Call for papers, international conference and Ph.D. course (09-10.06.11): Papers are invited for a themed conference on the concept of World-Building in science, fiction and fantasy. The conference will investigate the process of creating and recreating earths, planets, time-schemes, biology, languages, social and cultural systems within imagined spaces that reflect back on the way we see our world. Paper deadline: March 15.

Please email 300 word abstracts to Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay by 30 March 2011.

As thematic starting points, world-building may be understood as a bridge between the world as given and world as possibility, the premise of much technological or extrapolative fiction. In this analysis, world-building might be understood as an extension of the real world seeking to uncover future directions of human endeavour. It is equally possible to see world-building as a way of revealing the semantic and cognitive limits and fault-lines of the empirical world, and not necessarily within fiction: ‘descriptive’ and not ‘predictive’. And it is also possible to separate out and focus on world-building as a creative exercise whose origin is the creator’s own psycho-social drives and imagination.

It can be argued that Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF) build worlds in a way different from other literary genres. Other genres manipulate the human consciousness within the world as a given in which experiences might be individual but the relations between objects and subjects themselves remain fundamentally unaltered. SFF severs the givenness of this link between objects and subjects, thus attempting to alter the definition of consciousness itself. A basic assortment of concepts within SFF — extra-planetary life-forms, time-travel, terraforming, inter-planetary travel, artificial intelligence — reveals this fascinating dimension.

It must be acknowledged however that the de-naturalisation and de-familiarisation in world-building works only with ‘orienting components’ in SFF. Even as SFF creates these alternate spaces, it retains elements of the ‘real world’ that allow us to compare our own perception of the real with the fictional. This is the space where the social function of SFF merges with the aesthetic function; the spaces that this seminar wishes to foreground.

This conference explores the process of world-building in an international writer’s conference and an associated academic seminar.

Papers are invited on any of the following themes:

1. Scientific factors: What is the role of real science in the dynamics of world-building? What is the impact of science on fiction? In what ways are science and fiction linked in visions of alternate worlds?
2. Social factors: Do colonialism, social iniquity and imbalance, gender issues provide the impetus for the creation of alternate worlds? In what ways are these factors reintroduced in the new fictional worlds?
3. The non-human: How does the non-human impact the creation of alternate worlds? How do considerations of nature, insect and animal life, and technology challenge or alter anthropocentric views of the world?
4. The human: How do considerations of the human affect the landscapes of alternate worlds? What is the role of biological knowledge, of race and gender, for instance, in SFF?
5. Language and world-building: What role does language play in altered worlds? Does one have to change language to create an altered reality? What do neologisms achieve in SFF worlds?
6. Time and Space: How do time and space function as axes of alternate world reality? How can we understand the role of real space on alternate space and real time on alternate time (and vice versa)?
7. Alternate realities: What is the function and significance of alternate worlds? Do these worlds dismantle the rigid boundaries of reality, or reveal the glimmering horizons of an unbounded reality?

This conference is being organized by Kultrans (Cultural Transformations in the Age of Globalization) and the sub-programme for literary studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Oslo.

Invited authors

Zoran Zivkovic

Andreas Eschbach

Anil Menon

Claude Lalumiere

Jon Bing and Tor Age Bringsværd (to be confirmed)

Invited critics

1. Andy Sawyer

Andy Sawyer is librarian of the Science Fiction Foundation Collection at the University of Liverpool Library, Course Director of the MA in Science Fiction Studies offered by the School of English, Reviews Editor of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, and a widely-published critic and reviewer. He has published essays on (among others) children’s/young adult sf, John Wyndham, Telepathy, Babylon 5, “Reverse-Time Narratives”, Ramsey Campbell, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Terry Pratchett. He co-edited the collection “Speaking Science Fiction” (Liverpool University Press, 2000) and was an Advisory Editor for and contributor to the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders edited by Gary Westfahl (Greenwood Press, 2005), and contributor to numerous other reference books on science fiction/fantasy, most recently The Blackwell Companion to Science Fiction, the Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, and the Routledge Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction.

He recently co-edited (with David Ketterer) Plan for Chaos, a previously-unpublished novel by John Wyndham, and forthcoming is a book (co-edited with Peter Wright) on teaching Science Fiction as part of the Palgrave “Teaching the New English” series. He is the 2008 recipient of the Science Fiction Research association’s Clareson Award for services to science fiction.

2. Paul Andrew March-Russell

Dr Paul March-Russell teaches English and Comparative Literature at the University of Kent, Canterbury.  His publications include The Short Story: An Introduction (Edinburgh University Press, 2009) as well as articles on, amongst others, J.G. Ballard, William Gibson and Joanna Russ. He is general editor of the “SF Storyworlds” series published by Gylphi.

3. Suchitra Mathur

Suchitra Mathur, associate professor of English at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India, is a teacher-scholar working primarily in the fields of cultural studies and feminist literature with the Indian subcontinent as her area of specialisation. She teaches courses ranging from Postcolonial theory/literature to Science Fiction and Detective Fiction, while her research work extends to a study of graphic novels and Hindi cinema. She has published numerous papers on these topics and is co-editor of Reading With a Difference: Gender, Race, and Cultural Identity (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993).

4. Farah Mendlesohn

Farah Mendlesohn is Reader in Science Fiction and Fantasy at the University of Middlesex, London. She is the author of Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008), Diana Wynne Jones and the Children’s Fantastic Tradition (2005), co-author of A Short History of the Fantastic (2009), and co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction and the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Fantasy (2011). She won the Hugo in 2005.

5. Debraj Mookerjee

Debraj Mookerjee is Associate Professor of English Literature in Ramjas College at the University of Delhi. He is part of a core group of scholars who have endeavoured to include and nurture popular fiction studies in the University’s curriculum for English literature. He teaches and researches popular fiction forms, including Sci-Fi, Detective Fiction and Thrillers. He has published papers on the application of detective fictional strategies in the assessment of fiction (e.g., ‘Stein’s Presence in Lord Jim: More of Scorn than Schon,’ Yearly Review Number 6, December 1992, which seeks to establish Stien as Jewel’s father through detective analysis). He writes in popular journals in India, on topics such as the landscape of the future in urban India, the discourse of advertising and the shaping of the globalised and emergent Indian middle classes, and the impact of mass media in the process of social transformation, especially the often-difficult transition (both metaphorical and literal) from rural and semi-urban, to metropolitan India. Apart from his academic work, Mookerjee also contributes to contemporary debates in India as a columnist. He writes regular columns for national newspapers like the Times of India, New Indian Express and The Pioneer, on subjects related to globalization, developmental issues, education, urbanization and the mass media.

My concerns arose first as I listened to several papers in which references were made to Nigerians and the least welcome of strangers, even amongst strangers, both within other African nations as well as in Europe and North America. I sat listening to these references – all made respectfully and in light of stereotyping in the media and on the street – but realizing that no one knew that I have a Nigerian Passport, that my children are citizens of both Canada and Nigeria. There was something about sitting there and not being known, perhaps not wanting to be known, that I think reveals something important about the process and experience of being a stranger. Maybe it has something to do with the manner in which we co-opt others, maybe it has something to do with the manner in which we fashion our assumptions about others so that we don’t see their otherness, for sure it had something to do with our, with my desire not to be identified as the other, regardless of our privilege (as a white, educated woman in this context) that was revealed in and through my experience of hearing these views articulated and being silent. I’m not sure but I think that there is something telling in that moment –something about our understanding and use of self/other distinctions.

This sense that we need to rethink the model we so readily and willingly adopt when investigating the experience of strangers, foreigners and aliens, was strengthened when I found myself amidst several conversations outside the conference room in which the issues raised in “theory” were placed in context. That is, when the theoretical issues became our personal concerns – when they moved within the boundaries of “our” countries, “our” neighbourhoods – when the losses and costs of seeing strangers as one of “us” and not one of “them” suddenly became “our” losses and “our” costs to be paid. I would be remiss if I didn’t express my disappointment in hearing all the values and insights gained in one forum — in our theoretical reflections — quickly abandoned, perhaps bartered away, when placed within the framework of our own lives. How fragile our understanding! Indeed, perhaps it is not/was not understanding at all if it cannot withstand our movement from one venue to another.

Finally, listening to the attempts to frame the issues we discussed using this model it seemed that there was an over-extension of the language of self and other. When we begin to have to frame the problems we are facing by discussing the othering of others – that is when we have long chains of reference, when such awkward construction is necessary, it suggests that something is “off” in either the language or our understanding of the problem at hand. Moreover, there was the application of the language of self and other to circumstances in which individuals and indeed whole populations were rendered invisible (detainees behind walls, refugee populations moved to remote locations, immigrants living in separate ‘camps,’ for lack of a better word). The model of self and other is grounded in/on the model of vision (rightly or wrongly). We must see the other in order to see the self. The two are interdependent. When these groups/individuals are rendered invisible, the model – the very logic of self and other – cannot be employed.

The same hold true for the opposite experience as well. Since the conference I’ve been thinking about the reverse side of this experience. Let me explain. While we try to “disappear” the other from our sight, we keep these strangers under ever more surveillance. There is no space that they can escape being watched. They are ever and always visible. Again, it seems that the language of self and other doesn’t adequately capture these experiences as the “self” is never present (given technology allows for distancing) and indeed, often the other doesn’t know that he or she is being watched.

All this got me thinking how the language of self and other fits less and less with lived experience. It seems unable to account for the complex layering and pattering of self-other relationships. Djemila and I were discussing this problem in relation to our own experiences. She mentioned how she is an Arab woman who is highly educated. How does the model apply to her? Is she self or other? Her experience seems more and more the norm. Consider how many of us at the conference crossed the divide based on our nationality, religion, language,gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, etc.. I thought of the experiences of my children as well. My son just returned from Nigeria. In Canada he is black, in Nigeria he is white. How can the model explain these shifts? Or consider what happens when I put all five of my kids together. They are mixed race but one considers himself black, one is sure he is white and the three girls flit between the two identifications. This is the case despite the fact they have all been raised in the same house, in the same neighbourhood for the first 15 years of each of their lives. These cases point towards the limitations of using this model.

So what is the alternative? Alejandro suggested that the language of alterity might offer a better fit. I’m still hunting down the etymology of the word. But, with all due respect, I wonder if it is a better alternative, whether it provides us with a means for addressing the complexities of these cases or if it simply hides the complexities they encompass behind new and increasingly complex levels of abstraction. Djemila suggested that we become more specific, more particular rather than increasingly general when naming the problems at hand. What if we called these processes by their names discussing racism, classism, sexism, etc.? What would we gain and what would we lose from both a theoretical and a practical standpoint from adopting this language? There is clearly the potential for greater clarity and more inclusion in the discussion. Moreover, it seems to me we would be speaking to the issues rather than speaking around them. Too often the language of self and other circumvents and/or misdirects the exploration – leading us to talk around the problems, making the move from scholarly discourse to practical response increasingly difficult. Indeed, suggesting and/or encouraging the belief that such a move from theory to practice is unwarranted and unwanted. However, this shift would no doubt make many uncomfortable and unwilling to enter into discussion on these complicated and pressing issues, silencing and blinding us to the complexities at hand.

So there you go. Some reflections and hopefully the beginning of further discussions

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Prof. Wendy O’Brien (Humber College)

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