It is possible then to think about SF not in the bourgeois terms of the novel, but as an experimental science. The object of study is not the ideological reproduction of SF, but a philosophical self-reflection upon these conditions of ideological reproduction. To read is to discover the absolute difference a novel has from its [...]
I bring you life-with. It’s more than love. Love’s a hard, sad, dirty word, a cold word, an old word. It says too much and it promises too little. I bring you something much bigger than love. If you’re alive, you’re alive. If you’re alive-with, then you know the other life is there too—both of [...]
Literary forms that helped create the preconditions for the appearance of science fiction as a singular phenomenon in the late 19th century:
* utopian fictions
* fairy tales
* classical myths
* earthly paradises
* folk stories about cockaigne
[...]
[Anamorphosis] is a philosophy of false reality, or, more precisely, a poetics of alternative realities. An anamorphic image posits the coded presence of an almost unimaginable reality that momentarily obtrudes on ideologically constituted reality, thereby rendering it arbitrary, ontologically inconsistent [. . .] The effect of anamorphosis, philosophically speaking, is therefore that of extreme relativisation. [...]
Q: What is Superstruct?
A: Superstruct is the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game. By playing the game, you’ll help us chronicle the world of 2019–and imagine how we might solve the problems we’ll face. Because this is about more than just envisioning the future. It’s about making the future, inventing new ways to organize the [...]
A brilliant novel by a brilliant writer.
Unlike a number of his recent pre- and post-Singularity narratives (Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise, Accelerando, Glasshouse) that Stross has been unleashing upon the now suspecting masses, in terms of its timelines Halting State is a much more humble affair. It is set in 2017, primarily in Edinburgh and [...]