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"Universe Fiction"
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In defense of the black box
Black box algorithms can be useful in science and engineering The science fiction writer Douglas Adams imagined the greatest computer ever built, Deep Thought, programmed to answer the deepest question ever asked: the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. After 7.5 million years of processing, Deep Thought revealed its answer: Forty-two ( 1 ). As artificial intelligence (AI) systems enter every sector of human endeavor—including science, engineering, and health—humanity is confronted by the same conundrum that Adams encapsulated so succinctly: What good is knowing the answer when it is unclear why it is the answer? What good is a black box?
Journal Article
Mr g : a novel about the creation
\"Bored with his existence in the shimmering Void with his bickering Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope, Mr g wakes up from a nap one day and decides to create the universe only to be challenged by intellectual rival Belhor.\"--Novelist.
Book
Pursuing Possibilities: Future, Solidarity, and the Literary Imagination in Anti-Caste Narratives
In a world of injustice and inequality, envisioning a better world gains importance. The crisis we face today has alerted us to our subsequent responsibility, which involves a dismantling of the vertical hierarchies of dominance and dwell in horizontal interconnectedness. Interventions in literary disciplines constantly alert us to these crises, simultaneously giving us an impetus to hope for and build a better future. One such intervention is the rise of Dalit discourse in literature. The emergence of Dalit literature is a remarkable example of addressing inequalities and fostering solidarities. In imagining futures through this literature, the emerging genre of speculative fiction serves as an important point of enquiry. What role does caste play in imagining a better future? What are the aesthetics and ethics of Dalit speculative fiction in the context of future becomings? Guided by these questions, in my paper, I will work closely with the stories in the recent anthology, The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF (2024). The stories in this anthology are powerful tools for critical reflections concerning the worlds and their hierarchical oppressive systems. Through this paper, I intend to analyse how speculation becomes a political gesture in anti-caste thought, whose aesthetics, unfurled in the immediate, are seeped in the possibilities of an inclusive and just world, a world yet to come. I am interested in exploring the utopian consciousness in anticaste speculative fiction, which moves away from escapism and stays grounded in reality.
Journal Article
The agent gambit
\"Agent of Change: Once a brilliant First-in-Scout, Val Con yos'Phelium was \"recruited\" by the shadowy Liaden Department of Interior and brainwashed into an Agent of Change--a ruthless covert operative who kills without remorse. Val Con has been playing a deep game, far from the orderly life of clan and kin. Fleeing his latest mission, he saves the life of ex-mercenary Miri Robertson, a Terran on the run from interplanetary assassins. Thrown together by circumstances, Val Con and Miri struggle to elude their enemies and stay alive without killing each other-or surrendering to the unexpected passion that flares between them. Which name -- or face -- will the agent choose when the game gets tough and an escape for only one of them seems possible?\"--Amazon.com, viewed May 17, 2011.
Book
Viewpoint: from Star Trek to “Service Trek”: these are the voyages of the service community
Purpose
Science fiction analogies have been shown to be an effective vehicle for disseminating scientific knowledge and building a better understanding of scientific principles. Toward this end, this study aims to use the Star Trek universe as a lens in an effort to remove barriers to understanding the science of service research.
Design/methodology/approach
This study synthesizes research on using science fiction narratives in sparking dialogue within and beyond scientific communities, draws parallels between the Star Trek universe and the service research domain and uses these insights to identify pertinent ways forward.
Findings
In the service research domain, science fiction analogies and dramaturgical metaphors can challenge researchers to reflect beyond the domain’s traditional boundaries. In fact, the Star Trek universe lends itself as visionary backdrop to assess leadership principles, understand the evolution of scientific paradigms and inspire future service research.
Originality/value
This article contributes to the service research literature by introducing the notion of drawing on science fiction analogies to facilitate key dialogues in a scientific context and demonstrates how such analogies can be used to provide guidance in moving the service research discipline forward.
Journal Article
In time
When Uncle Al is kidnapped by Dr. Kron-Tox and sent to prehistoric times, Andrew, his cousin Judy, and Thudd the robot try to use Uncle Al's latest invention, the Time-A-Tron, to rescue him, and learn first-hand about the origins of the universe.
Book
Catching The Spirit: Black British Explorations In Speculative Fiction
The first science fiction experience I recall was not a projected 35mm film or an experience found in the pages of a well-thumbed, second-hand book; it was encountered within a blues dance, assailed by sound. I struggle to describe the feeling, though I'll try. A space where my own Black body found itself cushioned by others inadvertently, bass felt as much as heard. The bleeps and bloops of the echo chamber's more distant reverberations, growing softer, softer still, fading into almost nothing. It's ludicrous to say my feet moved with the adults around me; no, it felt as if I was willingly stuck, hung in black amber, all gravity dispelled, consumed by utter darkness so weighty and thick that walls, ceiling, and floor were forever banished. This universe existed without limits. Even when I closed my eyes it made no difference; my vision was one and the same. I waited for the echo to return, providing our space with the next digitized tone; something that always suggested to me, in the years to follow, the cumulative weight of paraffin wax growing inside a lava lamp. Sound swelled, then burst, separated, set free. As the music performed this wonder, I very much believed the same was true for myself.
Journal Article
Sal and Gabi break the universe
In order to heal after his mother's death, thirteen-year-old Sal learns to reach into time and space to retrieve things--and people--from other universes.
Book
The One vs. the Many
Does a novel focus on one life or many? Alex Woloch uses this simple question to develop a powerful new theory of the realist novel, based on how narratives distribute limited attention among a crowded field of characters. His argument has important implications for both literary studies and narrative theory.
Characterization has long been a troubled and neglected problem within literary theory. Through close readings of such novels asPride and Prejudice,Great Expectations, andLe Père Goriot, Woloch demonstrates that the representation of any character takes place within a shifting field of narrative attention and obscurity. Each individual--whether the central figure or a radically subordinated one--emerges as a character only through his or her distinct and contingent space within the narrative as a whole. The \"character-space,\" as Woloch defines it, marks the dramatic interaction between an implied person and his or her delimited position within a narrative structure. The organization of, and clashes between, many character-spaces within a single narrative totality is essential to the novel's very achievement and concerns, striking at issues central to narrative poetics, the aesthetics of realism, and the dynamics of literary representation.
Woloch's discussion of character-space allows for a different history of the novel and a new definition of characterization itself. By making the implied person indispensable to our understanding of literary form, this book offers a forward-looking avenue for contemporary narrative theory.
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