An Archive of SF Archives
2020; Volume: 47; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5621/sciefictstud.47.1.0131
ISSN2327-6207
Autores Tópico(s)Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life
Resumo131 BOOKS IN REVIEW show the viewer where “real” space has been cut in half, as the earth drops away in darkness to the lower left corner. Another challenge to the legibility of the works in Geostories is that all the images are reproduced in black and white, except for a small section of photographic reproductions that depict Design Earth projects installed in galleries and in public spaces. Indeed, it was this section that drove me to research further, using websites and reviews, the exhibition history of these projects. What I found was a series of photographs of various Design Earth projects in gallery settings and, lo, many prints from the book were printed large-scale and in color. The decision to reproduce Design Earth’s works in small-scale black-and-white format may have made the book more financially accessible but does not do justice to the images themselves. The greatest tension in this book is also fundamental to the conceptual underpinnings of Design Earth’s very existence: how well do these images actually help the reader better to understand the environmental crisis that we face today and in the future? Geostories, according to the authors, “offers a new approach to evidentiary visual production” (11), which they argue has failed to tell the story of climate change and the looming apocalypse compellingly. As such they turn to sf, as well as design, to communicate in new ways. But is this really new? And do these images, which they call “geographic portraits,” actually “describe the political and ethical implications of our ecological actions, all while speculating on survival and adaptation strategies that invite us to make sense of the Earth and envision it in ways that generate inquisitive, delightful, and potentially subversive responses [?]” (15) While the drawings included are very complex and beautiful, often philosophically evocative and creatively absurd, I would not say that they helped this reader to come to any better understanding of a way forward. Indeed, I often found myself asking whether the collaborators were clear about their goal for the book. Is their aim to be heroically utopian and pronounce the future salvageable through the powers of neo-modernist design, or dystopian, rendered through a technological futurism that is marked by the total absence of palpable signs of human existence or even animal life (the silhouettes of endangered elephants notwithstanding)? Placing their images within the discourse of architecture, Design Earth seems to be saying that with the authority of architectural design we can convince the reader that a new future is possible. On the other hand, the pure irrational playfulness and futuristic absurdities they generate, couched in the techniques of architectural drawing, suggest that they are addressing a sophisticated architectural audience that already understands the collaborators’ sly humor, despite Design Earth’s earnest appeal.—Karla McManus, University of Regina An Archive of SF Archives. Joseph Hurtgen. The Archive Incarnate: The Embodiment and Transmission of Knowledge in Science Fiction. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018. vii+201 pp. $55 pbk. Joseph Hurtgen’s The Archive Incarnate is an ambitious exploration of how the “archive,” broadly conceived, has been represented and understood in a selection of sf texts since the mid-twentieth century. Not content with dealing 132 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 47 (2020) solely with the archive, the subtitle raises further key terms: “embodiment,” “transmission,” and “knowledge,” each of which open vistas of potential. This is precisely why the book operates on a very clearly defined structure: each text that Hurtgen discusses is explored through the ideas of “Archive Anxiety” (concerns about the archive), “Archival Control” (ways the archive can dominate individuality), and “Archival Resistance” (ways the archive can facilitate individual expression). The texts themselves seem intended to provide very familiar examples to readers, including Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953), William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age (1995), and Bruce Sterling’s Distraction (1998), with a sprinkling of related texts mentioned throughout. The central focus of the book seems to be the ambivalent uses to which the archive can be put: positively (in “archival embodiment”) or negatively (in “archival imprinting”). At its core, The Archive...
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