Current Search: Science fiction (x)
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- Title
- Creating a Religious Divide: Journeys Through Hell in British and American Science Fiction.
- Creator
- Sachdev, Advitiya, McGuirk, Carol, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
Science fiction, like any other genre, is sub-divided into categories. Yet scholars in the field have long debated the existence of multiple, regional sf genres. The most critiqued of these classifications is between sf produced in Britain, and America. Though Britain remains the birthplace of sf, American author have undoubtedly left a mark on the genre. Scholars mark this difference in the writing styles and themes of authors in these regions. To examine this difference, I analyze two...
Show moreScience fiction, like any other genre, is sub-divided into categories. Yet scholars in the field have long debated the existence of multiple, regional sf genres. The most critiqued of these classifications is between sf produced in Britain, and America. Though Britain remains the birthplace of sf, American author have undoubtedly left a mark on the genre. Scholars mark this difference in the writing styles and themes of authors in these regions. To examine this difference, I analyze two authors that have worked on a common theme: religion and in particular, the concept of hell. Evaluating the arguments put forth by critics such as Peter Kuczka, Cy Chavin, Franz Rottensteiner, and others; I examine works by Scottish author Iain m. Banks, and American author Cordwainer Smith to determine the validity of this classification.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2016
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004785, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004785
- Subject Headings
- Science fiction--Religious aspects., Religion and literature--English-speaking countries., Science fiction, English--History and criticism., Science fiction, American--History and criticism., Fantasy fiction, English--History and criticism., Fantasy fiction, American--History and criticism.
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Tomorrow is yesterday: protoscience from the medieval manuscript to the golden age of science-fiction.
- Creator
- Leivers, Robert James., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
Protosciences, or new sciences trying to establish their legitimacy, are ubiquitous in literature. In the old stories we hear of alchemists who can only dream of the discoveries that modern chemists take for granted, and in the new stories we hear of travelers moving faster than light as our greatest physicists attempt to make that fantasy a reality. Limiting our viewpoint to the modern scientific reductionist view of the universe not only makes little sense if we consider Michael Polanyi's...
Show moreProtosciences, or new sciences trying to establish their legitimacy, are ubiquitous in literature. In the old stories we hear of alchemists who can only dream of the discoveries that modern chemists take for granted, and in the new stories we hear of travelers moving faster than light as our greatest physicists attempt to make that fantasy a reality. Limiting our viewpoint to the modern scientific reductionist view of the universe not only makes little sense if we consider Michael Polanyi's theories of emergence and 'personal knowledge', but it robs medieval scholars for the conceptual credit they are due for theories they could not satisfactorily explain by the future's standards, and stifles the sorts of fantastic possibilities that are opened by the great science-fiction authors. Medieval authors' expositions of protoscientific thought laid the ground work for our own modern disciplines, and by reexamining how this happened we can develop a new appreciation for the power of the imagination.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2013
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/3362480
- Subject Headings
- Science fiction, History and criticism, Literature and society, Science, Renaissance, Philosophy, Medieval, Influence, Science and civilization
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Simulation, creation and reproduction in Dystopian science fiction.
- Creator
- Burns-Davies, Erin, Comparative Studies Program, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Date Issued
- 2008-10-24
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FADT165363p
- Subject Headings
- Utopias in literature, Science fiction, American, Place (Philosophy) in literature
- Format
- Set of related objects
- Title
- Ubiquitous entropy and heat death in Philip K. Dick and Pamela Zoline.
- Creator
- Kasdorf, Krista., Florida Atlantic University, Scroggins, Mark
- Abstract/Description
-
My scientifically informed readings of Philip K. Dick's Ubik (1969) and Pamela Zoline's "The Heat Death of the Universe" (1967) consider entropy's multifarious meanings from both thermodynamics and information theory. Additionally, rather than relying upon overarching assumptions about the texts' cultural moment, I explore each fiction's presentation of entropy as negative or positive. For Dick, the loss of female mothering accelerates the heat death of late-capitalistic society, with entropy...
Show moreMy scientifically informed readings of Philip K. Dick's Ubik (1969) and Pamela Zoline's "The Heat Death of the Universe" (1967) consider entropy's multifarious meanings from both thermodynamics and information theory. Additionally, rather than relying upon overarching assumptions about the texts' cultural moment, I explore each fiction's presentation of entropy as negative or positive. For Dick, the loss of female mothering accelerates the heat death of late-capitalistic society, with entropy a negative, destructive force. Zoline, however, recognizes the injurious ramifications of entrapping women within the gender role of self-sacrificing wife/mother; her protagonist purposefully accelerates entropy production to destroy such a closed system.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2006
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/13359
- Subject Headings
- Entropy (Information theory), Literature and science, Science fiction, American--History and criticism, Dick, Philip K--Criticism and interpretation, Zoline, Pamela,--1941---Criticism and interpretation
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Living Capital: Situating Animals within Capitalist Modes of Production in Science Fiction.
- Creator
- Cervone, Skye, Hagood, Taylor, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
-
This study addresses the relationship between animals and capitalism in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s We3, and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. These texts and their authors attempted to change the conversation surrounding animals and imagine alternatives to traditional thinking surrounding animal subjectivity. Despite their intentions, however, the authors fail to depict non-exploitative relationships with animals within...
Show moreThis study addresses the relationship between animals and capitalism in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s We3, and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. These texts and their authors attempted to change the conversation surrounding animals and imagine alternatives to traditional thinking surrounding animal subjectivity. Despite their intentions, however, the authors fail to depict non-exploitative relationships with animals within capitalist systems, suggesting an inherently exploitative relationship between animals and biopolitical capitalism.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2019
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00013364
- Subject Headings
- Animals, Capitalism, Atwood, Margaret, 1939- MaddAddam trilogy, Quitely, Frank, 1968-, Dick, Philip K Do androids dream of electric sheep?, Science fiction
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Mythological backgrounds in Sheri S. Tepper's fiction.
- Creator
- Carroll, Lonna Pomeroy., Florida Atlantic University, Collins, Robert A.
- Abstract/Description
-
Sheri S. Tepper, using postmodern literary techniques, utilizes ancient story forms to examine our contemporary world in three science fiction novels. Classical Greek mythology in the form of a parodic drama, "Iphigenia at Ilium" is intricately woven into The Gate to Women's Country. European fairy tale characters become metaphors for a postmodern world threatened by overpopulation and the loss of magic in Beauty. An American Indian fable, featuring Coyote, provides the mythic paradigm for A...
Show moreSheri S. Tepper, using postmodern literary techniques, utilizes ancient story forms to examine our contemporary world in three science fiction novels. Classical Greek mythology in the form of a parodic drama, "Iphigenia at Ilium" is intricately woven into The Gate to Women's Country. European fairy tale characters become metaphors for a postmodern world threatened by overpopulation and the loss of magic in Beauty. An American Indian fable, featuring Coyote, provides the mythic paradigm for A Plague of Angels. Each ancient story form is re-worked into Tepper's postmodernist fiction giving a new slant to familiar stories that highlight Tepper's feminist, ecological themes: of the folly of war, the threat of overpopulation, and mankind's interconnectedness to all living creatures.
Show less - Date Issued
- 1996
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/15317
- Subject Headings
- Tepper, Sheri S--Criticism and interpretation, Mythology in literature, Science fiction--History and criticism, Fantastic literature--History and criticism
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Would Lord Running Clam wear Wubfur slippers? The ethical imperative of empathy in the alternate ecologies of Philip K. Dick.
- Creator
- Aaronson, Russell S., Florida Atlantic University, Collins, Robert A., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
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Although critics have observed Philip K. Dick's references to empathy throughout his novels, short stories, and essays, no analysis has attempted to examine the role of empathy in his writings. In contrast to the element of ratiocination (or logical extrapolation) widely considered to be the hallmark of science fiction, Dick's fictions are held together by the value they primarily place not on reason, but on an empathic understanding of our actions and their effects upon the lives of other...
Show moreAlthough critics have observed Philip K. Dick's references to empathy throughout his novels, short stories, and essays, no analysis has attempted to examine the role of empathy in his writings. In contrast to the element of ratiocination (or logical extrapolation) widely considered to be the hallmark of science fiction, Dick's fictions are held together by the value they primarily place not on reason, but on an empathic understanding of our actions and their effects upon the lives of other entities. Using two early short stories ("Beyond Lies the Wub" and "Roog"), two non-Earth ecologies (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Dr. Bloodmoney). I will demonstrate that Dick's works are united by an ethical imperative to understand the thoughts and emotions of others, human and nonhuman alike.
Show less - Date Issued
- 1996
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/15339
- Subject Headings
- Dick, Philip K--Criticism and interpretation, Dick, Philip K--Ethics, Empathy in literature, Science fiction--History and criticism
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Frankenstein, Science Fiction, and the Poetry of Science.
- Creator
- Davis, Peter, Faraci, Mary, Florida Atlantic University
- Abstract/Description
-
While Frankenstein has recently received criticism weighted heavily in politics, gender, and feminist studies, what gets overlooked in these discussions is that Mary Shelley's novel remains a story about science--not about empirical science, necessarily, but about abstract science. As science fiction, Frankenstein incorporates fictional science to posit truths about the human experience. Shelley's metaphor for the novel, ''my hideous progeny," reminds readers to respect the uncertain elements...
Show moreWhile Frankenstein has recently received criticism weighted heavily in politics, gender, and feminist studies, what gets overlooked in these discussions is that Mary Shelley's novel remains a story about science--not about empirical science, necessarily, but about abstract science. As science fiction, Frankenstein incorporates fictional science to posit truths about the human experience. Shelley's metaphor for the novel, ''my hideous progeny," reminds readers to respect the uncertain elements in invention in the arts and sciences. The problem for Frankenstein that I address has to do with an uncertainty of the terms, "science'' and "science fiction ,'' which results in further uncertainty when discussing the novel's genre and meaning. This essay defines "science," "science fiction," and other important tenns relevant to a critical discussion of the novel. This essay further argues that readers should not overlook the poetry of science in Frankenstein.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2008
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00000908
- Subject Headings
- Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft,--1797-1851.--Frankenstein--Criticism and interpretation., Frankenstein (Fictitious character)--Criticism and interpretation., Science fiction, English--History and criticism--Theory, etc.
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- CHARACTERIZATIONS OF TRAUMA IN LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION.
- Creator
- Owsiany, Dylan, McGuirk, Carol, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
-
The prevalence and impact of trauma has been mischaracterized and misinterpreted throughout time, and this has undoubtedly affected the health and treatment of countless people throughout history. Considering this, some authors impacted by firsthand or cultural traumas before and/or during World War II and the Cold War era, went on to write works of science fiction that handled heavy and taboo characterizations of traumatic stress. Looking back at these short stories and novels with a modern...
Show moreThe prevalence and impact of trauma has been mischaracterized and misinterpreted throughout time, and this has undoubtedly affected the health and treatment of countless people throughout history. Considering this, some authors impacted by firsthand or cultural traumas before and/or during World War II and the Cold War era, went on to write works of science fiction that handled heavy and taboo characterizations of traumatic stress. Looking back at these short stories and novels with a modern clinical perspective of the impacts of trauma, one can see how these characterizations turned out to be strikingly accurate, or, at the very least, closer to truth than perspectives and hypotheses of their era. Two short stories, “Thunder and Roses” by Theodore Sturgeon and “Scanners Live in Vain” by Cordwainer Smith, and two novels, The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, will be examined.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2019
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00013402
- Subject Headings
- Science fiction--20th century, Trauma, Vonnegut, Kurt Slaughterhouse-five, Dick, Philip K Man in the high castle, Sturgeon, Theodore Thunder and roses, Smith, Cordwainer, 1913-1966--Criticism and interpretation
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Religious violence in Frank Herbert's Dune series.
- Creator
- Howard, Kenton Taylor., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
This thesis examines the first two novels of Frank Herbert's Dune series, Dune and Dune Messiah, in order to consider these two novels from the framework of postcolonial theory and analyze how religious violence becomes a source of subjugation, military power, and colonialism within the works. The three chapters of this thesis chart the creation of a colonial project through epistemic violence, physical power, and cultural control enabled by religion. This thesis argues that, in the Dune...
Show moreThis thesis examines the first two novels of Frank Herbert's Dune series, Dune and Dune Messiah, in order to consider these two novels from the framework of postcolonial theory and analyze how religious violence becomes a source of subjugation, military power, and colonialism within the works. The three chapters of this thesis chart the creation of a colonial project through epistemic violence, physical power, and cultural control enabled by religion. This thesis argues that, in the Dune novels, religious violence functions as a colonial project that closely resembles the goals of real-world colonial enterprises, and the failure to manage this colonial project by those who initiated it shows that the effects of colonial projects based on religious violence are dangerous and uncontrollable.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3355558
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Science fiction, American, Criticism and interpretation, Dune (Imaginary place), Violence, Religious aspects, Violence in literature
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Hope on the horizon: Mordecai Roshwald, Cordwainer Smith, and James Tiptree, Jr. look into the future.
- Creator
- Ebert, Valorie., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
This project considers the future, and the hope for humanity within three dystopian science fiction works : Mordecai Roshwald's Level 7, Cordwainer Smith's "The Dead Lady of Clown Town," and James Tiptree, Jr.,'s "The GIrl Who Was Plugged In". There are many aspects and different manifestations of hope in science fiction, even in authors who show readers the darkest side of human nature and what will become of humans, and by default earth, if an effort is not made to change the world's...
Show moreThis project considers the future, and the hope for humanity within three dystopian science fiction works : Mordecai Roshwald's Level 7, Cordwainer Smith's "The Dead Lady of Clown Town," and James Tiptree, Jr.,'s "The GIrl Who Was Plugged In". There are many aspects and different manifestations of hope in science fiction, even in authors who show readers the darkest side of human nature and what will become of humans, and by default earth, if an effort is not made to change the world's direction. Though some dystopian stories show horrible possible futures, there is an underlying hope within these stories that the story will change readers' thinking about how the future might unfold. It is because there is a chance to save the world that science-fiction-authors tell stories about disasters, destruction, and post apocalyptic scenarios. It is within the hopeless story lines that hope for humanity manifests itself.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3355566
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Speculative fiction, American, Criticism and interpretation, Science fiction, American, Criticism and interpretation, Literature and science, Criticism and interpretation, Dystopias in literature
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- The compass of human will in realism and fantasy: a reading of Sister Carrie and The King of Elfand's Daugher.
- Creator
- Stone, Tracy., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
As realist and naturalist writers at the turn of the twentieth century adopted a scientific spirit of objectivity, they reflected the emphasis many contemporary scientific studies laid on the forces of the natural world in shaping the character, behavior, and ultimate destiny of man. In this literary mood of "pessimistic determinism," fantasy literature began to experience a resurgence, providing a marked contrast to naturalism's portrayal of the impotence of man to effect change in his...
Show moreAs realist and naturalist writers at the turn of the twentieth century adopted a scientific spirit of objectivity, they reflected the emphasis many contemporary scientific studies laid on the forces of the natural world in shaping the character, behavior, and ultimate destiny of man. In this literary mood of "pessimistic determinism," fantasy literature began to experience a resurgence, providing a marked contrast to naturalism's portrayal of the impotence of man to effect change in his circumstances. I examine fantasy's restoration of efficacy to the human will through a study of two representative works of the opposing genres: Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie and Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter. As I demonstrate, the former naturalistic novel emphasizes the impotence of its characters in the face of powerful natural world, while the latter contemporary fantasy novel uniquely showcases man's ability to effect change in his world and his destiny.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/221950
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Realism in literature, Naturalism in literature, Literature and science, Life change events in literature, Fantasy fiction, English, Criticism and interpretation
- Format
- Document (PDF)