Insights from imbalance in China

Insights from imbalance

Science fiction frequently deals with civilizational inflection points. First encounters, for example, which introduce radical alterity, break from the past, and send society into chaos.

An anthologist of Chinese science fiction says that the genre has become so popular in part because China, in two generations, has dealt with incredible flux. "The kinds of technological and social changes that took societies in the West centuries to move through have sometimes been experienced by a mere two generations in China. The anxiety of careening out of balance, of being torn by parts moving too fast and too slow, is felt everywhere."

Dec 13, 2016

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The powers of science fiction are perfect for our present reality.

Edited by Hayden Higgins

Person reads from a futuristic wraparound display screen. Credit: David Revoy / Blender Foundation.

If the boundary between science and fiction turns on the difference between truth and falsehood, the genre of science fiction might represent our post-truth regime more accurately than either disjointed discipline.

From the introductory note to The New Inquiry's latest edition, Science/Fiction, which features essays on the microbiome, techno-utopianism, explainerism, and more.
↩︎ The New Inquiry

Dec 14, 2016

Black Panthers, Katniss Everdeen, and the changing face of sci-fi

Check out this killer reading list associated with a PEN Live talk featuring authors building "authentically diverse worlds." (Save the lecture for your holiday travel.)

Dec 14, 2016

Resistance isn't futile, hopefully

We’ve arrived at a future we don’t understand. Can science fiction help us make sense of it?

Darkly, the Hugo Award "Puppygate" scandals, in which an unforeseen voting bloc rallied against diversity in science fiction, presaged the mainstreaming of populist white identity politics. But as the Atlantic put it, "trying to undo change in an increasingly diverse world is futile," so maybe we can learn from it instead.

Dec 13, 2016

With all the talk of two Americas, China Mieville's The City & the City springs to mind. Using the ghosts and ghouls of Halloween as an entry, here the science fiction author and leftist makes the case for non-mimetic art—which creates not just imaginary characters and plots but breaks the rules of reality—as essential to resilient and creative society.

Dec 13, 2016

The history of utopia reveals that purity of means is less important than sheer quantity of imagining. More utopias, however messed up, is better than no utopias... The transformation [from an agricultural to a market economy] was bewildering, unbearable, and quite literally murderous; utopianism was a constant injunction to think of alternatives, as business elites moved to close them off.

Three utopian visions, always speculative, of American liberation.
↩︎ Bookforum

Dec 13, 2016

From one Delany to another

A black science fiction reading list begins with Martin Delany's story of a Utopian slave revolt in 1859 and ends with Octavia's Brood, a 2015 collection. The Devil in America, a novelette available here, feels especially relevant.

Dec 13, 2016

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A room wallpapered in (presumably unread) New Yorkers. Credit: lars_o_matic.

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A very stupid thing begins again. Credit: TMN.