future – TimeSpace Warps (2025)

Again, this is another of those books I have not read yet (out now in 2024 by the University of Minnesota press, but I have eagerly been waiting for and now found out that you can actually read it online. Transgressiveness, or the whole shock value of avant-garde modernism has been completely appropriated by right-wing spectacular politics. Every anti-censorship and anti-PC advocate today harbors a little (or bigger) fashy, now best exemplified by various hues of Musk lovers.

In his previous book – Reading the Obscene: Transgressive Editors and the Class Politics of US Literature Jordan S. Carroll uncovers the underlying class politics of a lot of famous anti-censorship battles of the twentieth century in the US. Usually, such anti-censorship is seen through the populist freedom-fighting lense (artistic freedom and/or freedom of expression), but taking a closer look, Jordan S. Carroll shows that such obscenity cases that fought anti-censorship battles often catered to elite audiences composed primarily of white men in the professional-managerial class. For me, such a necessary provocative reading echoes another discussion – one about modernist and particularly abstract art as being a “purely autonomous art manifesting human freedom” when theorized by Clement Greenberg during the heyday of the Iron Curtain, but this division of kitsch vs modernism should be situated in the aftermath of Nazi ideology and fascist “alternative modernity” (check a key e-flux article by Boris Groys The Cold War between the Medium and the Message: Western Modernism vs. Socialist Realism). For Greenberg modernist art should get support from the leisure classes, so even if historically avant-garde art meant to shock the bourgeoisie, now it “can hope to get its financial and social support only from the same rich and cultivated people who historically supported traditional art”.

In his new book Jordan S. Carroll explores the entanglements of SF and right-wing ideology speculative fiction. Futurism and white identity are not such a contradiction if we think about how Italian futurist art served as a template for Italian fascism and how proto-fascist ideologues like Ernst Jünger were enamored by a technological sublime characterized by militarism, manhood and machinism. Today one can easily forget that ironic Nazisploitaiton on the Moon like Iron Sky are quite rare and that there is a lot of competing and quite unironic Aryan supermen and all-white space colonies visions and narratives. The eugenically minded TESCREAL bundle among techbro elites also points to how pseudo-scientific ideas about IQ tests and so-called human biodiversity started blending economics with ideas supported byracial psychologists, neoconfederates, and ethnonationalists. Colonizing the future in the name of racial ideals and white supremacy politics today risks shaping the world we live in – and science fiction culture in film and literature has always been a place of struggle and debate “over who has the right to imagine and inhabit the future”.. Sorry for my premature enthusiasm for this book. Still, I had to make this endorsement here when days get darker.

ISBN: 9781517917081

Publication date: October 22nd, 2024

120 Pages.

The Fix is a 2024 South African science fiction thriller film directed byKelsey Egan starring Grace Van Dien, Daniel Sharman, Keenan Arrison. (wiki)

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Civil Waris a 2024dystopianthriller film written and directed byAlex Garland. It follows a team of journalists traveling from New York City to Washington, D.C., during acivil warfought across the United States between anauthoritarianfederal government and several regional factions, to interview the President before rebels take the city. The cast includesKirsten Dunst,Wagner Moura,Cailee Spaeny,Stephen McKinley Henderson,Sonoya MizunoandNick Offerman. (wiki)

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timespace coodinates: The series depicts the aftermath of the Great War of 2077, anapocalyptic nuclear exchangein analternate historyofEarthwhere advances innuclear technologyafterWWIIled to the emergence of aretrofuturisticsociety and a subsequentresource war. Many survivors took refuge infalloutbunkers known as Vaults. More than 200 years later in 2296,a young woman named Lucy leaves behind her home in Vault 33 to venture out into the dangerously unforgiving wasteland of a devastatedLos Angelesto look for her father, who had been kidnapped. Along the way, she meets aBrotherhood of Steelsquire and aghoulbounty hunter, each has their own mysterious pasts and agendas to settle.

Falloutis an Americanpost-apocalypticdramatelevision series created by Graham Wagner andGeneva Robertson-DworetforAmazon Prime Video. Based on therole-playing video game franchisecreated byTim CainandLeonard Boyarsky the series starsElla Purnell,Aaron Moten,Kyle MacLachlan,Moisés Arias, Xelia Mendes-Jones, andWalton Goggins. (wiki)

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timespace coordinates: 26th-century war between theUnited Nations Space Commandand theCovenant, atheocratic-military alliance of several alien races determined to eradicate humanity

Halois an Americanmilitary science fictiontelevision series produced byShowtimein association with343 IndustriesandAmblin TelevisionforParamount+. Based on thevideo game franchise of the same name,

Pablo SchreiberandJen Taylorstar as Master Chief Petty OfficerJohn-117andCortana; the latter reprises her voice role from the video game series, Yerin Ha as Kwan Ha, an Insurrectionist teenager from the Outer Colony planet of Madrigal and daughter of Jin Ha and Natascha McElhoneasDr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, a scientist for the UNSC, the creator of the SPARTAN-II program.

The first season ofHalopremiered on March 24, 2022, and ran until May 19. It was met with mostly positive reviews from critics, with praise given for its action scenes, cast, and visual effects but criticism for its derivative writing and alterations from the source material.A second season premiered on February 8, 2024, and ran for eight episodes until March 21. It was met with positive reviews from critics, who declared it to be an improvement over the previous season.(wiki)

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