Announcements

Published 20/05/18

What Do We Learn About Pandemics in Science Fiction Stories?

The Day that Coronavirus Stopped the World: What Do We Learn About Pandemics in Science Fiction Stories?

 We can’t say we weren’t warned. For decades now science fiction authors have been playing around with an enormous variety of pandemic scenarios. While some stories focus on attempts to avert them, many explore their catastrophic consequences, or the plight of victims and survivors in-between, and the ways in which the most trivial daily routines and the simple facts of life we take for granted may be critically, perhaps permanently disrupted. There’s the odd case (as in Wells’ War of the Worlds) in which an endemic virus turns up to be a savior, and there’s also the eerily prophetic (Brooks’ World War Z places the beginning of its pandemic a mere 300 km from Wuhan, before quickly spreading around the world). Beyond their occasional ability to anticipate some of the factual elements of the present pandemic, though, this volume invites us to reflect on the deeper lessons of science fiction stories, and how they help us illuminate philosophically our present times.

 Possible prompts and topics for reflection:

• Governmental and institutional preparedness in times of crisis: how is the preparedness/ unpreparedness of governmental institutions reflected and explained in SF stories?
• Human resilience: how does humanity cope with deep, global-scale life-affecting crises?
• Ethics on the brink: what is the appropriate response when the institutions of civilization collapse and individual survival is threatened?
• Disease and exclusion: how do responses to pandemic scenarios exclude minorities and the disabled? What about the exclusion of the diseased themselves? How is disease used as a metaphor to justify other forms of exclusion? What do we learn in reverse scenarios, in which population-wide incidents have normalized disability?
• Contagion and human relations: how does the possibility of contagion (literal or metaphorical) corrode human relationships? How does it affect friendship, loyalty, trust in others and in oneself?
• “Social distancing” and physical presence: how is civilization envisioned, and what may be lost if (as in Asimov’s The Naked Sun, for non-medical reasons) social distancing and online relations become the norm, while physical presence becomes taboo? Are we heading in that direction already?

The deadline for the first round of reviews is August 15, 2020.

This article examines the use of “noble lies” in Plato’s Republic and Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.

A new article, “Political Myths in Plato and Asimov,” by Dr. Nathaniel Goldberg, has been published in Vol.2 of the Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy.

This article marks the closing of Volume 2 (2019): Dystopian Caves and Galactic Empires: Social and Political Philosophy in SF Stories. The contents of Volume 2 are:

– “Living in a Marxist Sci-Fi World: A Phenomenological Analysis of the Power of Science Fiction,” by Matías Graffigna.

– “Political Myths in Plato and Asimov,” by Nathaniel Goldberg.

– “Gallifrey Falls No More: Doctor Who’s Ontology of Time,” by Kevin Decker.

– “‘We Don’t Know Exactly How They Work’: Making Sense of Technophobia in 1973 Westworld, Futureworld, and Beyond Westworld,” by Stephano Bigliardi.

Volume 3 will be launched soon!

Friday-Saturday 1-2, May 2020. Sponsored by the Canadian Centre for Scholarship and the Christian Faith

Hollywood’s impact and influence should not be underestimated: It’s a $40 billion annual business! Hollywood may be largely responsible for shaping who we are as individuals and a society—including what our beliefs and values are. Hollywood is neither morally nor politically neutral. Movies affect us emotionally long before we have thought it through—and all kinds of
philosophical ideas and values are smuggled in by them—while we’re enjoying some escape from the real world. The use of religious themes, ideas and imagery—unhinged from their traditional mooring—is also pervasive. The Canadian Centre for Scholarship and the Christian Faith at Concordia University of Edmonton cordially invites you to our ninth annual conference. The theme for 2020 is Film, Philosophy and Religion.
The keynote speaker is Dr Adam Barkman who is Professor of Philosophy at Redeemer University College. He is the co-editor of Lexington’s book series Critical Companions to Contemporary Directors. He has authored five books and is the co-editor of six books, including The Philosophy of Ang Lee, The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott, A Critical Companion to Tim Burton, A Critical Companion to James Cameron and A Critical Companion to Steven Spielberg. His keynote is entitled “Ridley Scott: Film, Philosophy and Religion”.

Call for Papers and Presentations 

along the lines of the theme of Film, Philosophy and Religion
may be approached interdisciplinarily from the Humanities and Social Sciences and from the subdisciplines of Philosophy, Theology, Psychology, Sociology, Culture, English Literature, Fine Art and Ethics; though this list is not intended to be restrictive. For guidelines and submissions go http://www.ccscf.org/conference/artwork_and_paper_proposals/ . The deadline for proposals is
Thursday 16th April 2020. Vernon Press will be publishing the proceedings of this conference.

Scholars who want their original unpublished papers in this book must submit them for adjudication by 31 st July 2020 to the editor Dr bill.anderson at concordia.ab.ca . Scholars need not present at the conference to
submit their papers for consideration.

Register http://www.ccscf.org/conference/ .
Student Grants to attend free http://www.ccscf.org/conference/grant/ .

Call for Proposals

Lexington Books’ Politics, Literature, and Film series is actively seeking proposals for academic works that fit the description below: 

This interdisciplinary series examines the intersection of politics with literature and/or film. The series is receptive to works that use a variety of methodological approaches, focus on any period from antiquity to the present, and situate their analysis in national, comparative, or global contexts. Politics, Literature, and Film seeks to be truly interdisciplinary by including authors from all the social sciences and humanities, such as political science, sociology, psychology, literature, philosophy, history, religious studies, and law. The series is open to both American and non-American literature and film. By putting forth bold and innovative ideas that appeal to a broad range of interests, the series aims to enrich our conversations about literature, film, and their relationship to politics.

All manuscripts will be double-blind peer-reviewed. Once the manuscript has gone into production, all costs will be covered by Lexington Books. All titles are released first as hardcover and ebooks and later as paperbacks (usually within 18 months). Titles available as paperback become available as a free exam copy for any professor considering adoption of the book for their course.

The primary market of Lexington Books is the academic library market, with the objective that their books will remain on library bookshelves and databases for decades to inform current and future scholars. Lexington attends most major disciplinary conferences as well as regional ones. For every conference Lexington attends, there is a corresponding catalog highlighting the titles on display in their exhibit booth. Those catalogs are also direct mailed to anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 recipients carefully chosen for relevance based on discipline-specific mailing lists. Lexington publishes quantitative books and qualitative books, left-leaning books and right-leaning books, historical and contemporary titles, theoretical and practical. Lexington Books itself is a division of Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group.

Potential authors who may be interested in publishing with us, contact Lee Trepanier (ldtrepan at svsu.edu).

Find out more: https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/LEX/LEXPLF

Beyond the Anglocentric Fantastic

28th-29th May 2020-Glasgow

GIFCon 2020 is a two-day symposium that seeks to examine and honour the heterogeneity of Fantasy and the fantastic beyond Anglonormativity and Anglocentrism. We welcome proposals for papers relating to this theme from researchers and practitioners working in the field of Fantasy and the fantastic across all media, whether within the academy or beyond it. We are particularly interested in submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers. We will also offer creative workshops for those interested in exploring the creative process.

Submission guidelines: https://gifcon.org/gifcon-submission-guidelines/ Find out more at gifcon.org

A phenomenological analysis of Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.

A new article, “Living in a Marxist Sci-Fi World,” by Lic. Matias Graffigna has just been published. This article examines, with the use of tools from phenomenological analysis, the power of science fiction to “flesh out” certain concepts left undetermined by philosophical theories, “furnishing with content” the undetermined ideas and making them more present and concrete to the reader. The author puts this into practice by examining in this manner the anarcho-communist world of Anarres, as described by Ursula Le Guin in the influential novel The Dispossessed.

Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy: www.jsfphil.org — 

 The Blue Pill Dilemma: Is Knowledge a Blessing or a Curse?

In the original The Matrix Neo took the Red Pill, choosing Truth – and got himself into a world of trouble. Wouldn’t the Blue Pill (of “Ignorance is Bliss”) have served him better?

In dystopian tales, deep questioning is proscribed to safeguard the (questionable) happiness of the general population. In pre- and post-apocalyptic scenarios scientific knowledge can be savior and culprit, both revered and feared. Brain-in-a-vat stories make the choice between harsh reality and simulated bliss vivid and poignant, while cyberpunk stories emphasize the double-edged character of the “Information Era.” 

The tension in these stories merits examination. Which is preferable? Which is better? Can a truth cause more harm than a lie? Is there a danger of “knowing too much”? Is knowledge just a neutral tool, or is there, as Plato would have it, something inherently good about seeking knowledge?

 The deadline for the second round of reviews is June 1, 2020.

Contact the Editor, Alfredo Mac Laughlin, at editor.jsfphil@gmail.com with any questions, or visit www.jsfphil.org for more information. 

* General Articles, Response Essays, Book Reviews, accepted year-round. See www.jsfphil.org for details *