WORLD

Significant modern SF, with

deeper and more lasting
sources of enjoyment, also
presupposes more complex
and wider cognitions: it
discusses primarily the
political, psychological, and
anthropological use and
effect of knowledge, of
philosophy of science, and
the becoming of failure of
new realities as a result of
it.

Darko Suvin
 Or literally, in Latin, “the new”. The
component, in speculative fiction stories,

The
which is novel and strange – it seeks to feed
the reader’s curiosity while simultaneously
being the chief means through which the
writer explores the larger themes that the
story grapples with.
The Time
Machine
The Left
 Estrangement is the creation of a “new
normal” through its worldbuilding and
narrative, which makes us reflect on our own
norms and values – it gives us an unfamiliar
representation of the world while allowing us

Estrang
to recognize the logic of how that world works
and comparing it with our own.
The Windup Girl
If, in the eyes of Amerindians, the body makes the
difference, then it is easily understood why, in the
anecdote told by Levi-Strauss, the methods of
investigation into the humanity of the other, employed by
the Spanish and the inhabitants of the Antilles, showed
such asymmetry. For the Europeans, the issue was to
decide whether the others possessed a soul; for the
Indians, the aim was to find out what kind of body the
others had. For the Europeans the great diacritic, the
marker of difference in perspective, is the soul (are
Indians humans or animals?); for the Indians it is the
body (are Europeans humans or spirits?). The Europeans
never doubted that the Indians had bodies; the Indians
never doubted that the Europeans had souls (animals
and spirits have them too). What the Indians wanted to
know was whether the bodies of those 'souls' were
capable of the same affects as their own - whether they
had the bodies of humans or the bodies of spirits, non-
putrescible and protean. In sum: European ethnocentrism
consisted in doubting whether other bodies have the
same souls as they themselves; Amerindian
ethnocentrism in doubting whether other souls had the
same bodies.

Vivieros De Castro, Cosmological deixis and

Amerindian perspectivism.
Of course, reality is all that is physical,
solid and concrete...

Of course, reality is all illusion,

impermanence and change...

Wait, what???
At last Mal finished his cough. He began to straighten
himself by bearing down on the thorn bush and by
making his hands walk over each other up the stick. He
looked at the water then at each of the people in turn,
and they waited.

“I have a picture.”

He freed a hand and put it flat on his head as if confining

the images that flickered there.

“Mal is not old but clinging to his mother’s back. There is

more water not only here but along the trail. A man is
wise. He makes men take a tree that has fallen and—”

His eyes deep in their hollows turned to the people

imploring them to share a picture with him. He coughed
again, softly. The old woman carefully lifted her burden.

At last Ha spoke.

“I do not see this picture.”

William Golding, The Inheritors

The laws of media are
phrased
as questions instead of as
statements, to preserve
their heuristic character as
instruments for probing
situations (media). For
example, “What does the
new form enhance or
amplify?”
“What older form does it
retrieve, reconstituted?”
And so on.

Marshall Mcluhan
The Tetrad

Enhancement Obsolescence

Retrieval Reversal
Mediu
m
• Enhances the old
• Obsolesces the present
• Retrieves ground as figure
• Reverses into the new
The Moving Image (Cinema+TV) The City
• Enhances the still image by projecting it in time
(editing) and space (mise-en-scene)
• Obsolesces the still image
• Retrieves the sense of flowing narrative
• Reverses into remixing\compositing (Youtube)
Single-Player Video Games
• Enhances the moving image by bringing in
player interactivity
• Obsolesces the fixed narrative
• Retrieves performativity
• Reverses into VR gaming
• Enhances the centralization of human activity
• Obsolesces the countryside or rural
• Retrieves homeostasis, bustle
• Reverses into suburbs; breakdown of centralism
War
• Enhances passions and goals
• Obsolesces leisure and luxuries
• Retrieves camaraderie and community
• Reverses into research and progress