[ecrea] Call for papers for a proposed special themed journal issue on Imagining Science Fiction Dangerously

Imagining Science Fiction Dangerously



Call for papers for a proposed special themed journal issue on 
“Imagining Science Fiction Dangerously”.



The power of science fiction lies in its dangers. Science fiction 
imagines other worlds that can challenge, unsettle, and disturb the 
known world. It turns on dangerous ideas, affective ruptures, political 
critique, and unfamiliar textures. It has the power to threaten the 
established order of things and open gaps in the way we conceptualise 
the contemporary world.



But are we losing sight of the dangers of science fiction as we try to 
come to understand it? Istvan Csicsery-Ronay warned “there is a danger 
in making Science Fiction into an academic specialty. [...] I’m somewhat 
suspicious of treating Science Fiction as if it were a circumscribed 
subject with a canon and set of reading protocols” (interview with Rain 
Taxi, 2009).



This special issue aims to address questions of:



·      How can science fiction continue to be imagined dangerously in 
all its forms – from literature to film to gaming to art – in the face 
of it becoming a “discipline”?



·      How does science fiction recover its danger, away from the 
neo-liberal safety of commercialisation and criticism that renders it as 
a digestible genre?



·      How can academia approach science fiction in a way that both 
contributes to, and avoids eroding, the power and danger of science fiction?



·      How can the tropes of science fiction be challenged to imagine 
new intersections of science and fiction?



·      What do advances in science and technology mean for the dangerous 
dimension of science fiction?



·      How is science fiction used dangerously; for example in military 
planning or by environmentalists imagining dangerous futures?



·      How can the spaces and the textures of science fiction continue 
to be imagined as dangerous?



·      How do practices of reading contribute to science fiction 
becoming “safe” (in other words, are we missing the point?), and how can 
practices of reading make sci-fi dangerous again?



·      Where is science fiction the most unsettling, confronting, and 
urgent?



We invite contributions that address any of these questions from the 
disciplines of literature, film, gaming, art, and science and 
technology, and any other field with an investment in the possibilities 
of imagining science fiction dangerously.



The issue will be edited by the Emerging Research Group in Science 
Fiction at Deakin University, Australia (lead by Associate Professor 
Sean Redmond, Associate Professor Leon Marvell, Dr Elizabeth 
Braithwaite, Dr Chris Moore, and Trent Griffiths, postdoctoral student), 
aiming for publication in late 2014.



We welcome abstracts for of 300-350 words, along with a short biography, 
emailed to (sean.redmond /at/ deakin.edu.au) or (leon.marvell /at/ deakin.edu.au) by 
Friday September 20th 2013. General enquiries about the special issue or 
the research group are also welcome.



Notification of acceptance of articles will be by Friday October 18th 
2013. Completed articles should be original work which has neither been 
simultaneously submitted for publication elsewhere nor published 
previously, and will bedue in April 2014.



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