“Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes then shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket.”

W. H. Auden

This article examines some of the central themes in science fiction over the last thirty years.  Each section offers a list of further reading.  It is often said that sci-fi is more about the present than the future: contemporary trends are extrapolated and projected into future environments. What can this reveal about society now and in the recent past? How does the mise-en-scene of the representations themselves relate to contemporary practice in architecture, design and science? It is possible to trace responses to technological change in the twentieth century by examining science fiction texts. Will we ever get the future promised to us by science fiction?

Body Horror

‘Body Horror’ was a cycle of films focusing on anxieties surrounding the human body. The body itself became the site of horror as its physical form was mediated by disease, invasion or mutilation. The interface between the human body and technology was a key preoccupation. Disease, decay, and transformation were depicted as horrific processes.

Reading:

Beard, W. The Artist as Monster: the cinema of David Cronenberg.

Constable, C. ‘Becoming the Monster’s Mother: Morphologies of Identity in the Alien series in Kuhn, A. (1999) Alien Zone II: the spaces of science fiction cinema.

Creed, B. ‘Alien and the Monstrous-Feminine’ in Kuhn, A. (1990) Alien Zone: cultural theory and contemporary science fiction cinema.

Kavanagh, J. ‘Feminism, humanism and Science in Alien’ in Kuhn, A. (1990) Alien Zone: cultural theory and contemporary science fiction cinema.

Newton, J. ‘Feminism and Anxiety in Alien’ in Kuhn, A. (1990) Alien Zone: cultural theory and contemporary science fiction cinema.

Kristeva, J. (1980) Powers of Horror: an essay on abjection.

Future Noir

In the 1970s cultural theorists began to sense that the Modernist project had been replaced with something else, an evasive and protean phenomenon that came to be known as postmodernism. The emergence of global corporations and the mass media has disrupted our reality and fractured previously-stable constructions of identity. How is this state of ‘postmodernity’ represented in dystopian thrillers such as Blade Runner?(https://knoji.com/blade-runner/) 

Reading:

Bruno, G. ‘Ramble City: Postmodernism and Blade Runner’ in Kuhn, A. (1990) Alien Zone: cultural theory and contemporary science fiction cinema.

Bukatman, S. ‘Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner’ in Redmond, S. (ed.) (2004) Liquid Metal: the science fiction film reader.

Neumann, D. Film Architecture: set designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner

Staiger, J. ‘Future Noir: contemporary representations of visionary cities’ in Kuhn, A. (1999) Alien Zone II: the spaces of science-fiction cinema.

Sobchack, V. ‘Cities on the Edge of Time: the urban science-fiction film’ in Kuhn, A. (1999) Alien Zone II: the spaces of science fiction cinema.

Yuen, W.K. ‘On the Edge of Spaces: Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell and Hong Kong’s Cityscape’ in Redmond, S. (ed.) (2004) Liquid Metal: the science fiction film reader.

The Artificial Human: Robots, Replicants and Cyborgs

The concept of the artificial human has been a central theme in science fiction since the time of Mary Shelley. The artificial human has appeared in a number of different guises: robot, android, cyborg and replicant. This complex figure has been used to personify technology, while its polysemic image has been adapted to explore anxieties surrounding conformity, class, slavery and racial difference.  A key example is Robocop (https://knoji.com/robocop-an-analysis/)

Reading:

Doanne, M.A. ‘Machine as Messiah: Cyborgs, Morphs and the American Body Politic’ in Redmond, S. (ed.) (2004) Liquid Metal: the science fiction film reader.

Haraway, D. ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: science, technology and socialist feminism in the 1980s’ in Redmond, S. (ed.) (2004) Liquid Metal: the science fiction film reader.

Larson, D. ‘Ghosts and Machines: the Technological Body’ in Redmond, S. (ed.) (2004) Liquid Metal: the science fiction film reader.

Mizejewski, L. ‘Action Bodies in Futurist spaces: Bodybuilder Stardom as Special Effect’ in Kuhn, A. (1999) Alien Zone II: the spaces of science fiction cinema.

Trussell, R. ‘I, Robot: You Gotta Have Heart’ in Journal of Religion & Film; Oct 2005, volume 9, issue 2, p15.

Digital Futures

The emergence of digital media has altered our perception of time and space, while the advent of computer aided design has provoked new forms within contemporary design practice. Recently, designers have produced spaces which exist solely within the digital realm.

Reading:

Baudrillard, J. Simulacra and Simulation.

Bukatman, S. ‘Who Programs You? The Science Fiction of the Spectacle’ in Kuhn, A. (1990) Alien Zone: cultural theory and contemporary science fiction cinema.

Negroponte, N. Being Digital http://www.obsus.com/obs/english/books/nn/bdintro.htm

Rheingold, H., Virtual Reality

Springer, C. ‘Psycho-cybernetics in Films of the 1990s’ Kuhn, A. (1999) Alien Zone II: the spaces of science fiction cinema.

Vidler, A. Warped Space

Please see my related artilces:

https://knoji.com/the-matrix-a-critical-discussion/

https://knoji.com/robocop-an-analysis/

https://knoji.com/the-artificial-human-representations