Fictionality and Infrastructure

The main goal of this text is to show why money is so wildly represented in the sci-fi narrations. The main reason for this is the obscure nature of money - its phantasmatic origin (according to Jan Sowa’s conception). The second reason is the imperative to create a logical and consistent universe in sci-fi narrations. Money, as one of the most important elements of the reality, must be included in the plot. And, last but not least, money and the whole economic and sociological system related to it, is a very useful and powerful tool for critical purposes. In the further parts of the text the author interprets two sci-fi narrations which are emblematic for Polish sci-fi genre - the book Limes inferior by Janusz Zajdel and the movie O-bi, o-ba: Koniec cywilizacji (‘O-bi, O-ba: The End of Civilization’) directed by Piotr Szulkin. These two examples show that money can be used in sci-fi narrations not only as a world-building element, but also as an important critical tool. Because of its nature, the sci-fi genre is particularly predestined to explore the social and political mechanism which stands behind the money and economic system.

The Industrial Revolution is an easily misunderstood event. In many people’s minds the phrase suggests mass production, assembly lines, and the heavy industry of the late nineteenth century, but these things all came much later. When Arnold Toynbee coined the term Industrial Revolution, he applied it to the technology-driven change of British life as it occurred from 1760 to 1840, opening a very large umbrella. Yet even that umbrella still did not cover the first mass production and assembly lines, nor did it encompass our images of modern heavy industry. Toynbee’s dating of the Industrial Revolution starts when its causes were just taking form, and ends when England had become a mature industrial power. He took in the whole saga of the revolution, but within that saga we can identify the Revolution as a much more specific moment in British history. It is the point at which technology suddenly joined hands with radical social and economic changes. In the 1780s Watt’s advanced steam engines, Hargreaves’ spinning jenny, Cort’s improvement of wrought-iron production, and Wilkinson’s cylinder-boring mill all came into being. At the same time, economic theoreticians David Hume and Adam Smith were setting forth a new economic and social system. This convergence of inventions was part and parcel of the other great revolutions of the late eighteenth century—the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and a spate of lesser European revolutions. We have to understand it in the context of those political and social upheavals. In England, social revolution grew out of eighteenth-century Protestant reform. The Wesleyan movement and the various dissident Protestant groups counted the makers of the Industrial Revolution among their members. The mid-eighteenth century was marked by worldwide discontent with authoritarianism and with the tyranny of the mercantile economic system. The French kings loved elaborate clocks and clockwork toys—devices that were completely preprogrammed. By the late seventeenth century, they had joined with the other western European nations in a clockwork economic system as well. The mercantile economic equation specified trade balances, such that raw material flowed in, manufactured goods flowed out, and gold flowed in.

Viral Vampires

There is not a great deal to be said about economics which is truly universal. One can say that economics is the study of economic systems. Economic systems can be defined as systems of human actions concerned with the production and the distribution of goods and services which are scarce relative to the wants of the community. But statements of this kind, which attempt to define the economic aspect of human society in universally valid terms, are far too general to serve as premises from which an economic theory, useful for understanding actual economic problems, can be logically deduced. To have theory, one must start with premises and assumptions about some particular economic system, historically given, or some particular kind of economic system. The great bodies of economic thought of the Western world—mercantilism, classical and neo-classical economic liberalism, and the various schools of Marxist economic—have been theories relevant to particular economic systems: those, let us say, of the Western world in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

SCIENCE FICTION by Sherryl Vint. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2021. 224 pages. Paperback; $15.95. ISBN: 9780262539999. *Science Fiction is the story of the romance between fiction and science. The goal of the book is not to define the history or essence of science fiction, but rather to explore what it "can do" (p. 3). How does fiction affect scientific progress? How does it influence which innovations we care about? In the opposite direction, what bearing does science have on the stories that are interesting to writers at a point in time? Science Fiction references hundreds of books to paint a cultural narrative surrounding science fiction. Throughout the book, Vint refers to the fiction as ‘sf' in order to avoid distinctions between science fiction and speculative fiction. The dynamic between science and fiction is a relationship defined by both scientific progress and by forming judgments of the direction of development through a lens of fiction. Fiction is cause and effect; we use fiction to reflect upon changes in the world, and we use fiction to explore making change. *Vint, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and of English at the University of California, Riverside, gives overviews of different areas of sf. These include some of the most common sf elements, such as utopias and dystopias (chap. 2), as well as relatively recent concerns, such as climate change (chap. 7). Through these questions, she is navigating one question: how does sf engage with the world? It is more complex than the commonly reflected-upon narrative that sf is an inspiration to inventors--it is a relationship moving in both directions and involves value judgments as well as speculation about scientific possibilities. *The book also navigates the attitudes at the root of sf. Vint presents sf as a fundamentally hopeful, perhaps even an optimistic, genre. She describes sf as "equally about frightening nightmares and wondrous dreams" (p. 13). Yet even dystopian stories require hope for a future. Showing the world gone wrong still requires "the seeds of believing that with better choices we might avoid these nightmares" (p. 32). This is certainly true in the discussion of climate change sf. Where nonfiction writing often focuses on the impartial mitigation of disasters, the heart of fiction offers "the possibility to direct continuous change toward an open future that we (re)make" (p. 136). *The most surprising chapter is the penultimate one, focusing on economics (chap. 8). Vint discusses the recent idea of money as a "social technology" (p. 143) and the ways our current economy is increasingly tied to science, including through AI market trading and the rise of Bitcoin. The chapter also focuses on fiction looking at alternative economic systems--how will the presence or absence of scarcity, altered by technology, change the economic system? Answers to this and similar questions have major implications on the stories we tell and the way we seek to structure society. *As Christians, we have stories to help us deal with our experiences in life and our hope for the future. Science Fiction discusses sf as the way that our communities, including the scientific community, process life's challenges and form expectations for the future. We must not only repeat the stories from scripture, but also participate in the formation of the cultural narratives as ambassadors of Christ. While Science Fiction does not discuss the role of religion in storytelling, the discussion of our ambitions and expectations for the future is ripe for a Christian discussion. *Vint describes sf as a navigational tool for the rapid changes occurring in the world. Science Fiction references many titles that illustrate the different roles sf has played at historical points and that continue to form culture narratives. While some pages can feel like a dense list of titles, it is largely a book expressing excitement about the power and indispensability of sf. I would recommend this book for those who want to think about interactions between fiction, science, and culture, or learn about major themes of sf, as well as those interested in broadening the horizons of their sf reading. *Reviewed by Elizabeth Koning, graduate student in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801.

This is the first volume to appear in the 'Origins of the Modern State in Europe' series, which arises from an important international research programme sponsored by the European Sciences Foundation.The aim of the series, which comprises seven volumes, is to bring together specialists from different countries, who reinterpret from a comparative European perspective, different aspects of the formation of the state over the long period from the beginning of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. One of the main achievements of the research programme has been to overcome the long-established historiographical tendency to regard states mainly form the viewpoint of their twentieth-century borders. Economic Systems and State Finance offers a new approach to the development of the state finance and fiscal systems in Europe. It covers a broad chronological span, beginning with a reassessment of the feudal system and beginnings of state finance, and counting with developments within a comparative European framework as far as 1815 when Britain emerged as the only state to have achieved economic hegemony. The conclusions are presented in four thematic chapters on expenditure, revenues, public credit, and the fiscal burden. The text is underpinned by the comprehensive apparatus of 97 figures, drawn from an important research database established during the research programme. Economic Systems and State Finance is a significant work of scholarship, which will make a permanent contribution to historical debate.

This is the first volume to appear in the 'Origins of the Modern State in Europe' series, which arises from an important international research programme sponsored by the European Sciences Foundation.The aim of the series, which comprises seven volumes, is to bring together specialists from different countries, who reinterpret from a comparative European perspective, different aspects of the formation of the state over the long period from the beginning of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. One of the main achievements of the research programme has been to overcome the long-established historiographical tendency to regard states mainly form the viewpoint of their twentieth-century borders. Economic Systems and State Finance offers a new approach to the development of the state finance and fiscal systems in Europe. It covers a broad chronological span, beginning with a reassessment of the feudal system and beginnings of state finance, and counting with developments within a comparative European framework as far as 1815 when Britain emerged as the only state to have achieved economic hegemony. The conclusions are presented in four thematic chapters on expenditure, revenues, public credit, and the fiscal burden. The text is underpinned by the comprehensive apparatus of 97 figures, drawn from an important research database established during the research programme. Economic Systems and State Finance is a significant work of scholarship, which will make a permanent contribution to historical debate.

This collection of translations is interesting, useful, and enjoyable. It introduces a philosophy little known in either English or the Western world. Russian Cosmism was a progressive movement in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Russia. It was an intellectual counter to the rational Futurism that would eventually take hold as the guiding functionalist art and scientific ideology of the Soviet Union. Cosmism sought to understand the totality of human civilization with the universe as the basic unit of analysis. Sunspots, cosmic rays, and interstellar interactions with planet Earth could and did have an impact on human societies and political, economic, social, and artistic structures. It may seem far-fetched to the modern reader, but in a world where the Syrian War was brought about by climate change drought, where Russia's and China's reemergence into Arctic geopolitics has been brought about by warming seawaters and melting ice, and where Pacific Island nations are changing entire nation-state structures around rising ocean levels, a philosophy with a planetary perspective on human-nature interrelationality might be equally relevant today.The book presents a series of translations of the key exponents of Russian Cosmism. There are original essays here in English translation from Alexander Chizhevsky, Nikolai Fedorov, Alexander Svyatogor, Valerian Muravyev, Konstantin Tsoilkovsky, and Alexander Bogdanov. Most of the authors are represented by multiple essays, making this a really excellent compendium of primary sources of Russian Cosmism in English. Under the umbrella of the science and art futurism of Cosmism, the collection covers astronomy, architecture, mathematics, anarchist politics, and science fiction. Such is the scope of the philosophy that it would be useful for anthropologists, historians, political scientists, visual artists, cultural theorists, and Russian area studies experts. Particularly given the renewed attention on Eurasianism in contemporary Russian political ideology, there should also be quite an interest in a revival of the understanding of Cosmism from the perspective of Russia's political and cultural reemergence.Cosmism was really about technology transforming society and art. Much of it seems science fiction to the contemporary reader, but Cosmism is the philosophical basis for much twentieth-century science fiction that later did become reality, in the development of space travel, modern medicine, global economic systems, and the melding of technology with everyday human life. Cosmist ideas were some of the first to take space travel as a serious engineering project, and ideas of immortality and resurrection through advanced biology are evidenced today in cloning, species revival, molecular medicine, and biochemistry. Culturally, Cosmism is the guiding philosophy behind science fiction, and from a cultural tradition that yielded so much science fiction that it helped to shape the present reality, perhaps global problems of climate change, clean energy transitions, food security, and oceans management could benefit from a reimagining of Cosmism, which had a strong influence in both cultural and scientific spheres and politically was also a forerunner of the transhumanist movement.There are some truly outlandish ideas represented here though, for example, the Tektology of unifying all scientific systems as a means of conquering death and bringing in immortality through the human resurrection of anastasis. Whole-Earth command-economy structures are a foreshadow of the worst manias of the Soviet economic system. There are also the concepts of panpsychism, where atoms have feelings and therefore everything in the universe has consciousness derived from the atomic level, and Chizhevsky's heliobiology, where sunspots influence political movements through mass psychology. And in the “biopower” of Cosmism, we get the foreshadow of Eurasianism and the Gumilevian biopolity. Bogdanov brings it all back down to Earth on a more practical sociological level, arguing that if Cosmism is to be applicable to humanity, then humanity must converge into a monist unitary bloc. Therefore throughout all of this Cosmist thinking weaves the singularly Russian formation of monism and messianism, almost ensuring that Cosmism could only ever remain in the Russosphere and never achieve the planetary acceptance it would need to flourish.Criticisms are mostly for the sake of criticism, and this is a fine and valuable book. The only thing I would have liked to see more of would be the poets and artists who developed Cosmism, as the volume tends toward the scientific and philosophical spectrum. As much of the online e-flux material is focused on the art side of the science-art meld, it could have been interesting to see more of it presented here. There are misprints in Tsoilkovsky's “The Future of Earth and Mankind,” with are instead of acre occurring multiple times. Wider criticisms are of taking Cosmism itself too seriously. The usual criticisms of Russian political philosophy apply here; there is always talk of “the masses” and of “workers” or “great armies” but little conception of where these people should come from sociologically or where they should fit into the new Cosmist society. Taking a mass of people for granted was the failure of most twentieth-century political philosophical thinking. And it seems indelible to Cosmist thinking too.While the arguments are barely scientific and not particularly convincing to typologize the entirety of global human history into a single causal factor on the scale of the universe, these are all interesting essays that, if nothing else, help deepen our understanding of Russian social and art history. Something essentially Russian is here—that in the pursuit of the rational in the 1920s and 1930s scientific and futurist movements, the Russian avant-garde came up with some novel ideas, which evolved independently of anything in Europe and persist through to today in institutional legacies within Russian social and political systems and theories. This is important to understand for anyone seeking to gain insight into contemporary Russian society or the wider Eurasian Russosphere. And as much as this book should celebrate the authors of Cosmism, there should also be a celebration and recognition of the translators who have brought these works into English: Ian Dreiblatt, Thomas Campbell, Caroline Rees, Anastasia Skoybedo, and Anastasiya Osipova.The ideas expressed in this volume are radical and utopian. And they are one hundred years old, from a time of far less technological sophistication than today. But the writers' ability to dream and imagine better futures is a kind of vision that carried science and art through the twentieth century, and it is one that we have often given up on and delegated to a social strata of scientists and technologists. Atomic energy sounds fanciful when put in nineteenth-century science-fiction terms. But to read Muravyev reason out and feel out a way toward harnessing atomic energy makes us believe in the future again and in imagining yet better futures. Perhaps that is the utopic element, that dreams and visions make our artistic, scientific, and social realities. Cosmism, for all its practical faults, was a vision—a gaze into a future where humanity could control more than it could then and can now. If only as a reminder of what creative vision can accomplish in science and material reality, Russian Cosmism maintains relevance today. Our technology is our defining feature, and it is through technology that our visions and arts are now seen. Cosmism itself presented many faults; most ideas would be infuriating to serious scientists of the twenty-first century. But presented as an inspiration to new generations of futurists, Cosmism still has a lot to offer our collective imagination.

In this volume the author describes more than 3000 short stories, novels, and plays with science fiction elements, from earliest times to 1930. He includes imaginary voyages, utopias, Victorian boys' books, dime novels, pulp magazine stories, British scientific romances and mainstream work with science fiction elements. Many of these publications are extremely rare, surviving in only a handful of copies, and most of them have never been described before. Each of the entries is exhaustive, with bibliography, including previous periodical publications, and a full summary of the story, with historical and critical comments. Author biographical data, where available, accompanies each item. An appendix surveys ideas and systems that have proved important in early science fiction, such as Atlantis, Fourierism, the single tax, Theosophy, the hollow earth, the open polar seas and similar concepts. The text also includes title, author, date and magazine indexes as well as a 65-page motif and thematic index. The author's introduction aims to provide a fresh understanding of the nature of science fiction and its origins, and contains an exhaustive analytical table of science fiction motifs as they fit into the conceptual scheme of the sciences. In addition to its obvious value to the field of science fiction, the book covers many powerful issues in American cultural history - feminism, racial and ethnic prejudices, crank scientific theories, extreme social and economic systems, occult ideas, and descriptions of varying attitudes toward science and advanced technology.

This original teaching idea is designed for a course unit on protest communication. It consists of a performed protest speech, dubbed the “fantastical speech,” and a post-speech reflective analysis. Students utilize the subversive genre of fanfiction to compose a protest speech in which, as a fictional character, they convince their fictional audience to change the canonical plot of their fictional universe. Students will leave the activity with an understanding of protest communication and the ability to convey their own protest messages effectively. Courses: Persuasion, Social Movements, Introduction to Rhetoric, Argumentation, Public Advocacy, Civic Engagement, Political Communication, Public Speaking. Objectives: This unit activity invites students to change the canonical plot of one of their favorite fictional universes by taking on the persona of a fictional character and engaging other members of that universe to make a dramatic, noncanonical change. By the end of this unit activity, students will: (1) understand the purpose, place, and other generic features of protest communication; (2) name, define, and utilize specific communication strategies to convey their own protest message effectively; (3) perform their own preprepared protest speech; and (4) concisely reflect on their invention and delivery processes using communicative theories of activism, advocacy, and social protest.

Written registers in English have undergone extensive stylistic change over the past four centuries, in response to changes in the purposes of communication, the demographics of the reading public and attitudinal preferences of authors. For example, Biber and Finegan (1989, 1997) document the way in which written prose registers in the seventeenth century were already quite different from conversational registers, and how those registers evolved to become even more distinct from speech over the course of the eighteenth century.

Introduction How often have you heard a lie so well told, so plausible and embellished with facts that you began to believe it? Better yetwhen you're the teller-has your lie been swallowed by others so completely that it assumes a shared reality for all whom it touches? If so, you've likely participated in the petit indulgence of novelists, historians, politicians and the criminally insane. Crafting lies about the future is the highly suspect activity of fortune tellers, science fiction writers and planners. Whether the time is the future or the past, good lies can be a fearsome delight that alters prosaic notions of reality. They become true. Since more and more designers are calling themselves planners these days, clearly they're fancying themselves futurists and forecasters. the future is usually an expression of optimism. It is a natural activity in a world of inherent opportunity, complexity, and risk. Its source is an implicit assumption that the future is not predetermined and that some futures are preferable to others. The postmodernist's ambition to influence events, however grand or intimate the scale, reveals something about core life assumptions. The futurist's optimism is an uncomfortable one born out of apprehension and acknowledgment of the complex, nondeterministic, and potentially chaotic behavior of systems. Social and economic systems have become increasingly complex and unpredictable, given the acceleration of technological innovation. Within this dynamic atmosphere, forecasting can be a complicated, perhaps impossible task. Nevertheless, the literature on forecasting is substantial and methods exist to mitigate some of the more embarrassing mistakes that characterize the checkered history of futurism. In fact the stakes of not planning can be very high. To paraphrase. the adage, the value of plans is debatable, but planning itself is absolutely invaluable. In the following we examine various prospects for design as a profession. In doing so we use the strategic approaches of Arie de Geus1 and Peter Schwartz2 in identifying global forces and localized key factors on which may turn the future practice of design. Our premise is that forecasting can ultimately generate insight, and that tactical construction of multiple scenarios for the future is wiser and more useful than focusing one's elaborations upon any one 1 Arie de Geus, Planning as Learning, Harvard Business Review(March/April 1988): 70-74. 2 Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View (New York: Doubleday, 1991).

Introduction. The era of Peter the Great was characterized by the activation and significant growth of the economy of the Russian state. There was a further strengthening of the All-Russian market communications. Progressive accumulation of statistics, which describe the functioning of local markets, a significant number of which operated on the basis of county-towns, is the main research direction of studying of this process. Alatyrsky county was one of the largest counties of the Mordovian area and the Sura region. To the beginning of XVIII century the town is transformed into a significant commercial center and transit point of the Sura region. In the funds of the Russian state archive of ancient acts was remained «The book of Alatyrsky customs duty» of 1714, which is not only the most valuable source of study of local trade in the era of Peter’s reforms, but also it allows us to trace the economic development of Alatyrsky county in the first quarter of the XVIII century. Methods. The analysis of the considered problem is based on the principles of historicism and objectivity. Following these principles, such methods were used: statistical, historical-comparative, historical-genetic, structural, abstract-logical. Results and Discussion. The customs book in 1714 recorded 59 facts of import of goods to Alatyrsky county and 186 facts of purchase of goods for sale outside the county. In total to the county it was delivered goods for total amount 1 382,485 rubles and exported to 11 485,43 rubles. The analysis of personal structure of participants of transactions showed that to the county the goods were imported generally by townspeople. The composition of personnel, who export goods from the county is about equally from townspeople and peasants. This fact tells about the active participation in the commercial life of the region. All goods which were taken out from Alatyr and its county were divided into three groups – production of agriculture and forest crafts (mainly hunting and apiculture), and also handicrafts. Since the dominant place in the production activity of the population of the region in the period under review was agriculture, in the structure of exported agricultural products the most important place is belonged to grain and raw materials for leather production. It was also revealed the dominance in the local market of agricultural products over the traditional for the region goods of apiculture and hunting (fur) crafts. Conclusions. Quite successful solution to the problems aimed to activating the economic life of the Russian state contributed to the formation of regional economic systems (on the basis of some counties) in the economic space of the region. This process took place in the historically developed specialized zone of localization of resources and factors of economic process. Besides, during the considered time the general territorial infrastructure is finally formed, the specification of relations between the participants of local markets is determined, and also centers of development in the economic regional system of Alatyrsky county are singled out. As a whole, the formation of the county economic regional system occurred in the general mainstream of integration processes of incorporation of the Mordovian area not only into the system of authorities and social stratification of the population of the Russian state, but also into the national economy due to folding of the uniform all-Russian market. Keywords: economy, customs book, product, handicraft, crafts, market, fair, trade relations, peasantry, townspeople.

Cyberpunk literature encapsulates the genre's essence by representing technology integration and human existence in a dark, impending future. It shows a society rife with disparities and introduces unconventional heroes who navigate a world where the boundaries between the virtual and tangible realms. The primary objective of this research is to examine the representations of Virtual Reality and Alternate Reality in cyberpunk literature, mainly focusing on Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash." The focus lies on how this significant work illustrates the portrayal of virtual and alternate realities in American science fiction, viewed through Postmodernism Literary Theory. An extensive discussion revealed that "Snow Crash" is a platform for addressing societal issues through its sturdy framework, examination of human interactions, and ethical considerations. It allows writers to explore intricate ideas, particularly emphasizing the significance of technology and scientific advancement. This exploration delves into the transformative potential of technology on society, ethics, and human experience, allowing for insightful social commentary. Also, "Snow Crash" mirrors societal shifts in scientific, technological, social, and cultural aspects affected by economic systems like mass consumerism and multinational capitalism. It embodies a paradigm that vividly portrays postmodern ideology, challenging established notions, especially concerning identity, within postmodern societies. Finally, the study's implications and limitations are discussed.

Western trade in the Ottoman Empire: questions, issues and sources The issue of Western trade and that of its legal framework, the capitulations, has always been viewed as crucial in the understanding of certain transformations undergone by the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The implicit argument behind these statements is that, in the long run, Western trade and economic presence in the Levant has worked towards the gradual integration of the Ottoman Empire into an economic system that came to be dominated by Western powers. This integration, in turn, has generally been described in rather negative terms, ranging from (Ottoman) passivity to signs of an impending domination of the Ottoman economy by the commercial and industrial supremacy of Europe. In that sense, it is rather striking that most scenarios concerning the evolution of Western trading activity in the eastern Mediterranean basin tend to reinforce the often-criticised vision of decline applied to the Ottoman Empire as a whole and, more particularly, to its military and diplomatic performance against the growing power of Western nations. Political and diplomatic in essence as it may have been, the Eastern Question is inextricably linked to the outcome of over three centuries of commercial interaction between Europe and the Ottomans. This, one may argue, is even truer of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While the sixteenth century is generally associated with the emergence of the Ottoman capitulatory regime and the granting of the first commercial ‘privileges’ to the French and the English, the implicit understanding is that these treaties were granted out of a combination of a self-assured magnanimity and a desire to forge durable political alliances with certain Western powers.