Fictional World Research Articles

From Star Trek to The Hunger Games: emblem gestures in science fiction and their uptake in popular culture

Abstract Research on emblems to date has not drawn on corpus methods that use public data. In this paper, we use corpus methods to explore the use of original fictional gestures in the real world. We look at two examples from popular science fiction, the Vulcan salute from Star Trek and the three-finger salute from The Hunger Games. First, a Twitter corpus of the Vulcan salute emoji shows that it is used to represent Star Trek fandom and wider nerd culture, alongside its use as a greeting. Second, a global news corpus shows the three-finger salute has come to be used as a pro-democracy protest gesture across political and cultural boundaries in South East Asia. These corpus studies show different trajectories for the two gestures, with the three-finger salute escaping the confines of its fictional world, while the Vulcan salute has come to stand in as a reference to the media it originated from. We conclude with a reflection on the opportunities, challenges, and limitations of bringing corpus methods to gesture studies.

Storytelling as Inverse Inverse Planning.

Great storytelling takes us on a journey the way ordinary reality rarely does. But what exactly do we mean by this "journey?" Recently, literary theorist Karin Kukkonen proposed that storytelling is "probability design:" the art of giving an audience pieces of information bit by bit, to craft the journey of their changing beliefs about the fictional world. A good "probability design" choreographs a delicate dance of certainty and surprise in the reader's mind as the story unfolds from beginning to end. In this paper, we computationally model this conception of storytelling. Building on the classic Bayesian inverse planning model of human social cognition, we treat storytelling as inverse inverse planning: the task of choosing actions to manipulate an inverse planner's inferences, and therefore a human audience's beliefs. First, we use an inverse inverse planner to depict social and physical situations, and present behavioral studies indicating that inverse inverse planning produces more expressive behavior than ordinary "naïve planning." Then, through a series of examples, we demonstrate how inverse inverse planning captures many storytelling elements from first principles: character, narrative arcs, plot twists, irony, flashbacks, and deus ex machina are all naturally encoded in the flexible language of probabilitydesign.

Táj és ember viszonya

In this paper I will focus mainly on the biopoetic aspects of Miklós Szentkuthy’s novel, Chapter on Love. In his novel, Szentkuthy creates an intense rhetorical web of biological metaphors and imagery, also elaborates a specific literary language, a unique world of fiction, in which the boundaries between man and nature are blurred or, on the contrary, even sharpened. ™e novel, like many of Szentkuthy’s works, uses a theoretical, philosophical vision to approach the experience of elementary perception. I examine the narrator’s interpretation of the individual’s relationship to the larger biological processes, and how the text creates a kind of visual and rhetorical forest.

Ecological Thinking about the Metaverse from a Posthumanist Perspective

ABSTRACT The metaverse is a burgeoning technological domain, ranging from data-driven algorithms to advanced artificial intelligence. Immersive virtual reality does not reflect the ecological crisis in fictional worlds through interactivity. In the footsteps of Félix Guattari, this article elaborates on ecological thinking in three categories, each of which reflects the ecological risk and potential positive improvement of the metaverse. In the first category, environmental ecology, the article argues that the technological infrastructure of the metaverse is intensely power-consuming and materialises data and information fluxes. Moreover, the structure of digitised societies promotes intangible production. In the second category, social ecology, it argues that cognitive capitalism further stimulates consumerism because of big data classification and user-targeted algorithms and further amplifies climate change due to the empowered logistics industry. Additionally, capitalism causes continuous competence in the culture industry, leading to a high elimination rate of device production and low efficiency of intellectual labour. In the last category, mental ecology, the article argues that by precisely targeting users, the attention economy of the metaverse empowers individuals who are eager to pursue valorisation. These digital dwellers overlook ecological issues and the foundations of their virtual lives. In the posthumanist approach, humans are flattened by capitalism and become surplus value as natural forces. Humans’ minds are alienated from the idea that nature and humans coexist. Instead, the metaverse is directed toward individual power that immerses itself in a capital-driven network of information technology. This article proposes the merit of forming a nature-culture continuum to promote an ecological ideology in the metaverse. On the one hand, the nature-culture continuum of the metaverse spreads ecological knowledge and praxis via interactivity. On the other hand, the key mediation of nature-human metabolism through human labour contributes to environmentally friendly products, which cultivate an ecological culture of consumerism. Thus, the metaverse functions in a posthumanist context that consumes nature and humans for profit; however, the metaverse can also arouse thoughts of sustainability.

„Die Wirklichkeit ist die Unwahrscheinlichkeit, die eingetreten ist“: Wahrscheinlichkeit, Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit im Werk Friedrich Dürrenmatts

This paper examines the role of probability in the thought and work of the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990), focusing on his definition of reality as the improbability which occurred. I argue that this expression encapsulates his lifelong critical investigation of the possibilities and limitations of the representation of the modern world. The polyvalent concept of probability serves Dürrenmatt in his essays, drama, and prose fiction to illuminate the irreducible complexity of reality, the inevitable constraints of human perception, and the futility of seeking to reconstruct empirical causality end-to-end. The concept of reality as an improbability which occurred defines both the empirical reality which Dürrenmatt seeks to analyze through his fiction, as well as the subjective reality he creates within his “fictional worlds,” thus forming a crucial conjunction between his worldview and his literary work.

Exploring Nnedi Okorafor's decolonial turn in the Binti Trilogy

Nnedi Okorafor is one of the best-known speculative fiction writers who has centred African perspectives and delinked from Western models. In her trilogy, Binti (2015), Binti Home (2017) and Binti the Night Masquerade (2017a), Okorafor disrupts the dominant white-masculine supremacist convention and traditions for a more diverse and inclusive narrative. In this article, I use decolonial thinking and the lens of Sankofa, a decolonial and African knowledge philosophy and worldview, to explore how Okorafor uses settings, characterisation, and ancient African traditional knowledge to achieve a decolonial turn in speculative fiction. By centring Sankofa, Okorafor sets her fantastic stories in Namibia among the indigenous and marginalised Himba people. She creates strong female characters who embody a multiplicity of beings operating intricately in a complex earthly, spatial and spirit world, and she exploits ancient African traditional culture and knowledge systems to create her 'organic fantasy' and a world of speculative fiction that transforms Western understandings of the genre.

GÖZETİM ASAMBLAJI: BUGÜNÜN DİSTOPYASI OLARAK DAVE EGGERS’ IN THE CIRCLE ADLI ROMANI ÜZERİNE ELEŞTİREL BİR OKUMA

Surveillance studies have gained momentum in today’s societies. These studies have put forward various theorems on surveillance since the states and/or corporations’ purposes of monitoring people are nebulous and open to discussion. However, the dystopian aspect of surveillance holds a common ground in most of these studies. No doubt, they have a fair share in their discussion since the growing fear of surveillance societies deeply instilled in the worlds of the futuristic-dystopian fiction has become a fact of our present world. That is, surveillance society has become today’s dystopia. Unlike the Foucaldian panopticon, surveillance in today’s society is relatively more complex and decentralized. This kind of surveillance is, what Haggerty and Ericson call, “the surveillant assemblage”. Dave Eggers’ The Circle is perhaps one of the best examples that portray it blatantly. As it shows us the complexities of the surveillant assemblage, it portrays its role to destroy individual zone by making them the willing agents to expose themselves to full transparency. This will eventually lead to the demise of the individual. With this purpose in mind, this research article examines Dave Eggers’s The Circle as today’s dystopia by giving utmost consideration to Haggerty and Ericson’s theory of surveillant assemblage and its discontents.

Play-Activities with Scientific Content in Early Childhood Education

AbstractThis article attempts to address the challenge that preschool teachers face, when integrating a specific content area, science, with play. The study builds on the theoretical framework of Play-Responsive Early Childhood Education and Care (PRECEC), in which teaching, and play are understood as a mutual activity. In this mutual activity, teachers and children signal their participation by shifting between as if (fantasy and fictional worlds) and as is (acquiring knowledge of the world as it is) (Pramling et al., 2019). The empirical data consists of video-observations of a preschool teacher and 1-4-year-old children who participate in activities that incorporate play and scientific content. The video-observations were analysed through studying how and why shifts between as is and as if were made by the preschool teacher. The results show that the preschool teacher made the play shift between as if and as is through different types of actions (voice change and bodily expression). Further, shifts seemed to be made with two aims in sight: science learning and socialisation. In conclusion, the preschool teacher (as a more knowledgeable adult) has an important role in creating a responsive environment and in introducing science content, which does not arise by itself. Implications for preschool teachers and preschool practice are discussed.

The Female Man ve The Left Hand of Darkness Romanlarında İkinci Dalga Feminizmin Yansıması

Women science fiction writers of the 60s and 70s reflected second wave feminist ideologies in their fictional works. The distinctive narrative techniques of science fiction genre brought out various aspects of feminist ideas in different ways. Issues related to gender and sex were embedded in the elements of science fiction such as parallel universes, androgynies, intersex, mindreading, planets, aliens, and inventions. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975), through these elements, raise questions about gender equality, body politics, ethics, and social constructions. These science fiction novels have themes that are closely related to the central texts debated among second wave feminists such as Simon de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963). Le Guin and Russ apply feminist theories to unconventional lives and societies, whose uniqueness or oddity helps readers think outside of the box. By presenting alternative societies, they unfold how male domination can cause sexual objectification and gender inequality, and anatomic differences in science fiction worlds creates an awareness concerning constructed gender roles. Moreover, the second wave feminists’ emphasis on sexual freedom, birth control, and marriage are illustrated through the multi-faceted outcomes of these multi-directional utopic and dystopic societies. This paper aims to bring together second wave feminist ideas and science fiction through an examination of two works, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Female Man, both of which present resisting interpretations of traditional gender issues. Unorthodox approaches to gender, the peculiar structure of the societies, and body politics will be analyzed through the narratives and elements of science fiction. Further-more, this paper will illustrate how these novels challenge conventional definitions of gender and sex in the light of second wave feminism.

Authorial notes to the text: an artistic device or an ego-document?

Based on the authorial notes to the “Letters of a Russian Traveler” by N. Karamzin, who separated “poetry” from “truth”, the article considers the following questions: how to determine the aesthetic nature of the notes; how they are connected with the change of literary trends, genres and styles, with the communicative function of verbal art, how the artistry of notes is formed; whether they are an integral part of the work; whether the author of the notes and the author of the main text are identical. We emphasize that Karamzin’s notes should be analyzed, first of all, in terms of his attitude to the problem of “literature and reality”, since for him authenticity was more important than artistry. The writer enters not into an artistically mediated, but into a direct dialogue with the reader, in order to gain his understanding and trust, to convince him of the veracity of what is described, while revealing a new level of understanding of what happened earlier. The article investigates the dynamics of the relationship between the notes and the main text. The special arrangement of the notes, the temporal and spatial distance separating them from the main text is interpreted as the evidence of their heterogeneity. We note the differences in their status: the main text, in principle, can exist and be perceived by the reader without the notes, albeit in a flawed form, while the publication of the notes in isolation from the main text is meaningless. The article highlights that it is in the literature of sentimentalism and, in particular, in Karamzin’s works, that a specific artistic quality of notes is developed in the form of a dialogue with an imaginary reader. The conclusion is made about the referential function of the authorial notes: in the “Letters of a Russian Traveler” they link literature and reality, the world of images and the real world, which is characterized by “its selective affinity” with the world of fiction.

Artistic interpretation of real traumatic events in Maria Ogneva’s play “Following the White Rabbit”

The article considers the documentary and fictional components of M. Ogneva’s play “Following the White Rabbit”, which raises the theme of the trauma experienced in the past. The play is based on real events related to the violent death of two teenage girls. In this play, the tragic event is taken out of the storyline and the attention is focused on the understanding of the tragedy by a female friend and the mothers of the girls. The article studies the techniques used by the author to create the fictional world of the play: allegory, allusion, a combination of real and fantasy elements, division and montage, work with documentary materials of a judicial practice, the “verbatim” technique, different types of discourse and different “points of view” to describe one and the same event. As a result of the analysis, we conclude that the strategy used by the author is comparable to a fairy tale therapy (the method of psycho-correctional work): the therapeutic effect is achieved by pronouncing the traumatic experience in the presence of the audience, by the characters’ searches for various options for getting out of the spiritual crisis, by launching the process of continuous moral and ethical self-identification at the viewer’s level, i.e. by correlating the characters’ experience with their own destiny.

CHALLENGING CONVENTIONAL HEROISM: REDEFINING HEROISM THROUGH THE REPRESENTATION OF DISABLED SUPERHEROES IN DAREDEVIL AND X-MEN

Disability representation in films is often viewed as a means of inspiring and evoking emotions from able-bodied audiences. Disability activists have long challenged these ableist norms and called for greater recognition of the diversity of human experience. The representation of characters like Matt Murdock and Charles Xavier from the American superhero films Daredevil (2003) directed by Mark Steven Johnson and X-Men (2000) by Bryan Singer has evolved to offer audiences more thought-provoking narratives that transcend simplistic notions of good versus evil. By portraying Matt and Charles Xavier as disabled superheroes, these stories challenge traditional conventions of heroism. This study analyzes how Matt and Charles Xavier disrupt the perception of heroism, particularly in the science fiction genre, thereby examining how their representation emphasises that disability does not hinder heroism or the ability to make a difference. This study combines the fields of disability studies and science fiction to challenge and showcase how the science fiction world is an inviting home for disabled characters and fans. This paper highlights how these characters, despite their physical disabilities, are depicted as powerful, determined, and capable of performing incredible feats and challenge conventional ideas about non-normative bodies in the science fiction genre. This paper concludes that such portrayals can provide disabled audiences with a sense of connection and validation through characters who share similar experiences. Seeing themselves positively reflected in fictional narratives can contribute to a stronger and more positive self-identity. Such characteristics can be included in the world of literature and movies as protagonists with persistence and resilience.

Art Is Magic

Art Is Magic

Enacted Offstage Images, Reported Onstage Action, and Parallel Fictional Worlds in Dead Centre’s Chekhov’s First Play (2015) and Tim Crouch and Rachana Jadhav’s Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation (2019)

This essay addresses how the collision of image, text, and speech in contemporary scripted performances discloses something significant about both being in and thinking about the theatre. It examines cases wherein recent examples of theatre practice disrupt long-standing expectations about the form and function of reported offstage action. While Tim Crouch and Rachana Jadhav’s Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation (2019) literalises the relationship between text and performance by putting the play script in the hands of the audience and employing illustrations as a means of reporting that inverts established ekphrastic modes, Dead Centre’s Chekhov’s First Play (2015) literalises offstage presence through the audio narration of a figure named as ‘The Director’. These acts of staging literally key conceptual and practical challenges of theatrical representation work in both cases to reveal instances of mimetic disjuncture. Audiences are not sure which version of each performance to invest in: the staged action or illustrated text of Terrestrial Salvation and the onstage adaptation or The Director’s critical reporting in Chekhov’s First Play. By making available different versions of the same theatrical event, each production connects resonantly to a cultural moment wherein we are often exposed to alternative narratives but may not always recognise or acknowledge these alternate perspectives. Reviewed together, these two productions present a wide-ranging sensorial problematising of theatrical representation. They construct points of meaningful divergence through unscripted performances and the disaggregation of actor and character. Methodologically, this essay works to address these questions of representational multiplicity through a form of discursive practice that reports between the two case study examples. This approach serves to reveal the discourse of theatre and performance studies as frequently grounded in ekphrastic reportings that recount theatrical images no longer available to view. The argument marks out first how reported action and other forms of ekphrastic representation have historically been about what cannot be staged in order to propose that what comes to be unrepresentable in these examples – even as it is the means of representation – is theatrical performance itself. The essay then traces how these metatheatrical questions related to the representational affordance of these performances – in this case to do with impossibility of representing the theatre itself – ripple into wider consequences that can have substantial implications related to race, freedom, and collective endeavour.

ОТРАЖЕНИЕ ПЕРВОЙ МИРОВОЙ ВОЙНЫ В МИРОВОЙ ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ

This paper presents an analysis of the reflection of the First World War as the greatest disaster that initiated the existence of the "lost generation" in world fiction. As our research has shown, not so many writers devoted pages of their works to this topic. However, such iconic authors as Erich Maria Remarque, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald became classics who created the image of the "lost generation" in their works. They talked without censorship and embellishment about the most terrible moments at the front, about the consequences faced by the surviving soldiers. Their works do not allow new generations to forget about the First World War and should remain the same postulate for centuries.

Using RPG-Based Learning Environment to Increase Engagement and Motivation for Learning Higher Mathematics

Although game-based learning has been introduced in various fields, there appears to be a lack of engaging computer games that incorporate higher maths learning (Anagnostopoulou, 2021). This paper presents an exploration of how fantasy-based narrative and storytelling, through role-playing and game mechanics, can be used to increase engagement and motivation for learning higher mathematics in a role-playing game (RPG) based learning environment. As part of this research, the project developed an RPG with incorporated mathematical techniques. Players/learners access the fictional world, controlling in-game characters. Learning evolves via a storyline and six mechanics, progressively building knowledge of derivatives using puzzles with shapes, which gradually fade to the abstract notion of mathematical functions. An experiment was conducted to test the research hypothesis that an RPG based around a quest structure with concreteness fading can enable students to get a better understanding of higher mathematics in the area of differentiation without impeding their entertainment. Participants were recruited from various backgrounds and levels of mathematical knowledge and gaming experience. Data was collected through observations, interviews and two questionnaires: one to be completed before playing the game and the other after. This paper is mainly focused on the qualitative outcomes of the research. The results suggest that the method is effective, with serious learning taking place. The participants reported that they had found the game to be fun and a useful way to learn maths. Moreover, it is revealed that a PRG-based learning environment can increase engagement and motivation for learning higher maths, without invalidating entertainment. The findings have implications for the design, implementation, and evaluation of game-based learning environments for higher mathematics. The paper concludes that this approach has the potential to provide a more immersive, engaging learning experience and increase motivation for learning. Finally, recommendations on how to improve the current game as well as more bold and optimistic ideas for enhanced immersive game builds are suggested.

The Image in a Vat?

The relationship between frames and works of art, or more generally between frames and images, is a classic problem of aesthetics and art history, which has however become a hot topic today, since new digital technologies seem to promise completely frameless virtual and fictional worlds. Nonetheless, it is perhaps useful to frame the question of the frame, and of the thresholds of the images, with a colder look, taking into account the cognitive, phenomenological and ontological implications of their variable and multilayered relationships.

TRANSLATING SPECULATIVE FICTION: CREATING NEW FICTIONAL REALIA

The article explores creation of new fictional realia as a translation technique. Fictional realia are defined as a special kind of linguistic realia, also known as quasirealia or irrelia, which describes various aspects of fictional worlds: flora and fauna, everyday life, social and political structure, etc. New realia creation involves incorporation of new lexical units in a translated text, which may remain semantically connected with the original realia and its referent or eliminate the connection completely. When the new realia preserve the connection with the original lexical units and their referents, we observe the creation of a new realia-word, which may be categorized as an attempt to redesignate the original realia, rather than a direct translation. This type of realia creation is somewhat similar to modulation, but differs from it due to the impossibility to establish direct logical links, such as “part and whole”, “cause and effect”, etc. Elimination of the aforementioned connections leads to the creation of a new realia-object, the translator’s own invention, which is absent is the original text and the corresponding fictional world. Creation of a new realia-word may resemble adaptation, but it does not necessarily share the same goal. In both cases, creation of new realia is a creative process, which is heavily dependent on the translator’s personality, their own vision. Creation of new realia is demonstrated through the analysis of the translations of fictional realia from “We” by Y. Zamyatin, “Brave New World” by A. Huxley, and “1984” by G. Orwell.

Diegetic existence: transmedia instauration in artists’ cinema

ABSTRACT This article engages with differences of experiences generated by transmedia migration of filmic content in artist-filmmaker Albert Serra’s two-channel installation Personalien and feature film Liberté (2019). Made from the same raw footage, the films were seen as iterations of one fictional world. How is diegesis transformed by Serra’s distinct negotiation of viewers’ patience and perversity at the museum and the film theatre? Responding to this issue requires retrieving Anne and Etienne Souriau’s concept of diegesis. Diegesis was exported to narratology and semiotics, though the notion was soon robbed of its relevance: its equal sensitivity to medial environments, circumstantial conditions of experience, and modulations of fictional existence. Reintegrating diegesis within Souriau’s multilayered and intensive ontology of filmic universes is of renewed interest in times of cinematic relocation, when cinematic experiences are reactivated in new contexts. Artists’ moving-images require us to give due weight to the ontic thickness of film. What environments do each experience configurate? Which operations are required in the theatre and the museum? Will viewers support the existence of Serra’s precarious worlds? Resituating diegesis within Souriau’s philosophy of instauration, I address intermedial differences in Personalien and Liberté and reflect on logical and metaphysical disparities.

Художественные средства выразительности в литературе на простом языке (на материале рассказа Ю. Герман «Ловушка»)

The study aims to describe in a comprehensive manner the linguostylistic means of literary expression in the short story “The Trap” („Falle“) by the modern German writer Judith Hermann. A special, simplified version of the German language used by the author, i.e., plain language or ‘einfache Sprache’ in German, is a distinctive feature of the work. J. Hermann’s short story was included in Germany in the first collection of original literary texts in plain language available to a wide readership and became a part of the new literary project „LiES – Literatur in Einfacher Sprache“ (“Literature in plain language”). The scientific novelty of the study lies in the uniqueness of the analysed practical material – it is the first time that an attempt has been made to identify and characterise the stylistic potential of plain language based on the material of an original (untranslated) literary work by a modern German author. The results of the study clearly show that plain literary language is not inferior to standard literary language and has an extensive arsenal of stylistic means (epithets, comparisons, metaphors, personification, antitheses and gradation, parcellation and ellipses, repetitions, rhythm) and an ample potential for building new, fictional worlds and creating non-trivial artistic imagery, in particular due to the receptive intention of the title and the open ending.