Questions about the future have always been an integral part of our human condition. From oracles, diviners, and augurs to econometrics, long-term planning, and forecasts, we are always trying to see past the non-linear abyss of the unknown. Today the ideal society, the democratic Utopia, promised by modernity and the Enlightenment or, more recently, by networked information technologies and neoliberal globalization, is nowhere to be seen. Enter science fiction and its novum or kehuan and Mo Biao as avenues to right what is wrong and to imagine possible neotopias. Some might be negative, dystopian, others more hopeful, in the tradition of former utopias and commons. They serve to explore and/or exploit the topologies of estrangement, magic, cognition, time, and the politics of nature, reality, and virtuality. They draw on the tradition of mechanical simulacra, retro and high-tech, to help us confront power, religion, environment, economy, beauty, gender, race, and sexuality. Drawing from film, graphic novels, theory, and literature, we will search beneath the hidden recesses of middle earth, in quantum or warp space, in our puppets, zombies, and cyborgs, androids, robots and cyberpunks, in cities and hinterlands, for clues about our past and paths to our future. We will travel from Atlantis to the New Atlantis, from Chimeras to Avatars, Metropolis to Neo Tokyo, Oaxaca, Soweto or Paris in 2054, to see if we can catch a glimpse of 'sleep dealers' and drones, of Clark Kents, Robins, and Tobey Maguires as they save the world. We will use tools from science and technology, social science, philosophy, ecology, history, cultural studies, and visual and literary criticism to suggest a post-futurist transversality that will help us interpret those imagined times-to-come.
Questions about the future have always been an integral part of our human condition. From oracles, diviners, and augurs to econometrics, long-term planning, and forecasts, we are always trying to see past the non-linear abyss of the unknown. Today the ideal society, the democratic Utopia, promised by modernity and the Enlightenment or, more recently, by networked information technologies and neoliberal globalization, is nowhere to be seen. Enter science fiction and its novum or kehuan and Mo Biao as avenues to right what is wrong and to imagine possible neotopias. Some might be negative, dystopian, others more hopeful, in the tradition of former utopias and commons. They serve to explore and/or exploit the topologies of estrangement, magic, cognition, time, and the politics of nature, reality, and virtuality. They draw on the tradition of mechanical simulacra, retro and high-tech, to help us confront power, religion, environment, economy, beauty, gender, race, and sexuality. Drawing from film, graphic novels, theory, and literature, we will search beneath the hidden recesses of middle earth, in quantum or warp space, in our puppets, zombies, and cyborgs, androids, robots and cyberpunks, in cities and hinterlands, for clues about our past and paths to our future. We will travel from Atlantis to the New Atlantis, from Chimeras to Avatars, Metropolis to Neo Tokyo, Oaxaca, Soweto or Paris in 2054, to see if we can catch a glimpse of 'sleep dealers' and drones, of Clark Kents, Robins, and Tobey Maguires as they save the world. We will use tools from science and technology, social science, philosophy, ecology, history, cultural studies, and visual and literary criticism to suggest a post-futurist transversality that will help us interpret those imagined times-to-come.