Mindplayers


Book Description

Mindplayers are tomorrow's psychoanalysts, linked directly to their patients using sophisticated machinery attached to the optic nerve. In one-to-one Mindplay contact, you can be inside someone else's head, wandering the landscapes of their consciousness. Allie is a sensation-seeking young woman, obtaining illicit thrills from her shady friend Jerry Wirerammer. But Allie goes badly astray when Jerry supplies her with a "madcap" - a device that lets you temporarily and harmlessly experience psychosis. There's something wrong with Jerry's madcap, and the psychosis doesn't go away when it's disconnected. Allie ends up undergoing treatment at a "dry-cleaner", and she is faced with a stark choice - jail, for her illegal use of the madcap; or training to become a Mindplayer herself. During training Allie becomes familiar with the Pool - a cohesive, though shifting mental landscape jointly constructed by a number of minds; and more disturbingly encounters McFlor, who has been mind-wiped, so that his adult body is inhabited by a mind only two hours old. And as a fully-fledged Mindplayer Allie has to choose between the many specialist options open to her - Reality Affixing or Pathosfinding; Thrillseeking or Dreamfeeding.




Dark Horizons


Book Description

First published in 2003. With essays by an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars, Dark Horizons focuses on the development of critical dystopia in science fiction at the end of the twentieth century. In these narratives of places more terrible than even the reality produced by the neo-conservative backlash of the 1980s and the neoliberal hegemony of the 1990s, utopian horizons stubbornly anticipate a different and more just world. The top-notch team of contributors explores this development in a variety of ways: by looking at questions of form, politics, the politics of form, and the form of politics. In a broader context, the essays connect their textual and theoretical analyses with historical developments such as September 11th, the rise and downturn of the global economy, and the growth of anti-capitalist movements.




Unveiling the Post-human


Book Description

This electronic book gathers twenty papers presented at the 6th Global Conference Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction, which took place in the Mansfield College of Oxford, between the 12th and the 14th of July 2011.




Disability Identity in Simulation Narratives


Book Description

Disability Identity in Simulation Narratives considers the relationship between disability identity and simulation activities (ranging from traditional gameplay to more revolutionary technology) in contemporary science fiction. Anelise Haukaas applies posthumanist theory to an examination of disability identity in a variety of science fiction texts: adult novels, young adult literature and comics, as well as ethnographic research with gamers. Haukaas argues that instead of being a means of escapism, simulated experiences are a valuable tool for cultivating self-acceptance and promoting empathy. Through increasingly accessible technology and innovative gameplay, traditional hierarchies are dismantled, and different ways of being are both explored and validated. Ultimately, the book aims to expand our understandings of disability, performance, and self-creation in significant ways by exploring the boundless selves that the simulated environments in these texts allow.




The Palm at the End of the Mind


Book Description

This selection of works by Wallace Stevens--the man Harold Bloom has called “the best and most representative American poet”--was first published in 1967. Edited by the poet's daughter Holly Stevens, it contains all the major long poems and sequences, and every shorter poem of lasting value in Stevens' career, including some not printed in his earlier Collected Works. Included also is a short play by Stevens, "Bowl, Cat and Broomstick."




Cyberpunk Women, Feminism and Science Fiction


Book Description

This analysis of cyberpunk science fiction written between 1981 and 2003 positions women's cyberpunk in the larger cultural discussion of feminist issues. It traces the origins of the genre, reviews the critical reactions and outlines the ways in which women's cyberpunk advances points of view that are specifically feminist. Novels are examined within their cultural contexts; their content is compared to broader controversies within contemporary feminism, and their themes are revealed as reflections of feminist discourse around the turn of the 21st century. Chapters cover topics such as globalization, virtual reality, cyborg culture, environmentalism, religion, motherhood and queer rights. Interviews with feminist cyberpunk authors are provided, revealing both their motivations for writing and their experiences with fans. The study treats feminist cyberpunk as a unique vehicle for examining contemporary women's issues and analyzes feminist science fiction as a complex source of political ideas.




Simulacrum America


Book Description

A collection of articles that analyses the role of the media in America from a deconstructionist viewpoint. This collection of original essays is a response to the paradigm shift that has taken place in cultural studies in the wake of postmodernism and poststructuralism. Such concepts as 'truth' or 'reality' have been increasingly called into question, since the realization that our experience of 'the real' is always mediated through an "empire of signs," as Roland Barthes put it. After a predominantly optimistic evaluation of the effects of the media in the 1960s (by Marshall McLuhan, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and others), a growing awareness of the total manipulation of society by mass-media imagery has emerged. The very concept of 'representation' has become problematic, witness the influential essay "The Precession of Simulacra" by the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, in which he defines simulation as "the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal"- the current boom in 'realityTV' comes to mind. In the seventeen years since the publication of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, ever more sophisticated technologies based on the computer as the simulacrum machine par excellence have offered us powerful new means of manipulating data - and consequently, means of manipulating, editing, and inventing 'reality.' The aim of this study is to unmask false 'representations', showing history, personal and cultural identity (especially gender and racial identities), the simulacrum of speed -- and American 'reality' itself -- to be constructs.




Beginning iOS Game Development


Book Description

Get in the game and start building games for the iPhone or iPad! Whether you only have a little experience with iOS programming or even none at all, this accessible guide is ideal for getting started developing games for the iPhone and iPad. Experienced developer and author Patrick Alessi presents the iOS system architecture, gives you the step-by-step of game development, and introduces the languages used to develop games. From the basic building blocks to including drawing, responding to user interaction, animation, and sound, this book provides a one-stop-shop for getting your game up and running. Explores the tools and methodology used to develop games for the iPhone and iPad Requires no previous experience with building a game for the iOS platform Details how iOS games require different considerations than other applications Addresses working with the Xcode programming environment, how to draw with the Quartz 2D API, ways to handle user input, and techniques for incorporating animation with Core Animation and sound with Core Audio If you're ready to jump on the gaming app bandwagon, then this book is what you need to get started!




Pat Cadigan SF Gateway Omnibus


Book Description

From the SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal sample introduction to the compelling work of Pat Cadigan, two-times winner of the ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD. Pat Cadigan has been dubbed 'the Queen of Cyberpunk' but her novels defy such narrow categorisation. In addition to winning two ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDs and a WORLD FANTASY AWARD, she has been nominated for the HUGO, NEBULA and PHILIP K. DICK AWARDs and garnered praise from such genre heavyweights as Neil Gaiman, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Few writers are as adept at facing the onrushing near-future as Pat Cadigan, and this volume perfectly showcases that skill, featuring TEA FROM AN EMPTY CUP, PHILIP K. DICK AWARD-finalist MINDPLAYERS and the ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD-winning FOOLS.




Science Fact and Science Fiction


Book Description

Science fiction is a literary genre based on scientific speculation. Works of science fiction use the ideas and the vocabulary of all sciences to create valid narratives that explore the future effects of science on events and human beings. Science Fact and Science Fiction examines in one volume how science has propelled science-fiction and, to a lesser extent, how science fiction has influenced the sciences. Although coverage will discuss the science behind the fiction from the Classical Age to the present, focus is naturally on the 19th century to the present, when the Industrial Revolution and spectacular progress in science and technology triggered an influx of science-fiction works speculating on the future. As scientific developments alter expectations for the future, the literature absorbs, uses, and adapts such contextual visions. The goal of the Encyclopedia is not to present a catalog of sciences and their application in literary fiction, but rather to study the ongoing flow and counterflow of influences, including how fictional representations of science affect how we view its practice and disciplines. Although the main focus is on literature, other forms of science fiction, including film and video games, are explored and, because science is an international matter, works from non-English speaking countries are discussed as needed.