The Failure of Post-9/11 Science Fiction (original) (raw)

2012, The New York Review of Science Fiction

In the wake of 9/11, the rise of American speculative fiction about American economic collapse, the future of an increasingly mobilized—via terrorism or political Islam—Muslim world, and Islam as a religion are hints that Americans are increasingly concerned about what Islam will have to offer in the near future. If Islam is a problem, these novels ask, how can it be fixed? The solution, from this view, is to make the Muslim world “like us”—secular and democratic, rather than allowing these cultures to achieve modernity on their own terms through democracy or otherwise. 9/11 and the Arab Spring seem to have woken the American public to the effect of the Muslim world on America and its “ideals,” but unfortunately these broader effects are seen—at least in speculative fiction—solely through the lens of 9/11 and the Arab Spring themselves. Such events have perhaps made the American perception of such American-Muslim relations personal via a fear of invasion or of democracy gone awry abroad. (The New York Review of Science Fiction; Sept. 2012 Issue, Vol. 25, No. 289, p.8-11)

"Exhaustion and Regeneration in 9/11 Specualtive Fiction: Kris Saknussemm's 'Beyond the Flags' (2015)"

Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos, 2018

Early 9/11 fiction has often been criticised for focusing too much on the victims and on the local aspects of the tragedy ignoring the global and political consequences of the attacks. 9/11 speculative fiction writers have taken longer to engage directly with the tragedy and when doing so they have also often adopted trauma-oriented approaches that could appease but not challenge. In 2015 Douglas Lain edited In the Shadow of the Towers: Speculative Fiction in a Post-9/11 World, a collection that shows how the idiom of the fantastic can be serious and meaningful and also a means to explore cultural anxieties in the United States. Within Lain's collection, this paper pays special attention to Kris Saknussemm's "Beyond the Flags," a story that combines cultural anxieties of our time and helps readers confront their own contradictions by questioning accepted assumptions like the sacred nature of the victims or the expected patriotism following a national tragedy. It also suggests new ways in which speculative fiction can offer original approaches to regenerate 9/11 fiction.

Epistemological shifts in knowledge and education in Islam: A new perspective on the emergence of radicalization amongst Muslims

International Journal of Educational Development , 2019

I theorize that the idea of knowledge and education has shifted in Islam from an inclusive and rational search for all knowledge to a narrowed focus on religious knowledge, void of rationality. By synthesizing literature on education and knowledge in Islam, this study identifies three shifts in the cultural history of Islamic education. I argue that those shifts in what was deemed valuable knowledge have played a significant role in the emergence of radicalization today. The study shows that once the social world of Islam destabilized, the sense of belonging and sense making became inward and less reflexive as compared to that of early Muslims. Belief became privileged over the rationality mechanisms that had previously formed Islamic endeavors. I demonstrate that a decline in intellectual and scientific production followed, allowing extremists to skew Islam's narrative by putting forward an idealized version of the Islamic caliphate divorced from rationality.

Medievalism in Anglo-American Science Fiction Literature of the 1950s and 1960s

Medievalism in Anglo-American Science Fiction Literature of the 1950s and 1960s, 2017

Royberghs, Thomas. "Medievalism in Anglo-American Science Fiction Literature of the 1950s and 1960s." Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2017 (unpublished thesis). This thesis looks for references to medieval times in Anglo–American science fiction literature from the early 1950s until the late 1960s. In doing so, it defines what is understood by respectively science fiction and medievalism. For the 1950s, Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov (1942–1951) and The Wizard of Linn by Alfred Elton Van Vogt (1950) will be analyzed. For the 1960s, the focus lies on Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) and Keith Roberts’s Pavane (1968).

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Making Worlds: Art and Science Fiction (anthology of collected essays on SF, Tarkvosky, Dick, Lem, Ballard, time travel, geophilosophy, speculative realism, dystopias, telepathy, Surrealism, Mercerism, and contemporary art)

2013