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This essay examines two short stories by David Foster Wallace from his final collection, Oblivion. Both are narratives of violent events (a suicide in \"Good Old Neon\" and a school shooting in \"The Soul is Not a Smithy\"), and in each case the narrator comes into conflict with the medical authorities diagnosing them. Wallace's writing of this period has been identified by critic Thomas Tracey as \"representations of trauma,\" a reading borne out by the stories' temporal fragmentation and narrative lacunae. I argue that these tropes of trauma writing are deployed ironically, and highlight instances in each story wherein trauma is undermined as an explanatory narrative of the protagonists' suffering. Such a reading not only opens up new avenues in Wallace studies but also raises important questions surrounding medical diagnosis and the value of patient narrative, even a misinformed one, as a diagnostic tool.

Kac-Vergne identifies the conflict between Snake (Kurt Russell) and the Duke (Isaac Hayes) as symptomatic of a divide-and-rule policy, on behalf of the ruling elite, between white, blue-collar workers and African-Americans. [...]she examines The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) and I, Robot (2004) where intelligent female characters are unceremoniously sidelined once the violent, hypermasculine spectacle begins. Kac-Vergne identifies in The Matrix a 'rainbow coalition' of androgynous women, Hispanics and African-Americans formed against an explicitly white male enemy, spearheaded by a multi-ethnic star (Keanu Reeves), although his white skin tone is foregrounded in the films.

\"4 Dunn and Morris's preferred term for the story cycle, \"composite novel,\" reflects the hybrid form's critical transcendence; \"in the pigeon house of genre the novel occupies a lofty perch, and any generic label that emphasizes 'story' rather than 'novel' roosts at a lower level,\" and so in turn works such as Winesburg, Ohio and Brief Interviews may be imagined as aspiring towards the \"lofty perch\" of the novel in the minds of many critics and readers.5 In his examination of the short story cycle as a phenomenon in twentieth-century US fiction, Rolf Lundén attributes this preference of (composite) novels over (mere) short fiction to the \"post-Kantian, Coleridgean ideal of esthetic organicism, so dominant in the nineteenth [century] and the first half of [the twentieth] century,\" as a result of which \"unity, coherence, and closure have been privileged at the expense of discontinuity, fragmentation, and openness. \"6 Lundén's invocation of Coleridgean organicism-which holds that \"[t]he form is mechanic when on any given material we impress a pre-determined form,\" and that in contrast \"[t]he organic form . . . is innate; it shapes as it develops itself from within\"-raises the issue of authorial design.7 Such questions have typically been considered misguided in contemporary literary criticism, especially since Wimsatt and Beardsley's declaration in 1946 that \"the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art. In order of decreasing unity/coherence, these four subcategories of short story composite are: the cycle, which is \"basically organized cyclically-where in the last story there is a final resolution and a return to a beginning\" (examples include The Golden Apples by Eudora Welty and The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder); the sequence, in which there is a principle of sequential order, but without the cycle's \"strong sense of unity and closure\" (Lundén suggests Faulkner's The Unvanquished and On The Line by Harvey Swados as examples); the cluster, which exhibits \"a fairly high degree of indeterminacy\" and in which \"the interconnections between the stories are not obvious, but will have to be constructed by the reader, often with a constricting result . . . discontinuity and fragmentation emerge as the by far more characteristic features\" (e.g. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway); and the novella, which (as distinct from the synonymous literary form which one might assign to \"Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way\") features disparate stories held together by a framing device (the most famous example of this is Winesburg Ohio, but Lundén also includes Lost in the Funhouse and A Night at the Movies in this category, by virtue of \"extradiegetic devices\" such as Barth's foreword and Coover's \"simulated offering of a movie house\").11 Although arguably not as developed as Lundén's categorical framework, the theories of cycles offered by Reid and by Dunn and Morris are univocal on the importance of \"threading\" between stories, connections formed by \"organizing principles\" such as \"characters, settings, [and] leitmotifs. \"14 The most obvious claim that Brief Interviews may make to status as a cycle is the eponymous series, which lacks any connecting characters or settings but features consistent formal features such as the provision of a date and location at the beginning of each interview and the use of what Wallace describes as \"a journalistic capital 'Q'\" in place of the interviewer's (or interviewers') questions.15 In the same discussion Wallace says that the interviews are \"conducted by a female,\" suggesting that the voice concealed by the \"Q\"s is the same one in each interview, and in a separate conversation with

[...]Miller reads Naomi Mitchison's Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) in the context of John Bowlby's attachment theory, thus finding in it 'a renewed feminist ethics of compassion', although it also 'colludes with the essentializing gender ideologies that haunt' evolutionary psychology. [...]Mitchison's Solution Three (1975) depicts a world in which homosexuality is state-mandated, and heterosexuality prohibited, a peaceful reality which is challenged both by Mitchison's continued use of Bowlby and by intertextual reference to John Christopher's The Death of Grass (1956). [...]Miller presents Ian Watson's The Embedding (1973) as a more sceptical narrative than either Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17 (1966) and Ted Chiang's 'Story of Your Life' (1998), eschewing their optimistic depiction of a kind of cognitive 'upgrade'through alien languages and instead suggesting that the limitations of language and cognition 'cast a phenomenal veil over an almost [possibly dangerously] ungraspable reality'.

In conjoining science fiction and fantasy under the sign of 'SF&F', Rogers and Stevens employ David Sandner's notion of 'displacement' as 'the fundamental characteristic of the fantastic', persuasively noting the conceptual resemblance to Darko Suvin's notion of cognitive estrangement. Revisiting Models and Methodologies for Classical Receptions in Science Fiction', requires both knowledge of author Tony Keen's influential 2005 blog post (The T Stands for Tiberius: Models and Methodologies of Classical Reception in Science Fiction') and recollection of Captain Kirk's full name in Star Trek. The final part of the collection once again skews towards fantasy ratherthan science fiction - unexpectedly so, given the inclusion of an essay by Vincent Tomasso on a novel by Gene Wolfe, which Tomasso categorically states 'is not, even loosely speaking, science fiction'.

Alongside the ubiquity of video games, democratization of geek culture and diversification of gamers, Barr identifies in the corpus of video game-focused sf a characteristic fascination with the erosion of the barriers between games and 'gamespace' - the perception that the real world is governed by rules as unfair and arbitrary as many video games. [...]there is a danger in these texts for characters to become addicted to games or become permanently absorbed into the game world. Another barrier to interpretation is the nebulousness of the texts that Barr examines. Since the number of sf texts which depict video games is purportedly remarkably small, the lack of a clear listing of them, their authors and publication dates, seems like a perverse oversight.

Jóhannsson's black and white footage of these relics - ghosts, Mark Fisher might say, of a lost future - is accompanied not only by Jóhannsson's score but also by a narrative adapted by Jóhannsson and José Enrique Macián from the final chapters of Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men (1930), depicting the final evolutionary stage of humankind as the sun expands and engulfs the solar system, and voiced by the otherworldly Tilda Swinton. [...]there is the voice of Swinton, although recognition is also due to Stuart Bailes' lighting design, which adds a dynamic connection between the screen and the performers, and powerfully emphasizes the moment at which Swinton's narrator addresses her audience by lighting the hall. Like the film footage and the orchestral performance, the narration is not a constant presence, and while there is always something commanding the audience's attention from the first shots to the Anal dimming of the lights, the periodic disappearances of each major element of the performance is another powerful component.

The inaugural “Microbiome for Mars” virtual workshop took place on July 13, 2020. This event assembled leaders in microbiome research and development to discuss their work and how it may relate to long-duration human space travel. The conference focused on surveying current microbiome research, future endeavors, and how this growing field could broadly impact human health and space exploration. This report summarizes each speaker’s presentation in the order presented at the workshop.

IntroductionCancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI) can have detrimental effects on quality of life, even among patients with non-central nervous system (CNS) cancers. Several studies have been conducted to explore different markers associated with CRCI to understand its pathobiology. It is proposed that the underlying mechanisms of CRCI are related to a cascade of physiological adaptive events in response to cancer and/or treatment. Hence, peripheral blood would be a logical source to observe and identify these physiological events. This paper outlines the protocol for a scoping review being conducted to summarise the extant literature regarding blood-based biomarkers of CRCI among patients with non-CNS cancer.Methods/analysisMethods will be informed by the updated guidelines of Arksey and O’Malley. The systematic search for literature will include electronic databases, handsearching of key journals and reference lists, forward citation tracking and consultation with content experts. Study selection will be confirmed by duplicate review and calculation of inter-rater reliability. Data to be charted will include study design, sample size, cancer and treatment characteristics, demographic characteristics, cognitive variable/s and biomarkers assessed, associations between cognitive functioning and biomarkers (including statistics used), and rigour in biomarker sample collection and processing. Results will be presented through: (1) a descriptive numerical summary of studies, including a flow diagram based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses statement, (2) a list of blood-based biomarkers associated with CRCI and (3) a narrative overview developed through collaboration among the research team and consultation with content experts.DisseminationThe findings of this review will highlight current directions and gaps in the current body of evidence that may lead to improved rigour in future CRCI investigations. The dissemination of this work will be facilitated through the involvement of clinicians and researchers on the research team, an external consultation process and the presentation of the results through scholarly publication and presentation.