This thesis explores elements of science fiction in three gothic novels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It begins by explicating the important tropes of science fiction and progresses with a discussion that establishes a connection between three gothic novels and the science fiction genre. This thesis argues that the aforementioned novels express characters’ fear of technology and offer an analysis of human nature that is literarily futuristic. In this view, each of the aforementioned writers uses extreme events in their works to demonstrate that science can contribute to humanity’s understanding of itself. In these works, readers encounter characters who offer commentary on the darker side of the human experience.

Ursula K. Le Guin uses dark and light imagery to emphasize her theme of dynamic equilibrium. This theme can be found throughout her work; the novels discussed are The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, The Dispossessed, and The Beginning Place. In each novel, Le Guin focuses on a different aspect of dynamic equilibrium. The themes are respectively, gender identity, chaos and order, and the individual versus the community. The final novel, The Beginning Place, unites and sums up all three themes. In each novel, one or more main characters suffers from imbalance that reflects the theme of the novel. Throughout the course of the novel, the character learns to find balance, thus resolving the issues that Le Guin discusses.

This thesis contains four stories of fantasy and science fiction. Four story lengths are represented: the short short ("Dragon Lovers"), the shorter short story ("Homecoming"), the longer short story ("Shadow Mistress"), and the novel ("Sword of Albruch," excerpted here).

Heroes Are Born Then Made is a theatre piece involving live actors on stage, and live music originating from an orchestra pit. The script and music is original. The music is meant to literally depict actions and emotions on stage whether the actors are present or not. The duration of the entire production is about two and one-half hours long. Six main actors are used with additional walk-ons. Sixteen musicians are required to make up the orchestra which is organized into a woodwind quartet, a brass trio, a string quartet, a piano, and a percussion quartet. The play is based on the author's conception of how people tend to treat each other when someone is caught at a disadvantage. Specifically it is a depiction of the conflict involved when the minor characters discover that the main character is trying to do something quite different from their definition of "normal."

When the body is observed through a certain combination of technologies, there can be subversive politics to doing anything at all. The nature of media and biopolitics has permitted for a set of systems aimed at total control of the human body; a power which can permeate all facets of life. This thesis is a collection of essays which argues that speculative fiction contains multitudes of approaches to biopolitical discourse, permitting the reader of the text to approach politics from their own set of experiences, but not allowing the political to be ignored. These chapters contain three separate but interrelated arguments regarding the nature of power: “Law, Technology, and the Body,” “Weaponized Media,” and “The Subversive Politics of Doing Anything at All.” This thesis creates working definitions of critical or political concepts which the chapters engage, defining terms such as speculative fiction, formalism, and biopolitics. The texts which these chapters primarily rely upon to convey examples of the visibility of these concepts—the work of Margaret Atwood and David Foster Wallace—will also be explored in these pages, prescribing specific interpretations of their plots and suggesting possible readings of the way the narratives describe technologies. The first chapter, “Law, Technology, and the Body,” posits that computational metaphors for humans are used to enforce power, particularly through the construction of law, which is prominent in works of speculative fiction. This chapter will use biopolitical theory as well as formalist readings to approach the texts: it begins by explaining the biopolitical approach to the texts which permits for such readings, then elaborates upon law, power structures, and technology which affect the body within Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. It ultimately concludes by suggesting that these structures will be visible within all narratives, but particularly prominent in speculative fiction due to the way speculative fiction engages with and responds to the technologies of the real world. The second chapter, “Weaponized Media,” shows that the trope of weaponized media is a compelling lens through which to approach text and an apt metaphor for the relationship between art and power, elucidating its prominence within speculative fiction. This argument relies primarily upon structuralism, linguistic theory, Russian formalism, and conflict theory to explain the highly-politicized use of weapons in these texts. Beginning with a survey of examples of this trope in speculative fiction, particularly within David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, the chapter concludes by reflecting upon the biopolitical structures which contribute to and are reflected by this trope. The final chapter, “The Subversive Politics of Doing Anything at All,” is a cumulation of the prior arguments. Supporting the chapter’s titular thesis, Russian formalism, media theory, and the surveillance and race theory of Simone Browne are used as central tenets to support this argument’s progression. This chapter argues that media propagates norms, that all things are now media. The consequences that follow from the nature of media entail that due to a hyper-connected world and the conflation of fear and terrorism, almost all things can be considered outside the norm—that doing almost anything at all is viewed as subversive by some, particularly by normative structures and governments. Speculative fiction questions these structures, specifically asking the reader to consider the political structures inherent in every action that they might commit to.

It is difficult to say that anything will be proven in this thesis of mine. I think of it more as an account of some things that happened in my artwork over the course of graduate school and my earlier development as an artist. Some influences are listed, but certainly not all of them. Likewise, the work that is mentioned in this paper represents a sampling rather than an in-depth survey. I don't have any tables or charts.

<p>Dwelling with the alterity of the deep sea, my dissertation, "Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater," considers how the ocean environment produces cognitively estranging conditions for conceptualizing media and media theory. Concepts in media theory have thus far exhibited what I call a "terrestrial bias," theorizing primarily dry technologies through a language whose metaphorics have developed through human lives lived on land, rather than in the volume of the sea. In order to better understand the "terrestrial bias" in media theory, I develop a critical method of "conceptual displacement" that involves submerging key concepts in media theory underwater, engaging both literary texts and digital media. Specifically, I turn to Vilém Flusser's speculative fiction text "Vampyroteuthis Infernalis" to rethink "inscription"; ocean data visualizations to rethink "database"; and Jacques Cousteau's diving narratives to rethink "interface." Focusing on the ocean expands the critical discussion of the relation between embodiment and knowledge taken up by feminist science studies, and necessitates the inclusion of the environmental conditions for knowing; our milieu determines the possibilities of our media, and the way that we theorize our media in language. The ocean thus serves as an epistemic environment for thought that estranges us from our terrestrial habits of perception and ways of speaking about media, providing an important check on the limits of theory and terrestrial knowledge production, compelling us to have the humility to continually try to see--and describe--differently. </p><p>Turning to the ocean to rethink concepts in media theory makes apparent the interrelation between technology, desire, ecology, and the survival of human communities. While media theory has long been oriented toward preservation and culture contexts of recording, studying media in ocean contexts requires that we consider conditions that are necessarily but contingently ephemeral. Yet to engage with the ephemeral is also to engage with issues of mortality and the desire towards preservation--of what we want to remain--a question that especially haunts coastal communities vulnerable to sea-level rise. What the ocean teaches us, then, is to reflect on what we want our media technologies to do, as well as the epistemological question of how we are habituated to see and perceive. By considering the ocean as a medium and as an estranging milieu for reconsidering media concepts, I argue for an expanded definition of "media" that accounts for the technicity of natural elements, considering how media futures are not only a matter of new digital innovations, but fundamentally imbricated with the archaic materiality of the analog.</p> / Dissertation

Cette thèse de recherche-création comprend deux parties complémentaires : Hivernages, un roman par fragments, et Habiter l’imaginaire, une étude géocritique des littératures de l’imaginaire au Québec. Ces deux parties explorent les lieux inventés dans la littérature, par la création, puis par l’analyse, et se rejoignent en conclusion. Hivernages : Une année, sans qu’on sache pourquoi, l’hiver ne s’est pas terminé. Depuis, tout est couvert de neige et de froid. Dans une église éventrée, une femme rêve de lieux étranges. Le fleuve charrie des cadavres. Chacun a beaucoup perdu. Talie a été amputée de sa sœur, Sam a laissé partir son grand amour, le vieux a oublié son nom. Socrate, le chien-loup, est redevenu sauvage, et Célia est restée seule dans sa vallée. Ren, l’orphelin, n’a jamais rien eu. Aude est née au cœur d’une tempête, le visage figé dans un rictus étrange. Pourtant, à Ville-réal, la cité souterraine, les vieilles continuent de boire du thé vert et de manger des beignets en parlant de choses ordinaires. Habiter l’imaginaire. Pour une géocritique des lieux inventés : Cette recherche découle d’une série de prémisses. D’abord, l’époque contemporaine se caractérise, entre autres, par une perte de repères spatio-temporels et un sentiment de fragmentation. Ensuite, les œuvres de fiction sont susceptibles de traduire le vécu et les perceptions des humains par rapport à l’espace. Même les lieux fictionnels les moins référentiels révèlent, avant tout, une spatialité contemporaine. Enfin, la nécessité, pour les littératures de l’imaginaire, de contenir leur propre xénoatlas confère une place privilégiée aux lieux dans les récits. De ces prémisses découlent les questions suivantes : est-il pertinent, pour une science des espaces littéraires telle la géocritique, de s’intéresser aux lieux non référentiels ? Si oui, comment s’articulerait une géocritique des lieux inventés ? Quels sont les éléments qui devraient être pris en compte ? Quels outils pourraient être sollicités pour analyser les œuvres ? Le premier chapitre retrace les principales études portant sur la spatialité littéraire, en particulier dans le contexte du tournant spatial qui se dessine en recherche depuis quelques décennies. Il dresse également un état de la question sur les littératures de l’imaginaire. Il en ressort que la géocritique peut et doit s’intéresser aux lieux inventés. Le deuxième chapitre élabore une méthodologie tenant compte des spécificités des littératures de l’imaginaire. Les chapitres trois, quatre, cinq et six analysent quatre œuvres québécoises contemporaines, dans une perspective géocritique. Il s’agit de Récits de Médilhault d’Anne Legault, Les Baldwin de Serge Lamothe, L’aigle des profondeurs d’Esther Rochon et Hôtel Olympia d’Élisabeth Vonarburg. Enfin, en conclusion, les lieux inventés sont revisités, mais du point de vue de l’écriture.

Through the gossip and rumors in a small town in Minnesota, the townspeople discuss and react to the Levison family's claimed perfection.

Frank Herbert’s Dune is generally recognized as the best-selling science fiction novel of all time. While it is commonly referred to as a novel of environmental characteristics, this essay investigates the depiction of society and how the power dynamics in this far future setting are presented. I argue that Dune’s portrayal of power within the state apparatuses of the ideological and repressive kind are to be related to issues and concerns that were observable within the state powers of America and the west during the decades of 1950 and 60. By using the concepts and theories of Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault, I claim that the centralized ideology found within the whole state apparatus of Dune endangers the freedoms of the individual in ways that can be related to its contemporary real-world setting. The first part of the essay is an exploratory investigation in how power is being expressed within the two institutions of the military and the church, as well as how the protagonist deals with the burden of authority. This is analyzed in terms of Althusser’s arguments on the reproduction of ideology and the Foucauldian concepts of biopolitics and disciplinary expressions. The second part revolves around a historicist approach, namely how these expressions within the novel are related to the contemporary setting of the United States and its western neighbours. This latter analysis addresses the foreign and domestic policy of the western powers and how, I argue, these are exemplified to an extent within the pages of the novel. This discussion shows how centralized power is presented as an issue due to the influence of ideology, how the different institutions that we perceive as secular and independent become tools for social injustice. Such instances revolve around the subtle insertion of religious values in state affairs and how imperialist intervention is legitimized by the defense of economic and cultural interests, but also how societies are prone to react in the presence of charismatic leaders. Apart from this I also emphasize how the status and subsequent influential significance of Dune have come to play an important part in the development of its genre and how its capabilities of social commentary have been vital to the emergence of “soft” science fiction.