Future Present: Ethics and/As Science Fiction by Michael Pinsky (review)

Abstract

MLRy 100.3, 2??5 807 knowledge of the US horror film, and he writes with confidence about films from a wide range of cinematic eras and subgenres, Jones's analysis of these texts is more flimsythan his literary analysis, with some of the filmsections in the book appearing rather indexical. This renders the book methodologically uneven, given that the critical histories offeredofeach trope ofhorror literatureare so thoroughly researched. This study often glosses over the industrial contexts of production of the horror film (aside from occasional 'fan fact' anecdotes) and very little attention is paid to the specific detail of mise en scene within the horror genre, concentrating instead on plot and dialogue in the films in question. Furthermore, there is a wealth of critical literature on the horror genre in both film and literature which this study simply does not engage with, such as the wide-ranging work on Gothic horror for women which embraces both literary and filmic texts within its analysis (see, for example, Susanne Becker, Gothic Forms of Feminine Fictions (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999); Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology ofMonsters (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1995); Karen Hollinger, 'The Female Oedipal Drama of Rebecca from Novel to Film', Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 14.4 (1993), 17-30). The book does deal with the critical issues which have surrounded this genre, such as the question of reader/viewer identification, but then fails to draw on the extensive literature available on this subject to inform its lines of enquiry. Ultimately, it is the closing paragraph of the book which best epitomizes the relationship between horror literature and filmin the mind of the author, when he expresses his surprise and delight at undertaking 'a (funded!) research trip' (p. 192) to view The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974.). As the shock exclamation mark suggests, horror cinema is, by the end ofthe book, still seen by Jones as a low-cultural extension of horror fiction,perhaps slightly unworthy of study and valuable research funding, thus representing the difficultywhich the author has in uniting his dual identities as serious scholar of Gothic fiction and horror-cineaste. University of Reading Helen Wheatley Future Present: Ethics and/as Science Fiction. By Michael Pinsky. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2003. 215 pp. ?34. ISBN 0-8386-3924-0. The mode, Michael Pinsky suggests, in which we anticipate Otherness is through anticipation and speculation: the motive engines of science fiction. In this two-part text Space and Time are considered as aspects ofthe theoretical frameworks by which we construct ethics; then science fictions and proto-ethical systems are examined. Readers are encouraged to begin with whichever section they wish. The final chapter links both parts. While Pinsky skates around science as a narrative construct, and makes oddly su? perficial comments about sfcritics like James Blish, he is interesting when considering ethics as a 'science fiction'?as related to our concepts of scientific and philosophical 'laws'. Sf texts and philosophical texts are in some way partners?which may induce apoplexy in sf fans and philosophers alike, but philosophical 'thought experiments' are remarkably akin to science fictions. The firstchapters discuss Space and Time as locations of Self and Other, drawing on Heidegger and Levinas. The cause-and-effect relationship can be recognized only in hindsight, stressing future and futurity: perhaps we construct our identities and encounters with alterity with an eye to the future? Part 2, 'The Future in Focus', develops this question. Pinsky considers Wells's speculations, examining transgres? sion of rational and ethical law through temporal and special locales. From The Island 808 Reviews of Doctor Moreau and The War of the Worlds comes the 'Thing'?the machine, the animal, the irrational (and super-rational). In two 'case studies' of encountering the future Pinsky notes Wells showing prophecy 'reversed' as the very awareness of the future threatened in The Invisible Man cancels that future, while the endless open future of the 1936 film Things to Come offersuncertainty. The second 'study' is not fiction but the Disney Corporation's 'Tomorrowland' versions of the future. Chap? ter 5 gives us the...