The prevalence of science fiction readership among those who create and program computers is so well-known that it has become a cliche, but the phenomenon has remained largely unexplored by scholars. What role has science fiction played in the actual development of computers and computing? And likewise, how has computing (including the related fields of robotics and artificial intelligence) affected the course of science fiction? The 18 essays in this critical work explore the interrelationship of these domains over the span of more than half a century.
Science fiction is the playground of the imagination. If you are interested in science or fascinated with the future then science fiction is where you explore new ideas and let your dreams and nightmares duke it out on the safety of the page or screen. But what if we could use science fiction to do more than that? What if we could use science fiction based on science fact to not only imagine our future but develop new technologies and products? What if we could use stories, movies and comics as a kind of tool to explore the real world implications and uses of future technologies today? Science Fiction Prototyping is a practical guide to using fiction as a way to imagine our future in a whole new way. Filled with history, real world examples and conversations with experts like best selling science fiction author Cory Doctorow, senior editor at Dark Horse Comics Chris Warner and Hollywood science expert Sidney Perkowitz, Science Fiction Prototyping will give you the tools you need to begin designing the future with science fiction. The future is Brian David Johnson’s business. As a futurist at Intel Corporation, his charter is to develop an actionable vision for computing in 2021. His work is called “future casting”—using ethnographic field studies, technology research, trend data, and even science fiction to create a pragmatic vision of consumers and computing. Johnson has been pioneering development in artificial intelligence, robotics, and reinventing TV. He speaks and writes extensively about future technologies in articles and scientific papers as well as science fiction short stories and novels (Fake Plastic Love and Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing and the Devices We Love). He has directed two feature films and is an illustrator and commissioned painter. Table of Contents: Preface / Foreword / Epilogue / Dedication / Acknowledgments / 1. The Future Is in Your Hands / 2. Religious Robots and Runaway Were-Tigers: A Brief Overview of the Science and the Fiction that Went Into Two SF Prototypes / 3. How to Build Your Own SF Prototype in Five Steps or Less / 4. I, Robot: From Asimov to Doctorow: Exploring Short Fiction as an SF Prototype and a Conversation With Cory Doctorow / 5. The Men in the Moon: Exploring Movies as an SF Prototype and a Conversation with Sidney Perkowitz / 6. Science in the Gutters: Exploring Comics as an SF Prototype and a Conversation With Chris Warner / 7. Making the Future: Now that You Have Developed Your SF Prototype, What’s Next? / 8. Einstein’s Thought Experiments and Asimov’s Second Dream / Appendix A: The SF Prototypes / Notes / Author Biography
Alfred Bester's first science fiction novel since The Stars My Destination was a major event—a fast-moving adventure story set in Earth's future. A band of immortal—as charming a bunch of eccentrics as you'll ever come across—recruit a new member, the brilliant Cherokee physicist Sequoya Guess. Dr. Guess, with group's help, gain control of Extro, the supercomputer that controls all mechanical activity on Earth. They plan to rid Earth of political repression and to further Guess's researches—which may lead to a great leap in human evolution to produce a race of supermen. But Extro takes over Guess instead and turns malevolent. The task of the merry band suddenly becomes a fight in deadly earnest for the future of Earth.
Alas, poor Satan. He's not happy. No one seems to like or understand him; people have got him all wrong. And his relationship with God is a hostile one. Unloved and misunderstood, he's come back to Earth in search of a psychotherapist; he's prepared- if cured- to deliver the all-important Great Answer. In Jeremy Leven's wildly original comic novel, we follow the Prince of Darkness through his seven amazing therapy sessions. And we watch him grow increasingly well adjusted while his therapist, the unfortunate Dr. Kassler, descends deeper and deeper into hell.
Science fiction has always challenged readers with depictions of the future. Can the genre actually provide glimpses of the world of tomorrow? This collection of fifteen international and interdisciplinary essays examines the genre's predictions and breaks new ground by considering the prophetic functions of science fiction films as well as SF literature. Among the texts and topics examined are classic stories by Murray Leinster, C. L. Moore, and Cordwainer Smith; 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequels, Japanese anime and Hong Kong cinema; and electronic fiction.
Science Fiction Film develops a historical and cultural approach to the genre that moves beyond close readings of iconography and formal conventions. It explores how this increasingly influential genre has been constructed from disparate elements into a hybrid genre. Science Fiction Film goes beyond a textual exploration of these films to place them within a larger network of influences that includes studio politics and promotional discourses. The book also challenges the perceived limits of the genre - it includes a wide range of films, from canonical SF, such as Le voyage dans la lune, Star Wars and Blade Runner, to films that stretch and reshape the definition of the genre. This expansion of generic focus offers an innovative approach for students and fans of science fiction alike.
Religious themes, concepts, imagery, and terminology have featured prominently in much recent science fiction. In the book you hold in your hands, scholars working in a range of disciplines (such as theology, literature, history, music, and anthropology) offer their perspectives on a variety of points at which religion and science fiction intersect. From Frankenstein, by way of Christian apocalyptic, to Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and much more, and from the United States to China and back again, the authors who contribute to this volume serve as guides in the exploration of religion and science fiction as a multifaceted, multidisciplinary, and multicultural phenomenon.
How do digital media technologies affect society and our lives? Through the cultural theory hypotheses of hyper-modernism, hyperreality, and posthumanism, Alan N. Shapiro investigates the social impact of Virtual/Augmented Reality, AI, social media platforms, robots, and the Brain-Computer Interface. His examination of concepts of Jean Baudrillard and Katherine Hayles, as well as films such as Blade Runner 2049, Ghost in the Shell, Ex Machina, and the TV series Black Mirror, suggests that the boundary between science fiction narratives and the »real world« has become indistinct. Science-fictional thinking should be advanced as a principal mode of knowledge for grasping the world and digitalization.
