Elana Gomel | Posthuman subjects in SF are often marked by extreme corporeal modifications, hence the genre’s narrative zoo of cyborgs, mutants, and human-alien hybrids. Far rarer but also more interesting is a posthuman subject whose difference is located in its/his/her psyche. Such subjects challenge humanism more profoundly and unsettlingly than does the cyborg. The humanist…
Seo-Young Chu | Kafkaesque, Orwellian, eerie, surreal, bizarre, grotesque, alien, wacky, fascinating, dystopian, illusive, theatrical, antic, haunting, apocalyptic: these are just a few of the vaguely science-fictional adjectives that are now associated with North Korea. At the same time, North Korea has become an oddly convenient trope for a certain aesthetic – an uncanny opacity;…
Sheila Finch | Lacking something new to read when the day for my semi-monthly writers’ workshop approached, I dashed off a brief essay about Ray Bradbury speaking at a recent Eaton Conference. I had no plans to do anything with it beyond maybe putting it up on my LiveJournal blog, but one of my workshop…
Sue Lange | Five minutes later I stepped off the Chicago to Wyoming line into the stench of Dubuque’s suburbs. Place called Gurwood. I hadn’t had enough time to review the particulars so I inserted the stick into my Slot A and uploaded the info the old-fashioned way: straight to the brain. I perused as…
Andrew Frost, College of Fine Arts, UNSW | The aura of the science fictional surrounds the work of photographer Gregory Crewdson. In series such as Twilight [1998-02] and Beneath The Roses [2003-06] Crewdson created oblique narratives where moments of dramatic realisation were contrasted with surreal idylls. In one image of the Twilight series, for example,…
Carl Abbott, School of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University, USA | Nothing says trouble like a city smashed to smithereens on screen. Meteors and earthquakes, tsunamis and glaciers, earthly monsters and alien invaders – moviegoers might think that the only thing science fiction does with cities is demolish them with big budget special…