; literary escapism is one variation of this activity. What makes it distinctive is what we engage with and how we construct our distraction from the immanent world. The fact of departure is meaningless; where are we headed with our imagination?

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/05/escape-has-a-destination-but-its-never-far-away/#more-75993 (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/05/escape-has-a-destination-but-its-never-far-away/#more-75993)

J. Jay Jones: Ko je bio Alice B. Sheldon iliti ko je bila James Tiptree, Jr. (http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/05/no-15-alice-bradley-sheldon-the-screwfly-solution-and-the-secret-life-of-a-cia-operative/)

via Amazing Stories

Tnx!

Did you ever notice that some novels are extensions of (or based off of) shorter works of fiction? This week at the Kirkust Reviews Blog, I take at look at that very thing. I used this as an opportunity to interview Ted Kosmatka, Catherine Lundoff, Will McInrosh, Linda Nagata and Robert J. Sawyer — all of whom have novels that began life as short fiction.

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2F1937197131.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SL300_.jpg&hash=3f626391ec1b79f3fe2de07fa9f4791e93567aca)(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2F0805096175.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SL300_.jpg&hash=25701d556643eafaf8199fb66d096040ce0105f0)
See some of the challenges they faced over at the Kirkus Reviews Blog in When Short Fiction Grows Into a Novel (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/when-short-fiction-grows-novel/).

MIND MELD: What is the Literary Appeal of Gods, Goddesses and Myths?

Q: Gods, Goddesses and Myths: From Rick Riordan to Dan Simmons, the popularity of Gods, Goddesses and Mythology, especially but not limited to Classical Greco-Roman and Norse mythology seems as fresh as ever. What is the appeal and power of mythological figures, in and out of their normal time? What do they bring to genre fiction?

Here's what they said:  (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/05/mind-meld-what-is-the-literary-appeal-of-gods-goddesses-and-myths/#more-76575)

Is There A New New Wave of Science Fiction, And Do We Need One Anyway?

Just shy of half a century since the young Michael Moorcock  (http://www.multiverse.org/)took the editorial helm of a long-running magazine called New Worlds  (http://%20http//www.philsp.com/mags/newworlds.html)and ushered in a new age of avant-garde science fiction, it appears that we might be in the throes of the birth of a new New Wave (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NewWaveScienceFiction).
   The original New Wave moved away from shiny futures and bug-eyed monsters and offered more experimental literature, both in technique and subject matter, perhaps best exemplified a couple of years later in 1967 when Harlan Ellison released his Dangerous Visions (http://www.sfsite.com/03b/dv148.htm) anthology, bringing new voices, new ideas and a new way of telling stories to take over from the rocket-ships and square-jawed heroes that had gone before. New Wave also brought to the fore many more female writers, such as Joanna Russ and James Tiptree, Jr.
   But does the emergence of a new aesthetic in (largely) contemporary British SF signal a similar movement nearly 50 years on?

   If so, it is perhaps fitting, then, that one of the main proponents of our New New Wave has nods to the past both in its title, which hearkens back to the Golden Age supplanted by New Wave, and by including an interview with Moorcock himself.
   Just like the New Wave never set out to be a movement, neither do those involved in the New New Wave; rather, it is serendipity that they've all come together at roughly the same time to create a bit of a buzz in the SF world. Adventure Rocketship! (http://www.tangentbooks.co.uk/products/Adventure-Rocketship%21.html) is a new publication edited by writer and journalist Jonathan Wright, which includes fiction, interviews and criticism. It was, says Wright, loosely modeled on The Idler (http://idler.co.uk/): "I love the idea of a series with its own evolving aesthetic. Also, while being fascinated by digital projects, I still love the idea of the book as object. In the case of Adventure Rocketship! the idea is on one level really as simple as a leftfield SF anthology or even magazine in book form with each issue themed. The first issue, "Let's All Go To The Science Fiction Disco," is about music, SF and the counterculture—and the space where they meet."

(nastavak na http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/05/is-there-a-new-new-wave-of-science-fiction-and-do-we-need-one-anyway (http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/05/is-there-a-new-new-wave-of-science-fiction-and-do-we-need-one-anyway))

In his keynote speech at the recent Augmented World Expo (http://augmentedworldexpo.com/), sf author Bruce sterling shares his thoughts on augmented reality.



Bruce Sterling - Keynote at AWE 2013 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohatuq8tekk#ws)

50 Essential Epic Fantasies (Part 1: 8th Century BC - 1982) (http://www.pornokitsch.com/2013/06/50-essential-epic-fantasies-part-1-to-1982.html)          Liz Bourke (http://lizbourke.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/epic-list-of-epicness), Justin Landon (http://www.staffersbookreview.com/2013/06/50-essential-epic-fantasy.html), Tansy Rayner Roberts (http://tansyrr.com/tansywp/epic-list-of-epicness-50-essential-epic-fantasies-part-i/) and I have challenged one another to write and compare our lists of "Essential" Epic Fantasies. The result is a multi-blogger liststravaganza! (For a previous challenge with SF, see here (http://www.pornokitsch.com/2013/01/50-essential-science-fiction-novels-part-1-1812-1979.html).)

The rules are as follows:

   
• No more than one book or series from     each author. For example, J.R.R. Tolkien could go in for The     Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings series, but not both.
• No anthologies.
• You can only list books that you have     read.
• Definitions of "essential",     "epic" and "fantasy" are left to personal interpretation.

That third rule limits me to things that are in English, which means this is an extremely Anglo-American list. Sorry about that - as always, please leave feedback and suggested reading in the comments.

I've defined "essential" as "gives or informs a useful perspective on the category". I've also tried to cover as much of a range as possible with the fifty picks. So the "essential" list should be a holistic view of the category. Favouritism is unavoidable, but I've balanced out some of those picks with books I really dislike. Only fair.

Specifically, because I'm a nutball, I'm interested in how the epic fantasy category has progressed, or, in many cases - stayed fairly static. There are some strands of epic fantasy that seem, well, completely unchanged over two thousand years. There are other strands in which the category actively pulls in tropes and themes from other genres. This first part of the list - Homer to the early 1980s - focuses on establishing these strands. The second part of the list (coming Monday) is more about progression (and the lack thereof).

As with all lists, I look forward to the debate. Please share your own "essential" books in the comments, and don't forget to check out what the others have done: Liz (http://lizbourke.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/epic-list-of-epicness), Justin (http://www.staffersbookreview.com/2013/06/50-essential-epic-fantasy.html), Tansy (http://tansyrr.com/tansywp/epic-list-of-epicness-50-essential-epic-fantasies-part-i/).

Enough of that. Here's the first half of my personal list of "essential" epic fantasies:Continue reading "50 Essential Epic Fantasies (Part 1: 8th Century BC - 1982)" » (http://www.pornokitsch.com/2013/06/50-essential-epic-fantasies-part-1-to-1982.html#more)

We asked this week's panelists...
Q: What are some of the most overdone tropes and stereotypes in SF/F? What are some of the most useful? What are some of the most damaging?
Here's what they said...  (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/category/interviews/mind-meld/)

   
• You keep using  that term; I do not think it means what you think it means:  Coleridge's original formulation of the term is not concerned with the unrealness of what is presented, but with an idea of the truth that the unrealness might contain for the reader to discover. You can read the term in context here (http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/biographia.html). What Coleridge primarily wants the reader to consider is that a fantastical or supernatural moment can contain a potent understanding and illumination of the human condition. I think the key phrase here is not 'willing suspension of disbelief," but "awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom." The concern is not the suspension so much as the willingness to be open to what awaits the reader in the text.
  The term is used today to describe a negative action: to withhold disbelief as if our default setting was to not accept anything "unreal." The focus is on the use of will to suspend disbelief, a very literal application of the term. But Coleridge is after more than that, as indicated by the additional phrase "which constitutes poetic faith." This is part of a larger act of belief. Coleridge is not counseling for the holding back of something, but for creating that effect in the act of accepting what one is reading. In that moment of faith a reader "procures" that effect of disbelief "for these shadows of imagination."  And does it not grudgingly, but openly.
• "Imagination...does not need to be redeemed by a dissociative framework providing for suspension of disbelief": This is a quotation from Richard Walsh, who wrote a fascinating chapter on dreams and the imagination in the book Toward A Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts (http://books.google.com/books?id=nFmbaQDsJOwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false). Walsh points out that human beings two do things constantly: they narrativize their sensory intake and imagination, and these narratives do not require this dissociation because the act of representation does not need some kind of verification. We believe, if only partially, for a short time, or in a limited fashion.  We do not have to somehow make something truthful –certainly not through some kind of self-deception — for it affect us. Coleridge might approve of this idea given his own distinction between "fancy," a dull, debased imagining, and "imagination" as a vital force that animates the world around us.  The point is, the literal notion of "willing suspension  of disbelief" is unnecessary; we don't need that suspension to engage a fantastic text.
• "[T]he notion of suspension of disbelief cannot coherently be used to explain or account for our reactions to fictional characters and events." Eva Schaper wrote this in 1978 in a critique from a philosophical perspective.  Schaper was interested in dealing with "the paradox of fiction" as something we know to be unreal but that we react to, on some level, as real.  Her argument was that an idea of conjured, faked credulity does not tell us why fiction stimulates the responses that many readers have to it. We cannot presuppose that there is only complete belief and utter disbelief, but that there are gradations. We have to mix belief and disbelief to both apprehend fiction and to process its effects on us.  A simple notion of withholding disbelief is useless because we engage the world with a combination of believing and disbelieving.
• Reading is an act of believing. From the moment we start to process words we have begun a process of belief and understanding. Reading is, in its first micro-seconds, an act of accepting, of making sense of little marks and unpacking meaning, not of disbelief. In order to read, we have to decide affirmatively to take in the information represented by those little marks. Sometimes with do this without thinking, but it is always a positive action, one of recognition. It is not a complete embrace, but a believing-in-progress. Before we can assess what we believe or do not believe we need to at least provisionally interpret and construct meaning from what we read. Even if we quickly dismiss or critique what we read, the first we have to do is accept the words and the information they represent.
• "[F]iction emerges as an experiential category not through a passive and wholesale sense of disbelief but, rather, through active scrutiny": The psycholinguist Richard Gerrig has written extensively on the problem of "willing suspension of disbelief."  He notes that the idea that we have a "toggle" in our heads that lets us turn disbelief on and off is at odds with our understandings of human consciousness and cognitive processing, and instead characterizes reading fiction as the "willing construction of disbelief." Gerrig's case studies have, he asserts, demonstrated that readers must expend effort "to disbelieve the story." We are cognitively inclined to believe what we read and have to find reasons to not believe. He also notes that "Texts transport readers unequally" and readers have a range of techniques, usually based on individual experiences and desires, that they use to create disbelief.  It is not the same process for everyone, and how much we believe –and how quickly we disbelieve– is not based on whether we have flipped out disbelief switch, but on our own proclivities.
• Reading the fantastic requires understanding, not disbelief: As I've noted before (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011/08/the_collaboration_of_belief_reconsidering_suspension_of_disbelief_in_the_reading_of_fantastika/), reading is a process of generating and processing understanding. As Adam Roberts, quoting Gwyneth Jones, noted: "'what is needed' with SF 'is not a suspension of disbelief, it is an active process of translation."  We do not disengage our critical faculties when we read fantastika (or really any other sort of fiction); we adjust them to the text. We search for elements to believe in, for details and tropes and trends that we can embrace and integrate into the experience of reading. Sometimes they ring true and other times they seem to be inert illusions. It is an ongoing process that requires us to be active and probing. This is a far cry from an act of suspension, of somehow putting away our discernment to let ourselves be tricked by a text. Reading fantastika is about much more than that.

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/07/six-fervently-held-hypotheses-regarding-willing-suspension-of-disbelief/#more-79007 (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/07/six-fervently-held-hypotheses-regarding-willing-suspension-of-disbelief/#more-79007)

"Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life..." Viktor Shklovsky
"For the apparent realism, or representationality, of SF has concealed another, far more complex temporal structure: not to give us 'images' of the future-whatever such images might mean for a reader who will necessarily predecease their 'materialization'-but rather to defamiliarize and restructure our experience of our own present, and to do so in specific ways distinct from all other forms of defamiliarization" – Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, p. 286.


I begin this week with one simple quotation, taken spectacularly out of context, and a very complex one that hits the mark like grapeshot at point-blank range (and with about the same subtlety). I discovered the work of Viktor Shklovsky, one of the premiere Russian Formalist thinkers, only a couple of years ago, but his ideas have cracked open and lit up some corners of the literary experience for me in profound ways. What unites his quotation and the long one from Jameson is that they both deal with the practice of ostranenie, of alienation/defamiliarization/estrangement (depending on your translation and intentions). Estrangement, the effect generated by a literary narrative that creates conceptual distance from the literal and commonly-accepted and thus permits imaginative transport, is the device we use to turn everyday words and stories into art. Ostranenie is the term that Shklovsky (thought he) coined for this process. As he puts it:

Read the rest of this entry (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/08/the-revelations-of-estrangement-sf-and-the-displacement-of-ostranenie/#more-80702)

I sad ispade da je Jameson za to zaslužan...  :( 
A brata Jugoslovena ni da pomenu...
Ua...


Све чешће ми дође да пишем ћирилицом...  :)

https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/critical-literacy-teaching-series-challenging-authors-and-genres/science-fiction-and-speculative-fiction/ (https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/critical-literacy-teaching-series-challenging-authors-and-genres/science-fiction-and-speculative-fiction/)


Science Fiction and Speculative FictionChallenging Genres
2013 - 226 pages
Paul Thomas (Furman University, Greenville, SC, USA) (https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/authors/auth-paul-thomas/) (Ed.)
ISBN Paperback: 9789462093782 ($ 43.00)
ISBN Hardcover: 9789462093799 ($ 99.00)

Subject: Literacy (https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/subjects/literacy/), Teacher Education (https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/subjects/teacher-education/), Culture and Education (https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/subjects/culture-and-education/)
Number 3 of the series: Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres (https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/critical-literacy-teaching-series-challenging-authors-and-genres/)
Free Preview Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction (http://www.sensepublishers.com/media/1679-science-fiction-and-speculative-fiction.pdf)
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sensepublishers.com%2Fmedia%2F855x855%2F1678-science-fiction-and-speculative-fiction.jpg&hash=7d44c80f1dbedb904213a6bc6a848ccf96048b64)

Why did Kurt Vonnegut shun being labeled a writer of science fiction (SF)? How did Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin find themselves in a public argument about the nature of SF? This volume explores the broad category of SF as a genre, as one that challenges readers, viewers, teachers, and scholars, and then as one that is often itself challenged (as the authors in the collection do). SF, this volume acknowledges, is an enduring argument.

The collected chapters include work from teachers, scholars, artists, and a wide range of SF fans, offering a powerful and unique blend of voices to scholarship about SF as well as examinations of the place for SF in the classroom. Among the chapters, discussions focus on SF within debates for and against SF, the history of SF, the tensions related to SF and other genres, the relationship between SF and science, SF novels, SF short fiction, SF film and visual forms (including TV), SF young adult fiction, SF comic books and graphic novels, and the place of SF in contemporary public discourse.

The unifying thread running through the volume, as with the series, is the role of critical literacy and pedagogy, and how SF informs both as essential elements of liberatory and democratic education.

Buy this book at Amazon:
Paperback (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/9462093784) | Hardcover (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/9462093792)
Buy this book at Barnes & Noble:
Paperback (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=9789462093782) | Hardcover (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=9789462093799)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: Challenging Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction 1
P. L. Thomas
1. A Case for SF and Speculative Fiction: An Introductory
Consideration 15
P. L. Thomas
2. SF and Speculative Novels: Confronting the Science
and the Fiction 35
Michael Svec and Mike Winiski
3. SF Novels and Sociological Experimentation: Examining Real
World Dynamics through Imaginative Displacement 59
Aaron Passell
4. "Peel[ing] apart Layers of Meaning" in SF Short Fiction:
Inviting Students to Extrapolate on the Effects of Change 73
Jennifer Lyn Dorsey
5. Reading Alien Suns: Using SF Film to Teach a Political Literacy
of Possibility 95
John Hoben
6. Singularity, Cyborgs, Drones, Replicants and Avatars:
Coming to Terms with the Digital Self 119
Leila E. Villaverde and Roymieco A. Carter
7. Troubling Notions of Reality inCaprica: Examining "Paradoxical
States" of Being 133
Erin Brownlee Dell
8. "I Try to Remember Who I Am and Who I Am Not":
The Subjugation of Nature and Women in The Hunger Games 145
Sean P. Connors
vTABLE OF CONTENTS
9. "It's a Bird . . . It's a Plane . . . It's . . . a Comic Book in the
Classroom?": Truth: Red, White, and Black as Test Case for Teaching
Superhero Comics 165
Sean P. Connors
10. The Enduring Power of SF, Speculative and Dystopian Fiction:
Final Thoughts 185
P. L. Thomas
Author Biographies 217