umass-sf444

[umass-sf444]

[umass-sf444]

After a startling encounter with a cuttlefish, Australian philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith set out to explore the mysterious lives of cephalopods. He was left asking: why do such smart creatures live such a short time?

[umass-sf444]

I was down at the Westfield mall at World Trade Center over the break, hadn’t been down there in probably 10 years when it was essentially just a giant empty subway station (the original mall was destroyed after 9/11). This new architecture struck me as conspicuously SF-inspired.

[umass-sf444]

Author Liana Brooks took on the terrifying task of writing time travel and lived to tell the tale. Here’s her take on the do’s and don’ts.

[umass-sf444]

This is definitely a bit of a stretch, but I couldn’t help but think of this year’s super bowl narrative in relation to cognitive estrangement. The Patriots needed a very specific set of circumstances to occur to make a monumental, unprecedented come back in the fourth quarter, circumstances that were extremely implausible and seemingly impossible based on previous super bowl statistics. Both commentators and fans familiar with the game speculated/conceptualized the precise circumstances needed for this to occur, and they in fact did. This also leads one to think about how sports narratives are constructed - as real events (though even this is speculated by conspiracy theorists who contend that major sporting events are fabricated for profit) but real events that are affectively constructed and narrated by the broadcasters.

[umass-sf444]

[umass-sf444]

This review reminded me on the issues of feminism we saw in some of the films we watched this semester. Even though we have come so far since the 80s we still face sexist images in the genre. This humorous review expands upon it! WARNING SPOILERS!

[umass-sf444]

Right after I watched the second episode of Black Mirror’s third season, Playtest, I thought I must post about it on the course tumblr. It’s similar to existenz in the way that they both use game to construct a virtual reality, and question what is reality and how can we tell. It also touched on the concept of “singularity”, and how time works in science fiction genre. 

Black Mirror is a science fiction series consisting of standalone episodes. Every episode of it uses dystopian world building and extrapolation to provoke the audiences to think about the impact technology has on the current society.

[umass-sf444]

Blade Runner 2049 Trailer

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6T2b0mp2hco

[umass-sf444]

This article extrapolates the current development of artificial intelligence, asks if AI can eventually reach singularity, and explores whether it will harm the human race or not.

[umass-sf444]

As opposed to existenz, where people get so lost in virtual reality that they lose the ability to tell which reality is real, this question creates a futuristic situation where people are informed of which reality is real and explores different forms of existence.                                                                                                          

[umass-sf444]

While mainly extrapolating into the future, sometimes science fiction needs to extrapolate into the past. There’s this theory that there used to be three prehistoric continents: Atlantis, Maldek, and Lemuria. And they all had more advanced civilizations than the one we live in. This is an evidence supporting the existence of Atlantis.

[umass-sf444]

This is a short movie made by a friend of mine. When she first showed it to me, I only thought it was aesthetically pleasing, probably because I knew more about mise-en-scène back then than I now know about science fiction. After we tried to interpret Vertigo as a science fiction movie, this short film of her came to my mind. I found that by reading this film with protocols of science fiction, it can also be thought as a science fiction. Who says special effects aren’t actually happenning?

[umass-sf444]

While doing research on my final paper I found the following article about virtual reality, and whats possible in the near future. Very interesting, and well worth a read!

[umass-sf444]

One of my Facebook friends shared this article, which features some pretty interesting and futuristic gadgets and technology.