Modern Literature Commons^™

Volume 27 Issue 1

NEBO: A Literary Journal

This issue of Nebo: A Literary Journal, published in Fall 2012, is a special speculative fiction issue dedicated to the memory of Ray Bradbury, Harry Harrison, and Neil Armstrong, three figures who profoundly shaped humanity’s vision of the future. The issue, archived as Volume 27, Issue 1, corresponds to the print edition labeled Volume 31, Issue 1. Due to necessary metadata adjustments in the digital archiving process, some volume and issue numbers in the online collection may not match those printed in the original journals.

In his editorial preface, James Ritchie explores the literary significance …

Volume 25 Issue 1

NEBO: A Literary Journal

This issue of Nebo: A Literary Journal, published in Spring 2010, is a reflection of editor Brooke Hobby’s vision for engaging, contemporary literature. The issue, archived as Volume 25, Issue 1, corresponds to the print edition labeled Volume 28, Issue 2. Due to necessary metadata adjustments in the digital archiving process, some volume and issue numbers in the online collection may not match those printed in the original journals.

In her editor’s note, Hobby expresses her desire to move away from the "great literature" of the past and focus on the stories and poetry …

Volume 24 Issue 2

NEBO: A Literary Journal

This issue of Nebo: A Literary Journal, published in Fall 2009, is uniquely titled "Readerwriteritis: A (Mostly) Speculative Fiction Issue", highlighting its strong emphasis on speculative storytelling and literary experimentation. The issue is archived as Volume 24, Issue 2, while the print edition is labeled Volume 28, Issue 1. Due to necessary metadata adjustments in the digital archiving process, some volume and issue numbers in the online collection may not match those printed in the original journals.

The preface by editor Benjamin David Lee Johnson reflects on the therapeutic power of creative writing, …

Paradoks Determinisme Dalam Film Tenet (2020) Sebagai Refleksi Kesadaran Manusia Akan Waktu, Farobi Fatkhurridho, Suma Riella Rusdiarti

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Time is a complicated object of study because understanding time is closely related to periodization, history, and memory. Film is a medium for presenting manifestations of motion and time in visual products that can be captured by human senses. Tenet (2020) is a film that displays temporal dimensions in terms of both creative ideas and packaging through its cinematography and narrative structure. Tenet presents the idea of overlapping time consciousness of the past, present, and future. A revolving door machine in the film is used to signify the paradox of determinism or the condition of characters suffocated in a time …

Anxieties About The Future: Ecocriticism And Dystopian Landscapes In The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch And Selected Fiction By Philip K. Dick, Nickolas Michael Sykora

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In a literary analysis of selected fiction by Philip K Dick through an ecocritical framework, the focus of this study reveals the consequences of ecological destruction on futuristic societies reflecting the Anthropocene. Drawing correlations between various texts by the author, the separation of nature from humanity demonstrates how dystopian landscapes influence the identity of the characters in these settings and how dystopia serves as a prism which distorts or reflects what it means to be human. With this, ontology and artificial intelligence are analyzed as a notable facet of his literature which addresses the progress of innovation in society and …

Hope And Wonder In The Wasteland: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction As Tolkienian Fairy Story, Alfredo J. Mac Laughlin

Journal of Tolkien Research

J. R. R. Tolkien’s four functions of fantasy stories, as developed in his Andrew Lang lecture “On Fairy Stories” (1939), have become a key conceptual tool for discussing human beings’ attraction to fantasy stories, particularly when attempting to push the analysis beyond the literary into the aesthetic, and beyond the aesthetic into the existential. Applying this interpretive key to an analysis of the expanding genre of post-apocalyptic fiction reveals that post-apocalyptic stories, despite superficial differences, are surprisingly close to fairy stories in their aesthetic core and orientation, and that post-apocalyptic stories are well-suited to fulfill—albeit with their own distinctive aesthetic …

Language And Betrayal: Posthuman Ethics In Kazuo Ishiguro’S Never Let Me Go, Netty Mattar

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Netty Mattar discusses in her article “Language and Betrayal: Posthuman Ethics in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go” the complexities of ethical compassion in this biotechnological age. Mattar highlights how genetic technology creates new forms of life that dissolve the line between ‘human’ and ‘technology.’ In spite of this, contemporary ethical discussions do not take into account changing conceptions of human subjectivity and instead reinstate older assumptions about what ‘human’ is. Mattar argues that speculative fiction (SF), as a self-conscious play on signs and signification, can draw attention to how ethical responses are determined by the language we use. …

Dennis E. Minor Collectioon, University Archives And Special Collections, Prescott Memorial Library, Louisiana Tech University

Manuscript Finding Aids

Collection consists of three framed, signed, and numbered prints by various artists depicting scenes from L. Ron Hubbard stories. This collection also includes a mass-trade paperback, "L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future" in which is contained the short story "Old Times There" authored by Dr. Minor.

Trial By Steam: A Lesson Plan For Using “Repent, Harlequin!” In The Steam Classroom, Olivia Burgess

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This lesson plan uses Harlan Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman” as part of an interdisciplinary first-year curriculum linking perspectives from the humanities with engineering design. Students participated in a “mock trial” based on two characters from the story as a way to reflect on good teamwork, the value of creativity, and on the nature of the engineering profession. Both Ellison’s story and the lesson explore the benefits of taking a “STEAM” perspective that integrates the precision and timeliness needed in engineering (represented by the Ticktockman) with the flexibility and creativity inspired by the humanities (represented by Harlequin).

New Scholarship On Early Sf In France And Québec. [Review Of C'Était Demain: Anticiper La Science-Fiction En France Et Au Québec (1880-1950) [It Was Tomorrow: Anticipating Science Fiction In France And Quebec, 1880-1950], Eds. Natacha Vas-Deyres, Patrick Bergeron, And Patrick Guay. Bordeaux, France: Presses Universitaires De Bordeaux, 2018], Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

Gender In Apocalyptic California: The Ecological Frontier, Marykate Eileen Messimer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is the consequence of ideologies that promote human reproduction and resource consumption by sacrificing human justice, nonhuman species, and the land. Both biology and queer ecologies resist this notion of human separation and supremacy by showing that no body is a singular, impermeable entity, that all beings are biologically and inexorably connected. My dissertation demonstrates that fiction writers use this knowledge to locate a utopian vision that can counteract the dystopian impotence of living within climate change. This argument is founded on novels written by women and set in California, a state that uniquely inhabits a utopian and …

Review Of Song For The Unraveling Of The World, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Persistence Of The Past Into The Future: Indigenous Futurism And Future Slave Narratives As Transformative Resistance In Nnedi Okorafor's The Book Of Phoenix, Ellen Eubanks

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, a number of authors have written science fiction works that express the concerns and experiences of marginalized people groups, including those in postcolonial societies, Indigenous/First Nations peoples, and other racial minorities. These works provide counter narratives to that of much canonical science fiction, which developed from narrative forms that often explicitly and implicitly supported colonial ideologies, and still often includes these ideologies today. This thesis analyzes the way The Book of Phoenix (2015) by the NigerianAmerican speculative fiction author Nnedi Okorafor uses a combination of the forms of Indigenous futurism and what Isiah Lavender terms meta-slavery narratives …

"On That Day We Will Be Free": Reflecting Women's Real Experiences In Joanna Russ's The Female Man And Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Victoria A. League

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

The feminist speculative fiction novels The Female Man (1975) by Joanna Russ and The Handmaid's Tale(1986) by Margaret Atwood mirror the real world by reflecting women's experiences. Speculative fiction, an umbrella genre that includes science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism, explores our world by discussing other worlds. Themes and events in each novel's fictional world reveal aspects of today's world, and the depictions and conditions of women in the novels illuminate heterosexist norms. Specific and clear parallels can be drawn between reality and these science fiction stories, showing that the novels critique and comment on our world's treatment of …

Educating Dídac: Mankind’S New Father And The End Of Patriarchy In Manuel De Pedrolo’S "Typescript Of The Second Origin", Sara Martín

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

The post-apocalyptic novel by Catalan writer Manuel de Pedrolo, Typescript of the Second Origin (1974, English 2017) celebrates Alba as humankind’s new mother. Alba’s mission, however, clearly depends on the help of a man willing to father her children, a role for which Pedrolo made an extremely singular choice: whereas Alba is already 14 when Typescript begins, Dídac is just a 9-year-old boy. Because of the exceptional situation (the catastrophic extraterrestrial devastation of Earth), Pedrolo forces Dídac to mature very fast, to the point that he is only 12 when Alba gives birth to their baby. Additionally, Dídac’s mixed-raced genetic …

Edgar Allan Poe’S Cosmology And Natural Theology: A Constructive Postmodern Appreciation, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Contrary to some literary classifications, Edgar Allan Poe’s book-length prose poem Eureka is not intended to be fiction. In Eureka Poe was seriously attempting to advance ‘truth’ about the universe. Poe was doing natural science and poetry in the tradition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and other natural philosophers. Poe’s prose poem is natural scientific astronomy and cosmology, plus natural theology, not science fiction.

Surrealism And Science Fiction, Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

Global Homesickness In William Gibson’S Blue Ant Trilogy, Sean Scanlan

Publications and Research

This article explores theories of home, homesickness, and identity instability as they occur in William Gibson’s Blue Ant trilogy, which consists of three novels: Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007), and Zero History (2010). In order to clarify this collision and underscore the importance of cultural and aesthetic codes of uneven globalization, this article offers a character study focused through the place-based intensities of global homesickness. Each character has a strained relationship with home: Cayce Pollard only feels at home while reading and writing in an online film forum; Hollis Henry wonders if she might be considered homeless, even though …

The Technological Singularity: An Ideological Critique, Phillip Stephens

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Technological Singularity represents a confluence of techno-cultural narratives of progress in which the projected exponential growth of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology will usher in a moment of irrevocable change for the human race – a change that many claim is scant decades away. Although the concept saw its modern clarification by science fiction author Vernor Vinge, the Singularity sits astride both fictional and nonfictional narratives of the future. It is the aim of this study to explore the ideological discourses that emerge from texts on the Singularity and the unfathomable posthuman future it ushers in. Doing so reveals how …

Science Fiction And Fantasy: The Cosmic Players, Kristin Laughtin-Dunker

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

This presentation gives an overview of science fiction and fantasy, including its origins, the prominent writers in each era, and its many subgenres and variations.

Frank And Gala, Heather M. Mcgrail

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Through the gossip and rumors in a small town in Minnesota, the townspeople discuss and react to the Levison family's claimed perfection.

Sublime Beauty & Horrible Fucking Things - The Finer Worlds Of Warren Ellis, William James Allred

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work constitutes an in-depth discussion of the muted postmodern characteristics of contemporary comics writer and novelist Warren Ellis, highlighting his major long-form works within comics, Planetary, Transmetropolitan, StormWatch, and The Authority, as well as several shorter works such as Ocean, Orbiter, and Global Frequency. In addition, Ellis is situated within the British science fiction tradition, specifically, the British Boom movement which contains other comics writers such as Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore.

Science Fiction And Lyric Poetry, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

This piece explores connections between science fiction and lyric poetry.

The New "Improved" Anatomy. [Review Of Anatomy Of Wonder 4, Ed. Neil Barron, R.R. Bowker, 1995], Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

Superb Jules Verne Translations. [Review Of Jules Verne's Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, Trans. William Butcher, Oxford Up, 1992, And Jules Verne's Around The World In 80 Days, Trans. William Butcher, Oxford Up, 1995], Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

The "New" Jules Verne, Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

Translation Of Maurice Renard's Article "On The Scientific-Marvellous Novel", Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

A "Stepping Stone" Study Of Early Sf. [Review Of Paul K. Alkon's Science Fiction Before 1900, Twayne, 1994], Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

A Jules Verne Fairy Tale. [Review Of Jules Verne's Adventures Of The Rat Family, Trans. Evelyn Copeland, Ed. Iona Opie And Brian Taves, Oxford Up, 1993], Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

The Fantastic Science Fiction Of Maurice Renard, Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

No abstract provided.