H. G. Wells Research Papers (original) (raw)

2025

The aim of this thesis is three-fold. The first aim is the overall intention of the thesis, to study Wells' lesser known works and understand their purpose. The texts analysed in the following chapters are the less well-known and less scrutinised of Wells' texts and the analysis will expand the critical body on Wells in a meaningful way. Wells' earlier works have an existing body of well-respected and well-established literature dedicated to them. However, his later texts have been over-looked. This thesis will address that problem. The two following aims are more focussed. The second aim is to demonstrate how Wells' ideological bias affected his work. Whilst not an exceedingly controversial point it is crucial for a deeper understanding of how his works act as a reaction to events. It also naturally leads to the final point. The thesis will argue Wells was such a dedicated socialist that as a contemporary history unfolded around him it was so inimical to his perceiv...

2025

The aim of this thesis is three-fold. The first aim is the overall intention of the thesis, to study Wells' lesser known works and understand their purpose. The texts analysed in the following chapters are the less well-known and less scrutinised of Wells' texts and the analysis will expand the critical body on Wells in a meaningful way. Wells' earlier works have an existing body of well-respected and wellestablished literature dedicated to them. However, his later texts have been over-looked. This thesis will address that problem. The two following aims are more focussed. The second aim is to demonstrate how Wells' ideological bias affected his work. Whilst not an exceedingly controversial point it is crucial for a deeper understanding of how his later works act as reaction to events. It also naturally leads to the final point. The thesis will argue Wells was such a dedicated socialist that as contemporary history unfolded around him it was so inimical to his perceived vision that he was forced to defend his utopian future in the form of fiction.

2025, The Brain is the Screen (ed. Gregory Flaxman)

Deleuze and the Cinema of West Africa DUDLEY ANDREW ... nomads are in fact people who don't want to move on, don't want to leave, who cling to the land taken from them, their region centrale ... -Gilles Deleuze 1 If one were to take the Academy Awards and the Cannes film festival the way the newspapers do, one would believe that standard cinema is in good health. Global action pictures (Independence Day), more artistic passion pictures (The English Patient), and their perfectly stewed combination (Titanic) have appeared on screens around the world, firing the universal imagination the way cinema has since Griffith. These two types of cinema, which might be termed first and second cinema, seem to defy predictions that the century's end also spells the end of this century's mass art. Still, those tracking aesthetic and social developments realize that the "soul of cinema" (to use Gilles Deleuze's manner of isolating what is crucial in the medium) 2 moved beyond Hollywood, the first cinema, by World War II, and by 1975 passed beyond the alternative second cinema. The "soul of cinema"what the cinema at any given moment permits those devoted to it to think-is on the move, and has moved elsewhere. Let's follow it... Deleuze's categorical elaboration of the powers of film involves one, and only one, historical break. Drawing on Andre Bazin's intuitive sense of cinematic development, Deleuze takes World War II to have utterly reconstituted cinema's cultural significance, and at all levels, from the kinds of films made to the way they were produced, exhibited, and discussed. After the war, the "classical" era, in which a stable studio system had mastered "movement-images" ceded the "soul of cinema" to the modernism of Japanese and European auteurs, the most worthy of whom fashioned "time-images." Ideally, 215

2025

This paper will explore Herbert George Wells' The Time Machine regarding the morality of technology while investigating its application into the ideologies of digital humanism. H.G. Wells novel offers a blunt image of the future, revealing the drawbacks of unchecked technological advancement and it also shows the consequential social stratification represented through the characters of Eloi and Morlocks. In the novel, Eloi characterizes the aristocratic class while Morlocks symbolizes the laborer class. The characters of Eloi and Morlock signifies the fact that the working class is suppressed by the aristocratic class and if this method of living the oppressed life continued like the times of H.G.Wells, people could end as prophesized in the novella. This work assists as per an admonitory tale linking the ethical implications of technology, and to prioritize the human values and social equality stresses the necessity of human-centered methods. The science-fiction work of H.G.Wells provides a dystopian visualization of human's future .in the novel there is a scientist who builds a time machine and continued his journey to future where he met two races. H.G.Wells predicted his idea that class dissections were mismatched with scientific development by supporting democratic socialism. Wells's time traveller character tracks the scientific method of hypothesis and experimentation. Ultimately, this exploration underscores the necessity of integrating ethical considerations into technological development to ensure that progress serves the collective good.

2025

This study explores H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1897) through the lens of digital humanism as defined by Martin Paul Eve and Jonathan Gray in Digital Humanities and Literary Studies (2022), analyzing how the novel critiques technological dominance, imperialism, and human fragility. Using a qualitative approach, this research examines how Wells anticipates contemporary debates on human personality, agency, and existence in an era of rapid technological convergence. The analysis focuses on the interplay between the Martians' technological superiority and humanity's struggle for identity and agency, bridging Victorian anxieties with contemporary concerns about technological progress and ethical innovation. By examining Martian technology as a symbol of imperialist, colonialist, and Social Darwinist ideologies, the study investigates its profound impact on human identity in the face of technological advancements. It further explores how the resilience of human existence, agency, and personality emerges under the pressures of technological dominance, offering insight into the broader implications of digital humanism. The collapse and reconstruction of societal norms in response to existential threats highlight the ways in which humanity reevaluates its place in the world, reshapes identity, and reclaims agency. Through close textual analysis, the paper argues that Wells presents a dualistic view of technology-both as an existential threat and a catalyst for human resilience. The Martian invasion serves as an allegory for colonial oppression and technological domination, mirroring contemporary ethical concerns surrounding technological advancements and ethical innovations .The findings suggest that The War of the Worlds offers a cautionary yet insightful reflection on the human condition, emphasizing that while technology may redefine human existence, it is ultimately human resilience and adaptability that determine survival. The study underscores Wells' continued relevance in today's world, highlighting the importance of ethical reflection, responsible innovation, and the preservation of human dignity in the digital age.

2025

La forma en la que la tecnología y la sociedad han cambiado a lo largo del tiempo hace cuestionar invariablemente hacia donde se dirigen las sociedades hipertecnologizadas y como han cambiado o cambiarán las formas de gobierno. En el presente ensayo se analizan dos grandes de la literatura del siglo XX, 1984 de George Orwell y Un mundo feliz de Aldous Huxley, puesto que en ambas visiones se aprecian diferencias significativas y similitudes con la realidad actual. Se confrontan los discursos de ambos libros, sus argumentos, sus ideas y sus planteamientos a fin de tener elementos en los que puedan relacionar sus ideas con la realidad, tanto los que fueron adecuadamente predichos, como las ideas que nunca se llegaron a cumplir. Los argumentos de 1984 tienden a ser más extremos en cuanto la forma de represión, mientras que los métodos usados en Un mundo feliz son implícitos, ocultos a simple vista, siendo más eficientes duraderos a largo plazo, por lo que se concibe que si bien 1984 tiene más bases en su historia al estar inspirada en los gobiernos totalitarios de la época y varios personajes históricos, lo cierto es que el mundo de placer, la falta de movilidad de las conciencias y la diversión excesiva son los elementos que se encuentran más arraigados en la actualidad.

2025

[...]
Suas três antecipações de acordo com as ideias da elite dirigente que o patrocinava foram 1)
armas nucleares, 2) governo mundial, 3) masturbação neo-malthusiana, ou seja,
ambientalismo. Armas nucleares e governo mundial vemos agora no íntimo entrelaçamento
entre a política bélica ocidental reunida em torno da OTAN e as diretrizes de "crescimento
zero", de atentado à soberania nacional, feitas pelo sistema financeiro transatlântico, seja
através de FMI, Banco Mundial ou correlatos. São duas forças que andam juntas. Na parte
mais "estética", mais "soft" das políticas imperialistas, o ambientalismo como meio de alavancar
o "crescimento zero", como nas "tecnologias apropriadas" para a África e não projetos de
integração regional com alto grau de investimentos, para dar um exemplo.
Balcanização e não desenvolvimento dos Estado-nacionais soberanos. A prática da chamada
Guerra Fria, como no macartismo passado e como no atual, talvez ainda mais intenso (e que
sentimos como nunca aqui no Brasil). Profeta do caos, das ideias nefastas dos círculos
dirigentes internacionais. Este, H. G. Wells.
[...]

2025

Presented at The Incredible Nineteenth Century: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Fairy Tale 3rd Annual Conference. Online. 2 May 2025.

2025

This article is an attempt to investigate futuristic warnings of scientific progress and its influence on human development particularly the ethical and social implications in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003). In the view of that, Margaret used the genre of speculative fiction to warn the impact of the technological and scientific advancement on the human civilization in terms of misusing or unchecking it. Besides, The author concerns about the social, ethical and environmental issues and their negative consequences as well. The study employs a textual analysis, as well as Close reading as a technique, is utilized to explore the thematic issues in the text. It also focuses on the notions of technological utopianism and modern sciences. It concludes the findings related to the critiques of scientific advancement and technology as the greatest addressed issues and a massive impact on life, ecology, and humanity.

2025, Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism

"Paul A. Cantor, America's premier interdisciplinary literary and media critic, wrote on Shakespeare's works, post-colonial literature, contemporary pop culture, the relationship between culture and commerce, and explored ways of employing Austrian economics in analyzing works of literature. A pioneer in literary criticism from a pro-market Austrian perspective, he co-edited the groundbreaking book Literature and the Economics of Liberty with the late Stephen Cox. This current volume, dedicated to the memory of Professor Cantor and his achievement in advancing the Austro-libertarian approach to literature, consists of a provocative collection of brilliant essays from scholars whose interests and contributions range from Shakespeare to Romanticism, pop culture, political and economic philosophy, and across a range of media during many different time periods. These articles take free-market economics as the foundation for examining creative works. This highly recommended new book presents cutting-edge essays that contribute to and advance this exciting emerging field of study." —Edward W. Younkins, Professor of Accountancy and Business, Wheeling University, Author of Exploring Capitalist Fiction: Business through Literature and Film

2025

most prominent leader of the modern birth control and 'free love' movements. 1 Sanger's mother was a devout Irish Catholic; her father, Michael Higgins, was an unstable man unable to provide adequately for his large family. Although a skilled stonemason and tombstone carver, Mr Higgins was unable to properly care for his family because he alienated many of his customers with his radical politics. 2 He drank heavily when he had the money while his 11 children 'suffered bitterly from cold, privation, and hunger.' 3 He was so anti-Christian that when Margaret was baptized at St. Mary's Catholic church on March 23, 1893, the event 'had to be kept secret, as her father would have been furious.' Sanger left her unhappy home as a teen, never to return-except briefly to study nursing at a co-educational boarding school called 'Claverack College'. She was reportedly a poor student, skipped classes and neglected her part-time job. She dropped out of school and, after a brief stay at home to help care for her dying mother, moved in with her older sister and worked as a first grade teacher. She taught the children of immigrants but left after only two terms. This unhappy experience may have contributed to her later enthusiastic embrace of eugenics. About this time she married William Sanger, an architect and painter, in 1902 and soon had three children. Her husband tried everything within his power to please his wife, but she turned out to be very difficult to satisfy. Margaret was also a distracted mother who did not like caring for children, including her own. 6 She detested domestic life and grossly neglected her children to the point that neighbours had to step in to care for them. The letters her children wrote to their mother vividly reveal this neglect. Margaret Sanger's second husband, oil magnate and founder of the 3-in-1 Oil Company James Noah H. Slee, was also very wealthy. 8 She wrote to her secretary, 'I don't want to marry anyone, particularly a stodgy churchgoer … Yet ... how often am I going to meet a man with nine million dollars?' In the first issue of her journal titled The Woman Rebel, she wrote that marriage is 'a degenerate institution' and that modesty is an 'obscene prudery'. Following her father's footsteps, Sanger became involved in radical politics. When she was formally introduced to Marxism, anarchism, secular humanism, free love and Darwinism, she found her passion in life. Sanger used her husbands' wealth to support her activities. Her sexual passion, though, resulted in free-love behaviour that neither of her two husbands could cope with. 10 Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood, the leading organization advocating abortion in the United States today. Darwinism had a profound influence on her thinking, including her conversion to, and active support of, eugenics. She was specifically concerned with reducing the population of the 'less fit', including 'inferior races' such as 'Negroes'. One major result of her lifelong work was to support the sexual revolution that has radically changed our society.

2025, Nabokov Online Journal

A review-essay for Nabokov Online Journal about 'The Man Who Dreamed Tomorrow: The Life of J. W. Dunne' (2024) by Guy Inchbald, the first full-length book on the influential British aeronaut and time philosopher John William Dunne (1875–1949). It explores Vladimir Nabokov’s engagement with Dunne’s books—especially 'An Experiment with Time' and 'The Serial Universe'—in both his dream diary and fiction. Dunne emerges as a feverish prophet of multidimensional time, whose unique blend of pseudoscience, prophetic vision, and imaginative brilliance clearly informed the writing of Nabokov’s 'Ada, or Ardor' (1969).

2025, Urania

There is science fiction, as is today recognized, and there is a pre-science fiction. The genere has its beginnings in Verne and Wells, but some important elements can be traced as far as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, though in our... more

2025, Gothic Studies

This essay investigates how H G Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau employs the gothic trope of the uncanny. Despite Wells's use of 'uncanny' twice to describe humanized animals, prior critics haven't explored what the uncanny adds to our understanding of the novel, perhaps because Freud's famous essay 'The 'Uncanny' was written in 1913, following The Island of Doctor Moreau by more than two decades. We argue, however, that both men were working from notions of the uncanny circulating in fin de siècle Europe and describing a larger colonial dynamic, so that even though Wells's work preceded Freud's, we can use Freud's explanation of the uncanny to better understand what Wells was doing and why the animals in The Island of Doctor Moreau are so unsettling to readers in our time and in his. That is, the uncanny helps to explain how the novel works as a gothic. Moreover, by examining how Freud's theories help us to understand Wells, we also see elements of Freud's essay that we wouldn't otherwise. We will argue that because Freud and Wells were describing the world around them, overlap is logical, even predictable, and certainly useful to understanding both projects.

2025, Cusp: Late 19th/Early 20th Century Cultures

In H.G. Wells’s essay 'Morals and Civilisation' (1897), Wells argued that the 'man beast' had gradually adapted itself to a corporate existence, finding ultimate expression in the modern city. Whilst the metropolis is often seen as the apotheosis of human-made artifice, Wells’s depictions of urban environments in his fin de siècle novels and stories (from The War of the Worlds to 'The Empire of the Ants') often place animals in a central role. Wells’s animal preoccupations provide a vehicle not only for dystopian fears about the city’s future, but a vivid reimagining of metropolitan life in the present. In Wells’s urban imaginary, human, animal, organic, and inorganic presences meet, clash, and compete.

2025, Fabula

Des écrivains-chercheurs prêtent leurs plumes à des (non)fictions qui spéculent sur des enjeux écologiques. Ces œuvres littéraires, créées dans un réseau intertextuel et interdisciplinaire, participent à l’émergence d’une réflexion... more

2025, Germivoire, no 21

The aim of this paper is to show, through Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the functional nature of the letter, as well as the epistemological concern, in the realist tradition, of the epistolary narrative. In Frankenstein, the chronotope raises, from the onset, the issue of enunciation in narratology. To a great extent, Mary Shelley’s novel illustrates, indeed, the pragmatics of the
epistolary text. The letter, in reality, promotes the plausibility of the story it relates; precisely when the story contains, as is the case in Frankenstein—and in a few rewritings—extraordinary and supernatural events.

2025, Chapter from Alexander Hall and Will Mason-Wilkes (eds.), Most Adaptable to Change: Evolution and Religion in Global Popular Media (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024)

2025, La Presse littéraire

Dans notre travail, nous explorons la relation complexe que nous entretenons avec les objets techniques, en affirmant qu'il est possible de les utiliser tout en maintenant une distance qui préserve notre essence. En disant à la fois "oui" et "non" à ces objets, nous découvrons une manière d'interagir avec le monde technique qui peut être à la fois simple et paisible. Nous serions ravis d'avoir vos réflexions sur ce sujet !

2025, Casting a giant shadow : the transnational shaping of Israeli cinema

The Apparition of Memory in David Greenberg 's Sha'ar Ha'guy (1965) and Much'shar Bli Rosh (1963) Shmulik Duvdevani Anat Dan E ver since its inception, Israeli cinema was a site of heterogeneity- a national cinema that was highly influenced by other cinematic vernaculars with no cultural heritage of its own. In short, it was a national cinema conceived solely by translations. Pioneer Zionist filmmakers immigrating from Russia and other Eastern European countries shaped their films in the spirit of the Soviet social realism of the 1930s, which resulted in their being termed Zionist realism. A key film among these early propaganda films is Helmar Lerski's Avodah (1935), which follows the story of a typical pioneer who arrives to the Land of Israel. While this film determined most of the images associated with early Zionist cinema (especially that of the New Jew, who is tall, healthy, suntanned, and masculine), it is also a landmark film for the integration of Zionist ethos and modernist aesthetics drawing from the Soviet montage and German expressionism. This interplay between modernist aesthetic and national ideology is the subject of this chapter. Our understanding of modernist aesthetics leans on Miriam Hansen's notion of "modernist vernacular" that was assigned to account for the ways in which "an aesthetic idiom developed in one country could achieve transnational and global currency."1 We argue that European modernist aesthetics were

2025, O monstro bicentenário: leituras de Frankenstein 200 anos depois

O ponto de partida para esta obra foi o I Encontro de Literatura de Língua Inglesa, evento promovido pela Área de Inglês da Universidade Estadual Paulista, Câmpus de Assis, e realizado no dia 11 de junho de 2018. Esse evento teve como subtítulo “celebrando o bicentenário de Frankenstein”, e nele aconteceram as seguintes atividades: conferência, mesa-redonda, workshops e debates relacionadas ao clássico Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus, de Mary Shelley (1797-1851), publicado em 1818. Lido, relido e recontado diversas vezes nesses duzentos anos de existência, essa obra "nos impressiona com uma grandiosa ideia oriunda do gênio original da autora. É um romance que excita novas reflexões e desconhecidas fontes de emoções"1 , segundo Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), contemporâneo de Shelley. Frankenstein é a transformação e a reconfiguração do mito de Prometeu no universo do horror gótico, apresentando a criação por mãos mortais de um monstro humano e moral e que, por isso, nos comove, embora não comova seu criador, um cientista obcecado, personagem típico da ficção científica, gênero que, para muitos, foi fundado nesse romance.

2025, Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift, Vol. 17, No. 4, p. 27-45

Homosexuals were among those persecuted in nazi Germany. Various researchers have explained this in terms of National Socialist racist ideology and eugenics, because the, nazis justified their regulations on the basis of population policies. They were apprehensive at the appearance and spread of homosexuality because it would result in larger numbers of Germans no longer procreating. This persecution was inevitable and massive, so the argument runs, because in the Third Reich, sexuality above all served propagation, population expansion, biological health and the purity of the so-called 'Aryan' race.' Medical historians have characterized the nazi regime as a 'biocracy': major social and political issues like the Jewish 'question', ethnicity, gender, poverty, crime, 'asocial' behavior and sexual deviance, were transformed into and reduced to biological and medical problems, for which there were apparently 'neutral', technical solutions. The willingness of the German medical profession to embrace the National Socialist cause was substantial, and biomedical scientists played an active role in the initiation, administration and execution of nazi 'biopolitics'. Thus it has been argued that the nazi biocracy was based on a strong affinity of the intellectual and social structures of professional medical science with authoritarian politics. The more science became expert knowledge and the domain of privileged professionals and a technocratic elite, the more it was conceptualized as undemocratic. Refuting the current notion that Nazism corrupted, distorted and misused a supposedly neutral biomedical science, these authors assert that biology and medicine were already inherently politicized and that they lent Nazism a specifically scientific and technocratic character. Employing a rhetoric of medical emergency, many leading nazis indeed saw their politics as applied biology. In their biomedical worldview, the German people suffered from deadly diseases. Their 'cure' was racial purification that would progress from coercive sterilization, euthanasia, segregation, and concentration for supposedly 'hygienic' reasons, to direct medical killing and genocide. From the notion that racial hygiene, the nazi vision of a 'total cure' by means of a medically oriented purification, dictated their treatment of homosexuality, it was only a small step toward bracketing homosexuals with Jews, the Sinti and Roma, ethnic minorities, psychiatric patients and hereditarily ill people as principal victims of nazi terror. However plausible this explanation may sound; it is neither entirely convincing nor complete. In the first part of this article that discusses the relation between biomedical science and nazi politics, I shall indicate why it is not satisfactory. In the second part I shall then attempt to give an additional explanation for the nazi persecution of homosexuals. This explanation focuses on the threat of homosexuality perceived by some important nazi leaders within their all-male military organizations. During the nazi regime the tension between male bonding in German nationalism and latent homoerotic tendencies of the so-called Männerbund was pushed to extremes.

2025, Techniques et Sciences Informatiques 35(1):75-113. 2016

Cet article résume l'évolution des automates et proto-robots depuis l'Antiquité jusqu'aux débuts de l'Intelligence Artificielle. Après avoir exposé la différence entre un automate et un robot, il décrit par quels moyens-mécaniques, hydrauliques, pneumatiques, éléctromécaniques-ces machines ont été animées au cours des siècles et ont pu être utilisées en tant qu'automates simples, en tant qu'automates programmables, en tant qu'automates truqués ou téléopérés, en tant que proto-robots. Il souligne à quel point certaines réalisations ont anticipé sur des mécanismes ou des problématiques caractéristiques des recherches modernes en matière d'intelligence artificielle et de robotique bio-inspirée.

2025

pour le grade de DOCTEUR de per il titolo di DOTTORE DI RICERCA l’Université de Paris 13 dell ’ Università LUISS GUIDO CARLI

2025, Filosofický časopis 72 (Mimořádné číslo 3):86-104

The essay focuses on the survival of Pascal’s metaphors concerning the cosmic wasteland. It analyzes step-by-step the ways in which authors such as Immanuel Kant, George Milbrey Gould, Herbert George Wells, Thomas Henry Huxley, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Vladimír Hoppe, Jacques Monod, and Eugene Thacker appropriated Pascal’s images of despair from the “eternal silence of infinite spaces”, which they have then used to develop their own arguments in favor of defending (or disparaging) the relevance of a human presence in the universe. The focus of the study lies in an analysis of these connections in the work of the Czech philosopher Vladimír Hoppe.

2024, Generis Publishing

This book explores the theories of Ibn Khaldun and Oswald Spengler through a comparative analysis approach to understand their perspectives within their respective contexts and theoretical frameworks. His focus on the unity within societies and the importance of leadership in maintaining social balance shows a practical perspective on how societies function. In contrast to this viewpoint is Spengler’s take on civilisation theory from a standpoint. During the aftermath of World War I in Germany, he viewed history as the progression of identities where each civilisation possesses its distinctive core and follows an inevitable course of growth and decline. Spengler’s methodology may have been less reliant on evidence; however, his concept of destiny" struck a chord with his peers and future generations alike who were searching for significance amidst the apparent decline of civilisation.

2024, H.G. Wells Society Newsletter

In my conference paper, 'Scripted Sovereignty: Reimagining Kings in the Anthropocene' (2024), I explore how leadership, particularly the concept of monarchy, can be reimagined to address the climate challenges of our time. Since childhood, I have been intrigued by H.G. Wells, and more recently, by his novel 'The King Who Was a King: The Book of a Film' (1929). Drawing upon his visionary approach to critique traditional governance, I found a way to imagine a sovereign dedicated to ecological stewardship. Wells's portrayal of a monarch who embodies the "kingly will in all of us"-to transcend war and foster a synergistic union with our planet-inspired the character I crafted in my own book, 'The Moraceaeians: Rites of Passage' (2015). The heroic monarch in my book, a young scientist, seeks to unite humanity with the wider ecological world, building a planetary kingdom of the future. Living on the Isle of Man, I find myself not only writing about this envisioned world but actively building it. My work stands at the intersection of fiction and reality by bringing the ideals of Moraceae to life through Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices and holistic design. This transformative journey is currently being documented through a film and my doctoral thesis, capturing the process of developing a real-world application of my imagined kingdom, much like how Wells sought to script a more forward-thinking society through his bold, speculative narratives.

2024

The so-called "theory of limits" or "theory of nearer aims" ("teoriya blizhnego pritsela"):

2024, Body Politics

This paper problematizes the idea of kinship between humans and other animals. It will deal, above all, with Donna Haraway’s manifold reflections on making kin with other animals and so-called human-animal symbionts, and ask how the history of the body may trouble animal studies and posthumanist speculations about future bodies – by decentering not only humans but other animals as well. Therefore, I will critically discuss her latest book "Staying with the Trouble. Making kin in the Chthulucene" in confrontation with Herbert George Wells’s science fiction "The Island of Doctor Moreau" and the concept of – what I would like to call – the Moreaucene

2024

This lecture is dedicated to the great scholar and honorand of the conference, Professor Michael Paschalis, from whose writings and example we have all been taught so much. In this lecture, I investigate an important tendency that runs... more

2024, R:I Relações Internacionais

Book review: Versailles 1919: A Centennial Perspective from Alan Sharp

2024, La Palabra

C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy is the only daring excursion the author does in the world of science fiction genre. Thus, this article has as main goal to raise discussion on the elements of science fiction and religion present on Perelandra (1943), core novel of C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy and H. G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895). To this end, it is drawn a parallel between these novels in order to demonstrate the deep discussion on religious and scientific issues explored by Lewis and Wells, as well as shown their humanistic and religious views of the process of scientific development. As theoretical support, we build on the literary scholarship of Frye, (2004), Suvin (1979), McGrath (2020), among others. Through the discussion provided in this study it is possible to notice that Perelandra displays verisimilitude to The Time Machine in the narrative structure and plot. Both novels present eschatological characteristic, since the writers deal with the future of humanity, evolution process and its philosophical implications. For all those features, one can infer that both Perelandra and The Time Machine bring a deep reflection embedded in religious and humanistic knowledge and discussions.

2024

As the urgency of addressing climate change becomes increasingly apparent, there is a growing need for innovative approaches to envision alternative futures and develop effective design solutions. This paper explores the potential of Speculative Fiction as a powerful tool within architectural design, capable of generating viable solutions to the large-scale issues arising from the ongoing climate changes. The recent global experience of quarantine amid the raging pandemic has shed light on the vulnerabilities of our current urban and rural strategies, particularly for coastal communities in their resilience against impending man-made or natural disasters. Speculative Fiction emerges as a promising instrument to engage communities and stakeholders in imagining new possibilities for the future. The author will draw examples from literature, specifically the Maddaddam Trilogy written by Margaret Atwood. This paper delves into the potential of Speculative Fiction as a design solution to address climate change. By emphasizing the transformative potential of Speculative Fiction within the design field, this research contributes to the ongoing discourse on climate change. It offers fresh perspectives for the creation of a sustainable future.

2024, Przestrzenie Teorii

The author of the article analyzes Orson Scott Card’s "Ender’s Game", focusing her attention on the relationship between the key motif of the novel – gaming – and the tendency to militarize and colonize outer space highlighted by astrocultural scholars. Card’s novel follows the astrocultural pattern of setting future wars in space, but introduces an important novelty: games of various kinds, including video games, become a mediating element between the characters and the real experience of space war. The theoretical framework for the analysis is provided by the insights of astrocultural scholars such as Alexander Geppert, Tilmann Siebeneichner and Alice Gorman. In analyzing "Ender’s Game" and, to some extent, its 2013 film adaptation, the author examines the protagonists’ relationship to space, which is shaped by the game’s setting. It is here that military and colonial themes are most prevalent. The first part of the paper presents the main contexts of the motif of the militarization of outer space and its close relationship with video games. These contexts provide an important background for the analysis of the motifs of games and outer space in "Ender’s Game". Selected reflections from the field of ludology are helpful in interpreting Card’s use of video games not only as a theme, but also as a structural principle of his novel’s settings. In the last part of the paper, the author considers the transformation of the militant motif taking place in the novel’s finale into a narrative focused on the colonization of outer space, as well as the transformation of this narrative that occurred in Gavin Hood’s film adaptation. The goal of such an interpretation is to show the story created by Orson Scott Card as entangled in a dynamic relationship with the video game medium that was developing at the time of its creation and with the changing trends of astroculture.

2024, Oxford Handbook of H. G. Wells

Throughout his career H. G. Wells wrote about the past, present and future of empires. Focusing on his historical and sociological writings, this chapter analyses how he thought about the pathologies and possibilities of empire as a form of political order. I argue that while he was critical of many aspects of the existing imperial order, he thought that empire could be justified if it helped to achieve the eventual unification of humanity. His dream of a world state was imprinted with the legacy of European, and especially British, imperial ideology. The chapter opens with his account of the impact of Rome on world history and his argument about the novelty of nineteenth century imperialism. It then explores his shifting and ambivalent attitude to the British empire. The final section turns to some of the imperial futures Wells imagined, concentrating on the Anglo-American “New Republic” and his vision of a world state.

2024, Time Travel in World Literature and Cinema

El anacronópete (Gaspar y Rimbau 2005) did not pass completely unno
ticed by the contemporaries of Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau. For instance, the protagonist of Bertrán Rubio’s short story “Un invento despampan
ante” (1906) boasts that neither the phonograph, nor the wireless tele
graph, nor the anacronópete of the ill-fated “Gaspar” could compete with his own instant and reversible psico-kinos-fono-fotocromógrajo (426). However, a few years later, El anacronópete and its author were forgotten. They did not reappear until the end of the twentieth century, rescued by Saiz Cidoncha (1988), Santibáñez-Tió (1995), and Ayala Aracil (1998), who also did not hesitate to call Gaspar y Rimbau the true inventor of the first time machine.

2024, Minding The Campus

We need efficiency in the humanities. Those with time and means can read on; most of us must keep things simple and stick to skills-based and STEM courses. I confess to years of canonical ignorance, but I also note that there’s a cost to reading everything; we risk “bleeding out.” Decaying cultural conditions, along with rapid technological change and a looming journey to Mars, make reading everything tantamount to reading nothing, or at least reading nothing together. To pick three big books is to recognize that we need a handful of thick common references.

2024, Vidhyayana -An International Multidisciplinary Peer-Reviewed E-Journal

This research paper investigates the complex relationship between biotechnology and bioethics in Margaret Atwood's seminal novels Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. Through a close examination of key themes, characters, and plot elements, this study illuminates Atwood's profound exploration of the ethical implications of scientific progress. In both novels, Atwood constructs dystopian futures where biotechnological advancements have reshaped human existence, raising pressing questions about the moral responsibilities of scientists and the potential consequences of unchecked technological innovation. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from bioethics and science fiction studies, this paper scrutinises Atwood's nuanced portrayal of genetic engineering, corporate greed, and environmental degradation, shedding light on the broader societal discourse surrounding the intersection of science and morality. By analysing the ethical dilemmas faced by characters such as Crake, Jimmy/Snowman, and the God's Gardeners, this paper emphasises the importance of considering the ethical dimensions of scientific research and technological development. Through Atwood's masterful storytelling, readers are challenged to critically engage with the ethical complexities of biotechnology and to reflect on the implications of scientific progress for human society and the natural world. This research contributes to a deeper understanding

2024

Un divertissement, frutto di un approccio fondato sul pensiero analogico, ovvero il riconoscimento di somiglianze tra concetti, oggetti, situazioni, concettualmente anche molto distanti tra loro, per descrivere un misterioso oggetto. Un oggetto che iconizzo, prima definendolo una Macchina del Tempo, poi un Multiplo, il cui “magnetismo emozionale” mi folgora permettendomi di mettere insieme le tante eterogenee discipline che m’appassionano:
• la Fantascienza che, oscillando tra letteratura e cinema, del viaggio nel tempo e della macchina che possa permetterlo ha fornito molteplici e variegate narrazioni, ognuna in grado di offrire punti di vista peculiari della storia raccontata in grado di renderla più interessante, vivacizzarla, esaltarla;
• la Fisica, che all’inizio del ‘900 con la Relatività Ristretta ha equiparato il tempo allo spazio in cui siamo abituati a viaggiare, permettendoci di estendere le nostre ambizioni di viaggio anche se in modo non proprio istantaneo e limitatamente al movimento verso il futuro; che successivamente con la Relatività Generale ha introdotto il Paradosso dei Gemelli che rende il tempo diverso per ogni osservatore in funzione della sua velocità di spostamento nello spazio; che oggi, cercando di unificare la Relatività Generale con la Meccanica Quantistica, s’interroga sul tempo, chiedendosi se esiste veramente o è solo una proprietà emergente;
• la Tecnologia, produttrice d’innovazione a partire della scienza che impatta sullo stile di vita dell’Uomo realizzando quelle che precedentemente erano solo utopie;
• il Design industriale, che si affianca alla Tecnologia per coniugare la funzionalità della macchina con la sua estetica, così da migliorarne l’ergonomia, favorendone l’accettazione e l’uso da parte di chi la compra ed al tempo stesso impreziosendone il valore per chi la vende;
• l’Arte moderna e contemporanea, che sebbene concentrata principalmente sull’espressione di emozioni, sensazioni e idee personali, che comunichino un messaggio in modo soggettivo o astratto con valore estetico, culturale o sociale, non ha una funzione pratica o utilitaria, spesso si correla strettamente al Design che si concentra sulla progettazione di qualcosa che soddisfi specifiche esigenze funzionali ed estetiche, seguendo un processo razionale e sistematico per definire un problema, identificare le esigenze degli utenti, sviluppare una soluzione che sia efficiente, utile e attraente.

2024, Literature and Science, 1922-2022: Modernist and Postmodernist Perspectives, ed. by Y. Chung, D. Crosara, M. Martino and M. Mitrano, Rome, Lithos, 2024

As the Great War broke out in 1914, aviation represented a novel field of scientific and technological development at which the broader public looked in awe. In the 1910s, the perspective of conquering the sky disclosed a new horizon and fuelled imperialistic will to power, despite the reluctance and scepticism of the military. However, the imperialistic dream of infinite conquest imprinted the forthcoming war, especially concerning the perspective of the aerial bombing (put into practice by the Italian troops in Libya in 1911), which showed the strategic potential of the new machine.
Even before the advent of the aeroplane, literary fiction had started representing the soon-to-come aerial warfare. Between 1883 and 1913, several European novelists such as Robida, Verne, Wells, Gray, Martin, and Salgari published several works in which they depicted futuristic scenarios of aerial warfare. The Great War confirmed many of the grimmest anticipations imagined in these novels, insofar as the strategic bombing of military and civilian targets was theorised and implemented by the major belligerent countries.
Italian Colonel Giulio Douhet was the most influential theorist of the strategic bombing, who presented his ground-breaking theories in various essays during the war. In 1919, Douhet also published a peculiar dystopian novel called Come finì la Grande Guerra, through which he envisioned the idea of a grand inter-allied aerial Armada that would crush the Central Empires by systematically bombing military and civilian targets. The theory of strategic bombing had already been anticipated in novels, among others by Wells in The War in the Air (1913) and by German author Rudolf Martin in Der Krieg in den Luften (1908). These novels share the vision of a technological revolution that, when applied to war, dramatically changes the scale of destruction and the perception itself of warfare. War is no longer a matter of clashing armies but an apocalypse that engulfs entire populations.
In this paper, I will discuss some aspects of this sub-tradition of literary dystopia by focusing on Wells’s and Douhet’s works as the most representative dystopian novels about aerial warfare. Wells’s and Douhet’s novels represent the advent of the new weapon from two significantly diverse points of view: as an author of science fiction, Wells had already anticipated the idea of global destruction in The War of the Worlds in 1897, which he applies to humans in 1913 by depicting the annihilation of New York and the global war permitted by aerial forces of all nations (with racial and colonial implications); Douhet was an officer who transposed his controversial technical theory of strategic bombing into a novel after the war to divulge it among the broader public, thus following in the wake of D’Annunzio’s literary fortune.

2024, Workshop: The Fantastic Afterlives of the Holocaust Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies

The umbrella term of the “Holocaust fantastic” fails to distinguish between different genres of non-mimetic fiction, specifically between fantasy and horror on the one hand, and science fiction (SF) on the other. The distinction is crucial because different genres of the fantastic strive for different emotional affects. In this paper I will argue that the rational ethos of SF is precisely what is needed to understand the Holocaust as an historical event rather than a sublime “rupture”. Holocaust SF, as opposed to Holocaust fantasy, does not generate spectral figures of monstrosity, seeking to embody the experience of the victims. Instead, it attempts to rewrite the history of the 20th century in such a way as to “lay bare” or “defamiliarize” (in Shklovsky’s sense of the word) the causes and effects of the Nazi genocide. Holocaust SF, in other words, performs the therapeutic function of narrativizing the historical trauma and bringing it back into the realm of the comprehensible.

2024, Pamukkale University Journal of Social Sciences Institute

In the Victorian Age, many people were apprehended not only by Dar win's theories of evolution, but also the possibilities for a reverse evolution. Thus, Stevenson and Wells build their dystopias on Darwin's evolutionary theories and Victorian fears of devolution. In Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Stevens imagines man's degeneration into savagery as the result of the repressiveness of the Victorian morals that demanded restraint of instinctive urges. He illustrates not only the potential of repressed desires to burst out into ferocity, but also perversity that may result from indulgence in vice behind the mask of sobriety. Similarly, in The War of the Worlds, Wells relates human devolution to the idea of natural selection in human societies. Besides, he anticipates a future in which technology is involved in human evolution, overtaking the functions of certain parts of human body and leaving men deprived of feelings for each other. It is concluded that both of the dystopian novels project the Victorian concerns about the future in relation to the Darwinian theories of evolution and the possibility of devolution.

2024, Victorian Automata: Mechanism and Agency in the Nineteenth Century (edited by Suzy Anger and Thomas Vranken)

This chapter examines a late-nineteenth century fictional trope of “mind invasion,” in which the white male unconscious is controlled by the very subaltern mind that Western science branded as “primitive” and associated with lower levels of mental and cultural evolution. The psychical automatism of mind invasion sometimes reproduces the power dynamics of colonialism, but the chapter examines countervailing examples in which the colonizer unconscious is dominated by the mental powers and occult knowledge of the colonized. It also explores incidents of extra-terrestrial or future-human mind invasion, which redraw the racialized hierarchies of mind constructed by Western scientists. Reiterations of the mind invasion trope satirized the claim of educated white male minds to rationality, detached objectivity, and the ability to resist automatist mental states. The chapter analyzes the multivalent aims of this reversal, including anti-materialism, a defence of paranormal experience, and a decolonizing attack on the very concept of racial hierarchy.

2024, Issues of Analysis

Here first we derive a general reverse Minkowski integral inequality. Then motivated by the work of E. R. Love [4] on integral inequalities we produce general reverse and direct integral inequalities. We apply these to ordinary and left fractional integral inequalities. The last involve ordinary derivatives, left Riemann-Liouville fractional integrals, left Caputo fractional derivatives, and left generalized fractional derivatives. These inequalities are of Opial type.

2024, Utopian Horizons

The Concept of Civil Religion Utopias have a controversial relationship with organized religions. As they are by definition seeking to present a social vision of a human community organized along significantly different rules and conventions than the author's contemporary society, they implicitly or explicitly challenge the norms and habits of existing societies, including the moral code and spiritual goals, which are predominantly influenced by the majority religion of that particular community. In other words, utopias have an inherent heterodox tendency, which renders them suspect in the eyes of religious authorities. The Catholic philosopher Thomas Molnar summarized this phenomenon succinctly when he described utopias as "perennial heresies" in relation to doctrinal orthodoxy: "The important utopian writers are heretics from the point of view of Christian doctrine; they want to restore man's original innocence-his knowledge and power-and, to achieve this objective, they want to abolish original sin and start with unspoiled beginnings." 2 But heretics are also motivated by powerful religious convictions. Authors of utopias might have a disparaging view of existing churches, their doctrines, and their practices, but nonetheless their alternative fictitious communities are inevitably governed by principles that must ultimately rest on some deeply held convictions about right and wrong, about social virtues and vices. Every utopian community is ruled by a more or less explicit ideology in the descriptive sense, as defined by Michael Freeden, but utopias are typically distinguished by the complete hegemony of one single ideology rather than the competition between different, rival ideologies in existing modern societies. 3 In fact, imaginary utopian communities usually function as mobile demonstrations illustrating the superior virtues of one particular ideology in the total organization of social life. In such utopian models, religion, insofar as it serves any role at all, typically assumes one overarching function: to reinforce the moral code and prescribe acceptable rules of 1 This chapter was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

2024, Nurturing Alternative Futures Living with Diversity in a More-than-Human World

The livestock industry's favouring of a small number of high-yielding commercial breeds has resulted in the extinction of almost 10 percent of domestic animal breeds globally, with at least 1,000 more at risk (IPBES 2019). On heritage breed farms, the intimacy enabled by the small scale of operations, 1 along with the risk of extinction many of these breeds face, heightens the stakes of human-animal relations. Living together, feeding, reproduction, and the sharing of substance and emotion constitute the daily relations between farmers and animals. These are also the characteristics of relatedness that Janet Carsten (2000, 34) identifies in her seminal work driving anthropology's revived interest in kinship. In this chapter, I propose extending conceptualisations of relatedness across species boundaries by exploring the complex imbrication of social relations and biogenetic substances within the enduring relationships between heritage breed animals and farmers. Economic viability is a constant challenge with these slower-growing breeds, and farmers who chose to perpetuate their bloodlines do so because of a love of their breeds, who they value for qualities beyond the economic. Small-scale farmers of commercial breeds share much in common in terms of their values and practices as I demonstrate through a description of a home kill of an Angus cow below. Yet, the extinction risk heritage breeds face, and farmers' commitment to their breeds notwithstanding their lesser productivity, renders the stakes of interspecies relationships particularly high. Heritage breed farms are thus fascinating sites in which to examine the rich potential of interspecies relatedness as an alternative configuration to the prevailing model of unidimensional commodification of livestock in pursuit of financial gain. Over the past half-century, the livestock sector has subjected farm animals to heavy selection pressure and extensive crossbreeding to maximise profitable traits, such as rapid growth and prolificacy. Performance gains have been extraordinary, yet the global dissemination of these fast-growing, high-yielding types has resulted in the extinction of numerous heritage breeds in Australia, with many more under threat (RBTA 2023). This is part of a broader global paradigm where the loss of agrobiodiversity evident in diminishing variety in seeds, breeds, and bloodlines poses a significant risk to

2024, Cultural Critique