Aff – Elysium

1AC
 Core
Welcome to 2154, Earth is now a shadow of its former self.
Violence, disease, and pollution have ravaged the planet, leaving
the majority of its people to live in suffering and despair. But for
the elite few, life is different. They reside on Elysium, an
advanced space station orbiting just outside of Earth’s
atmosphere. A utopia for the rich and powerful, where
technology has eliminated illness and poverty, while the rest of
humanity is left to suffer on a dying planet.
Upon the Elysium exists the Med-Bay, a device that can heal any
disease or condition. But the symbolic border between the Elite
and the rest of humanity has translated into a physical border
that prevents the people of Earth from accessing the
technologies on the Elysium. The poor are viewed as “aliens”,
bordered off from social mobility and the ability to challenge the
hegemonic capitalist structures that govern the Elysium.
Ulusoy, 20 (Emre Ulusoy, Youngstown State University , 2020, accessed on 1-13-2023, ISMD,
"Elysium as a Social Allegory: At the nexus of Dystopia, Cyberpunk,and Plutocracy ",
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1138&context=mgdr) //Rishizzle

Two-World Dichotomy and the Critique of Global Capitalism The overarching theme of the movie relies on contemporary but very critical
issues concerning social and economic inequality, wealth disparity, poverty, and capitalism/plutocracy. It
makes references to the discourses foregrounded and creates space for heated, ardent debate in various public spheres

in our everyday lives such as the dilemmas of one percent versus ninety-nine percent, the First World versus the Third World, universal healthcare system, working

conditions, anti-immigration laws & sentiments, open borders, and the like. Broadly
speaking, there are two different worlds in the movie, one for the ultra-rich (Elysium) and one for the ultra-poor (the earth). In this notion of ultra-rich and ultra-poor dichotomy
that the movie relies on, Elysium represents the First World while the Earth represents the Third World. The citizens of Elysium represent one percent while the people of the

Elysium is a satellite planet in space that orbits the earth and that is visible from Earth for the earthlings to
earth represent ninety-nine percent.

look up to and dream about. This floating luxury planet is designed only for the privileged elite class. One of the key specialties of this
satellite planet is that there are magical healing machines (Med-Pads) that not only can cure all sorts of diseases and carry out facial reconstruction and regenerate body parts
but also bestow favor on the citizens of Elysium with immortality so that they can live forever. On the other hand, the human life on earth is depicted in the movie as a cheap
commodity and people of the Earth are not only being vilified but also being murdered insensibly by the Elysium authorities and governmental bodies when they attempt to

citizens of Elysium want to

‘migrate’ to Elysium to gain access to such high-tech healthcare devices to cure their serious and fatal ailments. Also, the

preserve their privileged, comfortable, and luxurious way of living and thus do not want the poor people of Earth to migrate

to Elysium, therefore the authorities shoot down the shanty shuttles carrying illegal visitors (immigrants) seeking a cure for their ailments or deport them if they
could make it through.
Eerily similar huh? The movie may be set centuries in the future
but the dystopic world it paints acts as a symbol of the rampant
structures that define modern politics. Our reading of science-
fiction through Elysium reorients our scenario planning towards
understanding the future we are fighting for.
Mirrlees and Pedersen, 16 (Tanner Mirrlees and Isabel Pedersen, University of Ontario Institute of
Technology, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, 2016, accessed on 1-13-2023, 305MCP 12 (3) pp. 305–322
Intellect Limited 2016International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, "Elysium as a critical dystopia",
https://www.academia.edu/31452421/Elysium_as_a_Critical_Dystopia_) //Rishizzle

Tanner Mirrlees | Isabel Pedersen 312 International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics is not a human right, but a commodity, bought and sold. The rich belong to Elysium because they have the means to pay for

include Elysian citizens as

it; the poor are excluded because they cannot. The Elysian state’s cybernetic service systems recognize and

citizens they ‘Other’ exclude

in this political community by biom-etrically scanning a DNA-code tattooed into their flesh at birth. Conversely, and non-tattooed

worker-earthlings as threateningnon-citizens. Elysium’s corporate citizens enjoy their state’s national securityand health care;
earth’s workers are deprived of these even though they needthem.Though the Elysian state does not extend its citizenship rights to Earth’s working class, its coercive apparatuses encompass Earth so as to ensure

capitalist production continues without interruption.

that In much dystopic sciencefiction, states rule populations

rules Earth with brute force

with coercion and propaganda. But the Elysianstate , not propaganda, because Elysium has nonlegitimacy in the eyes of earth’s

wages war with robotic parole officers,

dispossessed. To protect and preserve its lavish ‘peace’, the Elysian state against Earth’s poor

police droids and drones of total surveillance and

that administer Elysian’s Law andOrder regime using a combination

repression . Inone scene, Max waits to board a bus to Armadyne and is accosted by twopolice droids. The droids identify Max as having a criminal record and thenask what is in his bag. The
shaved-headed Max jokes, ‘Hair products’ andexplains, ‘I am just going to work’ (Blomkamp 2013). The droids interpretMax’s humour as ‘misdemeanor: disobedience’, throw Max to the groundand break his arm.
After checking the bag and finding nothing, they explain:‘Zero tolerance policy applies to civilians’ (Blomkamp 2013). In anotherscene, a rebel community of earthlings led by ‘Spider’ hijacks three shuttles,fills them
with sick and dying earthlings and flies to Elysium. Their goal isto use Elysium’s Med-Bay technologies to heal and save their immiseratedcomrades. In response to this ‘security threat’ and ‘unauthorized entry
intoElysium airspace’, the Elysian Defense secretary Delacourt activates ‘sleeperagent’ Kruger, an earth-bound mercenary (Blomkamp 2013). From earth,Kruger fires missiles into space which destroy two of the
three ships, kill-ing all of the earthlings. The third ship outflanks the missile and crash landson Elysium. Earthlings scatter and run to the Elysian mansions, searching forMed-bays to heal themselves. Delacourt
orders ‘everyone coming out of that vehicle apprehended’ and deploys droids, which attack and arrest the ‘illegals’(Blomkamp 2013). Elysium’s robot police round up the earthlings, kettle theminto giant rusty
cages and then deport them to back earth. Overall, by representing a future security state blatantly serving the minor-ity interests of a capitalist ruling class at the expense of the majority interestsof the working
class poor, Elysium may invite viewers to question the prevail-ing liberal pluralist theory of the state/society relationship, which representsstates as neutral mediators of the contending interests of all citizens. At
thesame time, by depicting the Elysian state as one that relies on brute forceto maintain social order, Elysium addresses real fears that state coercion, notpersuasion, is the norm for maintaining law and order on

behalf of the power of the few to exploit people, and nature. Elysium
interrogates capitalism’s ecological furthermore

catastrophe capitalism’s
. Marxis sometimes framed as eco-naïve cheerleader for capitalist development, butMarx was actually quite attuned to

domination of nature the incompatibility between capitalist growth

and unfettered

and environmental and human survival (Bellamy Foster 2000). In the early twenty-first century, the Elysium as a critical dystopia

irreversible,
www.intellectbooks.com 313 ongoing ‘drive to capital accumulation is disrupting the planetary metabolismat cumulatively higher levels, threatening

catastrophic impacts for species, including our countless own’ (Bellamy Foster and Clark 2016).Capitalism’s infinite logic of
growth in an ecology of finite resources is calam-itous (Klein 2014). As capitalism expands individual private wealth at theexpense of common public wealth, including nature, it puts the ecology andhumanity in

dire jeopardy (Bellamy Foster et al. 2011). The threat of ecological catastrophe is real and present , as capitalism-

destruction are happening and well documented

caused climate change, ozonedepletion and biodiversity (Klein 2014;
Bellamy Foster et al. 2011; Bellamy Foster and Clark 2016). Elysium highlights capitalism’s ecological catastrophe in a number of poignant visual sequences. The film’s opening, for example, visually tours viewers
around Los Angeles 2154, showing them one giant sprawl of inter-connected barrios interlaced with burning pits of garbage that spew smoke into the smog of an ozone depleted atmosphere. Skyscrapers and
condo-miniums and apartments crumble, are stained with soot and overgrown withalgae. Their dilapidated facades boast mangled remnants of advertisementsfor beauty products – perhaps relics from an earlier

In the late 21st

time when planned obso-lescence was normal. As the camera shows us this ecological catastrophe,captions tell us what the planet has become: ‘

century, Earth was diseased, polluted and vastly overpopulated’ . The planet has become

a factory for extracting value from nature and people

thisbecause the Elysian rulers transformed it into in order

took flight to bell air in space’

to produce commodities for themselves,and then, upon realizing it was no longer hospitable and habitable, they their ‘ , building
and maintaining it by continuing todominate earth’s nature and workers. By depicting a future in which capital-ism and the class system persists in spite of the earthly ecological and humancatastrophe they cause,
Elysium suggests that current neo-liberal solutions toour world’s really present ecological problems (i.e. the greening of marketsplus eco-friendly technologies) are ineffective. By showing the ruling classinsulating
itself in outer space from the catastrophe of a destroyed planet anddoing nothing to ameliorate capitalism’s worst effects, Elysium suggests thatcapitalism negates environmental and human needs.Moreover,
Elysium interrogates the growth of the military-industrial-complex (MIC) and the ruling class’s development and use of militarizedtechnology to preserve and reproduce their privileged way of life. For fivedecades,
neo-Marxist scholars have examined the growth of the MIC (symbi-otic relationships between militaries, universities and weapons corporations),the role of permanent war and military expenditure in underwriting
andshaping the research and development (R&D) of new technologies, and howthe benefits of these weaponized technologies accrue initially and primar-ily to private corporations and security states (Schiller
1992). In the earlytwenty-first century, the MIC grows larger. The United States Department of Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), for example, brings togethermilitary agencies, universities and
corporations to ‘advance knowledgethrough basic research and create innovative technologies’ to ‘prevent strate-gic surprise from negatively impacting US national security and create strate-gic surprise for US
adversaries by maintaining the technological superiority ofthe US military’ (DARPA 2016). DARPA allocates billions in public money tothe R&D of technologies for war and then the DOD procures these technolo-
gies as commodities from corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing andNorthrop Grumman (Ruttan 2006; Singer 2009; Turse 2008). Tanner Mirrlees | Isabel Pedersen 314 International Journal of Media &
Cultural Politics Elysium examines the collusion between the military and corporations thatform the MIC’s base, presenting it as a ‘conspiracy’ of sorts between Secretaryof Defense Delacourt and Armadyne’s CEO,
Carlyle. At a meeting betweenthese two villains, Delacourt explains that she and Carlyle have a commoninterest in orchestrating a coup of Elysium’s president, Patel, who had earlierscolded Delacourt for using
covert coercion to keep the working class down,on earth, and away from Elysium. Patel does not disagree with the ends, butthe means; he wants Delacourt to ‘deal with illegals quietly’, perhaps to miti-gate image
problems and revolutionary blowback. Delacourt, a military hawk,tells Carlyle ‘there is a political sickness that needs to be removed’ and that Armadyne is ‘in need of revenue’ (Blomkamp 2013). Delacourt says
that ifCarlyle overrides Elysium’s ‘servers’ and encodes her as the ‘new presidentin power’, Armadyne will have a defence ‘contract secured for the next twohundred years: missile defense batteries, droids,
everything we need to protectour liberty, all guaranteed of course, by your new president’ (Blomkamp 2013).Carlyle consents to the coup. Here, Elysium ’s framing of the MIC as a conspir-acy is unnecessary, as its
working are widely documented (Ruttan 2006; Turse2008). Nonetheless, the film registers social anxieties about the machinationsthe real MIC in our time, and in our world.Furthermore, Elysium casts technologies
currently in-development bytoday’s MIC as being embedded in the future. Elysium displays militarizedbrain-computer interfaces, biometric surveillance and identification systems,autonomous robots, drones and
exoskeletons (Benjamin 2013; Biello 2013;Cooney 2012; de Chant 2013; Regalado 2014; Wagstaff 2014; Winston 2008). Elysium frames the ownership, control and use of these innovations as secur-ing the
interests of the already powerful. Brain-computer interfaces are usedby Carlyle to protect his intellectual property and financial secrets from earth’shackers; biometric surveillance maintains class divisions
between Elysian citi-zens and earthly non-citizens; robots and drones are deployed the Elysianstate to monitor, police and sometimes kill the working poor; exoskeletonsare worn by the state’s mercenaries

; the class divide

(‘Krugar’) to enhance their power to killrebellious and inusrgent earthlings. In Elysium , technology is largely part andproduct of Elysium’s power structure between

Elysium andEarth is expressed and sustained through a technological divide betweenElysian rulers and
earthly workers. Against the present-day determinist viewthat technology is an autonomous force that is changing the world in funda-mental ways, the instrumentalist idea that technology is a value-neutral
toolused for whatever ends whichever user decides, and the utopian notion thatnew technology empowers us all, Elysium shows technology to be an expres-sion of power that is used by the class privileged few
against the poor andunder-privileged many.

In the face of endless exploitation we say NO MORE! Justice

requires open borders for human migration to challenge
plutocratic systems of governance in Elysium through the
creation of subaltern groups – revolutionaries who strike
endlessly at the hegemonic dominance of the elite. We say
BREAK THOSE FUCKING BORDERS that otherize the earthlings
from utopian society aboard the Elysium
Mirrlees and Pedersen, 16 (Tanner Mirrlees and Isabel Pedersen, University of Ontario Institute of
Technology, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, 2016, accessed on 1-13-2023, 305MCP 12 (3) pp. 305–322 Intellect
Limited 2016International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, "Elysium as a critical dystopia",
https://www.academia.edu/31452421/Elysium_as_a_Critical_Dystopia_) //Rishizzle

ELYSIUM ’S UTOPIAN HORIZON: BEYOND DYSTOPIA Throughout this article, we’ve unpacked Elysium ’s dystopic story about afuture society of class
division, security states, ecological catastrophe and theMIC run amok and argued that Elysium addresses and amplifies the dystopic conditions of our capitalist world system. As

a ‘critical dystopian film’,however, Elysium also forwards a story of resistance and transformation
of the dystopic society. In Elysium , many earthlings are hopeless and seem to accept that ‘thingsare just the way they are’ and will never change. But alongside mass despair,

Elysium as a critical dystopia www.intellectbooks.com 315 there exists a small but well-organized community of rebel-
activists led by thedisabled Spider. This subaltern community subsists by smuggling goods and engaging in petty crime
while struggling for a future society that is differentand better than the current one. This future is one in which the Elysium-
Earthclass system is abolished and every earthling has equal access to and enjoys Elysium’s technological riches. This utopian kernel is what

makes Elysium a‘critical’ as opposed to ‘uncritical’ dystopian film. Indeed, Elysium shows us a multi-cultural working class developing the
capacity to transform the circum-stances that ‘deny or inhibit the further emancipation of humanity’ (Moylan2000: 199) en route to an alternative type of society capable of

Elysium ’s glimmer of hope comes in the image of a community

supportinga different and better life for all.

committed to a radically different principle than theunderlying Elysium and in the transformation and action of Max,
who resists the dystopic social order , first for reasons of self-preservation and then out of genuine solidarity with this community’s
struggle to liberate Earth from Elysian rule. Elysium introduces viewers to Max, its proletariat hero, on a workday. We watch Max wake up, put on his blue-collar slacks and
shoes and walk from his dilapidated home towards a crowded bus stop. On the way, Max is mockedby lumpen-proles for ‘having to get up early to work the line’ and
surroundedby peasant children, who beg for money (Blomkamp 2013). Max has a crimi-nal record and is on parole, but has retired from crime, stopped ‘doing thatstupid shit’

and is trying meet his basic needs as a waged worker at ArmadyneCorp (Blomkamp 2013). Even though no meritocracy exists in 2154 and theElysian-Earth class
positions are spatially and genetically locked in place, Max,perhaps suffering a form of ‘false
consciousness’ (Marx 1990) about the realcapitalist power relations that keep him down, seems to believe that obey-ing the law and working for Armadyne corporation will give
him a chance toone-day fulfil his childhood dream of going to Elysium. As Elysium ’s narrative moves forward, Max’s best efforts to obey and submit to the system’s dictates fail
to pay off and it becomes obvious to him and to viewers that his dream is a delusion. While Max waits to board a bus to work, security droids assault himand break his arm for
making a joke. After going to an overcrowded hospitalto try to get a cast put on his arm, Max meets an automated parole officerto explain his earlier ‘conflict’ with the droid
police. The automated paroleofficer tells Max the droid police officers reported Max’s ‘aggressive and anti-social violent behavior’ and as a consequence, extends Max’s parole

term byeight additional months (Blomkamp 2013). After detecting Max’s elevatedheart-rate, it offers him a ‘pill’ to sedate him. Police droid brutality,
slow and substandard health care and an automated parole officer pushing opiatesmake Max late for work. He nonetheless shows
up to Armadyne, eager to putin a day’s labour. But the manager threatens Max with job deprivation, docksa half days pay for lateness and then forces him into a droid assembly
cham-ber, where he is poisoned by radiation.In one workday, Max is brutalized by police, silenced by the Law and almost killed by the corporation that exploits him. This
objectively bad experi-ence of the workday fundamentally transforms Max from being a worker who submits to the reigning order of the dystopic society to one who resents
andthen challenges it. Broken, bruised and near death, Max confronts the painful truth of the dystopic society: he and other earthlings like him die, not because the
technological means to heal and cure everyone do not exist, but because they are exclusively and privately controlled by Elysium’s privileged few. After Tanner Mirrlees | Isabel

Pedersen 316 International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics vomiting, Max tells his friend Julio that ‘ they can fix this shit on
Elysium’; hedemands to ‘see Spider’ in hopes of getting a shuttle ticket to Elysium andusing one of the Elysian’s Med-Bays (Blomkamp 2013). Spider says tickets
arescarce and little children are more in need than he, but nonetheless offers Maxa ticket in exchange for supporting the rebel group’s activist cause. HelpingSpider steal data
(‘bank codes, passwords, log in data’) from ‘the Elsyianasshole and billionaire’ Carlyle’s brain would give his revolutionary commu-nity ‘access to billions’ (Blomkamp 2013). Max
and some of Spider’s activistsare tasked with hijacking Carlyle’s shuttle, downloading Carlyle’s organic datainto his own brain and bringing it back to Spider. To prepare him,
Spider andhis surgeons strengthen Max’s disabled body by equipping him with a ‘thirdgeneration exoskeleton suit’ that makes him ‘strong as a droid’ (Blomkamp2013). Here,
Elysium suggests that weaponized technology designed as toolsof repression can be appropriated by the underdog and used to fight back. The exoskeleton implant is
excruciatingly painful, but it gives Max the strength heneeds to fight Elysium’s apparatus of coercion – Kruger, police droids andsurveillance drones – on behalf of his class, on
Earth. As Elysium ’s narrative proceeds, Max steals secrets from Carlyle’s brain,destroys the droids that he was once paid by Armadyne to assemble, battlesthe crazed Kruger,

Spider says‘whoever has this [reboot

and delivers Carlyle’s data to Spider, who discovers in ita reboot program for Elysium’s entire political-economic system.

program] has the power to override the wholesystem; open the borders, make

everyone a citizen of Elysium. This can save your life; we can save everyone’ (Blomkamp 2013). Spider tells Max that withthis reboot
program, ‘we would control the system, we would be in charge, we can change

the course of fucking history!’ (Blomkamp 2013). Spider wantsMax to immediately share the data with him while he and his rebel hack-
ers work to put it to collectively beneficial uses, but Max, desperate to get toElysium before he dies, gives himself up to Kruger, who takes him there. OnElysium, Max realizes
that activating the Elysium reboot code will kill him. Atthe film’s climax, Max defeats Kruger and then, in one last moment of empa-thy for humanity, activates the reboot
program, making everyone on Earthan Elysian citizen and therefore able to benefit from all of Elysium’s services.In the film’s denouement, Elysium’s artificially intelligent system
identifies allof Earth’s ‘new citizens in need of medical attention’ and dispatches shuttlesfilled with Med-Bays and med-droids to provide healthcare for all (Blomkamp2013). The
ending is open to the possibility that a positive Utopia, or an‘Eutopia’ (a society that is better than Elysium ’s time and space, and ours as well), is possible. At the beginning of
the film, the horizon of Utopia is introduced as Max’ssomewhat individualistic boyhood dream of going to Elysium to live amongthe rich and powerful. At the end of the film,
Utopia is something that is prac-tical and achievable for all, by all. This Utopia does not derive from abstractprinciples, but develops through a struggle by earthly rebels, in
solidarity with the working poor and immiserated, who use many means to achievetheir emancipatory ends. Elysium ’s working class heroes use illegal tacticssuch as computer

hacking, data theft, hijacking, armed robbery and violenceagainst Elysians to achieve their revolution. But in the end, they make Utopia by re-
programming and rebooting, not destroying, Elysium’s infrastructure.Revolution comes not by literally ‘smashing
the system’, but by re-designingand reforming the system so that it will serve human needs as opposed to theprofit wants
of the propertied few. Elysium suggests that the techno-structure Elysium as a critical dystopia www.intellectbooks.com 317 that currently serves the reigning system of
dominance could be transformedand repurposed for radically different ends.

Science fiction is inevitable because it’s the language that we use

to deal with problems lacking material referents – whether the
knowledge formed by such projects operates as a repetition of
the Human or a pathway towards being otherwise is the debate
at hand.
Chu 10, associate professor of English at Queens College, CUNY (SEO-YOUNG, 2010, “DO METAPHORS
DREAM OF LITERAL SLEEP?,” Harvard University Press, //Townes)
What Science Fiction Is: Lyric Mimesis

By now it should be clear that Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? operates on a new definition of science fiction. Here is an
informal version of the definition:
 Science fiction is a representational technology powered by a combination of lyric and
narrative forces that enable SF to generate mimetic accounts of cognitively
estranging referents.
Here is a more formal definition:

Science fiction (definiendum) is a mode (genus) whose combined attributes— lyric/figurative and narrative/literal—
together empower SF to render cognitively estranging referents available for representation (differentiae specificae).

Three main factors are likely to make this definition “new” to most readers. The first factor is the definition’s assignment to the
definiendum a quality seldom thought of in conjunction with (or even in proximity to) science fiction: lyricism. Accordingly, most of
this chapter has been charged with the task of demonstrating the ways in which lyricism inheres in science fiction. The second factor
is the definition’s assignment to the definiendum a quality usually thought of as antithetical to SF: the capacity for mimetic
representation. Accordingly, each of the next five chapters of this book will demonstrate the ways in which a specific cognitively
estranging referent becomes available for representation in works of science fiction. The third factor is the definition’s classification
of the definiendum as a “mode” rather than as a “genre,” which is how most people classify science fiction. (Some even classify SF as
a “subgenre.”) By “mode” I have in mind a category more expansive than “genre” and less determinable. Alastair Fowler captures
the inexplicitness of “mode” in his insight that “modal terms never imply a complete external form” (107). Science
fiction,
being “modal,” can assume a variety of “external forms”— electronica, concept art, prose
fiction, film, architecture, etc.— while remaining recognizably science-fictional throughout.

Although Do Metaphors Dream operates on an unconventional definition of “science fiction,”

promoting a redefinition of the term is not my ultimate purpose here. The above formulations
amount to a working definition rather than a conclusive argument. This working definition enables me to
pursue the ultimate purpose of Do Metaphors Dream: to suggest a science- fictional theory of representation. As I proposed earlier,

all representation is to some degree science- fictional because all reality is to some
degree cognitively estranging. What most people call “realism,” I said, is actually a low-
intensity variety of SF, one that requires little energy to accomplish its representational work
insofar as its referents (e.g., softballs) are readily susceptible to representation. Conversely, what
most people call “science fiction” is actually a high-intensity variety of realism, one that
requires exorbitant levels of energy to accomplish its representational work insofar as its
referents (e.g., financial derivatives) challenge simple representation. In this book,
“realism” means low- intensity mimetic representation, while “science fiction” means high-
intensity mimetic representation. The continuum shared by realism and SF runs parallel to the
continuum shared by all referents— from pebbles, dimes, and blueberries to cyberspace, black
holes, and postmemory.
In addition to arguing that the difference between SF and realism corresponds to the difference in the degree to which their
referents defy representation, I argued that the differences among various types of SF correspond to the various types of referents
that require high- intensity representation. Surrealism,
I said, is a type of SF mimesis whose cognitively
estranging referent is the phenomenon of dreaming; utopianism is a type of SF mimesis whose
cognitively estranging referent is the ideal polity; gothic is a type of SF mimesis whose
cognitively estranging referent is the repressed- but- irrepressible unconscious; and so on. What
unites these types of SF— what differentiates them from realism proper— is their ability to
produce mimetic accounts of referents unavailable to straightforward
representation.
Skeptical readers might wonder (understandably) why I use “science fiction” as an apparent synecdoche for the sum of so- called
nonmimetic genres. Why do I posit science fiction (arguably a subgenre) as a mode encompassing fantasy, gothic, surrealism, etc.?
Would it not be more accurate for me to reformulate my argument using the word “nonmimetic” instead of “science fiction”?
Several reasons compel me to use “science fiction” to designate such a broad range of representational strategies. Replacing
“science fiction” with “nonmimetic” would be potentially misleading insofar as my argument is precisely that “nonmimetic” texts are
actually mimetic. Furthermore, there are distinct advantages to using SF as a means of framing and characterizing a theory of
mimesis. To return to a claim made in the opening pages of this book: science fiction offers an uncannily opportune and prolific
resource for generating brave new worldviews on an ancient topic. The
discourses that already surround and
constitute science fiction— the discourses that make science fiction what we perceive it to be—
encompass a prodigious wealth of aesthetic and philosophical materials from which
to construct a framework for thinking about mimesis. As the foregoing pages make obvious,
two materials that I have found especially suitable for constructing a science- fictional theory of representation are the
Suvinian vocabulary of “ cognitive estrangement
” and the tantalizingly deceptive absence of SF poems
(i.e., the absent omnipresence of lyric in narrative SF). Less obviously, I have sought to enhance my argument by tapping the potent
aura of iconic SF characters and texts (e.g., Jekyll/Hyde; 2001) as well as the mental associations that attend the repertory of SF
motifs (e.g., telepathy, aliens). But the material most vital to my project may be the phrase “science fiction” itself. It cannot be an
accident that the phrase’s original incarnation as “scientific fiction”— Hugo Gernsback introduced this coinage in the 1920s— rapidly
mutated into “science fiction,” which soon “prevailed over the original coinage” (Moskowitz, “How Science Fiction Got Its Name,”
1127). As noted earlier, “science fiction,” unlike the modified noun “scientific fiction,” is charged
with lyric voltage generated by the shock of catachresis: the noun “science” has
denotations and connotations that clash energetically with the denotations and
connotations of the noun “fiction.” At the same time, the etymological resonances of “science
fiction” suggest that the voltage generated by the catachrestic joining of “science” and “fiction”
is itself a generative force. “Science” comes from the Latin verb “sciere,” to know. “Fiction”
comes from the Latin verb “fingere,” to make by shaping. Science fiction, in other
words, equals
the making of knowledge. This equation calls attention to the crucial
epistemological work that science fiction performs. To make something available for
representation is to make it knowable.
What Science Fiction Is Not: Allegory

If all representation is to some degree science- fictional, then what is not science fiction?

My answer: Allegory is not science fiction.

This claim may seem perverse. As Joanna Russ has noted, one of the most common responses to “What is science fiction?” is “Allegory” (“Speculations,” 17). Certainly allegory and science fiction share salient attributes. Both are modes at once lyric and narrative,
modes in which figurative structures are methodically literalized as large- scale features of narrative worlds. In fact, many of the ways in which scholars have characterized allegory can be used to characterize science fiction as well. In Allegory: The Theory of a
Symbolic Mode, Angus Fletcher describes allegory as a “protean device” that embraces “so many different kinds of literature” that “no narrowly exclusive stipulated definition will be useful, however desirable it might seem, while formal precision may at present
even be misleading to the student of the subject” (1). This description can be applied directly to science fiction without losing any of its veracity. To continue applying Fletcher’s characterization of allegory to my own characterization of SF: science fiction
encompasses an “extraordinary variety of literary kinds” (3). It is “a many- sided phenomenon” whose “overall purposes are capable of many minor variations” (23). Just as “there are degrees of allegory” (312), there are degrees of SF. Just as “we must be ready to
discern in almost any work at least a small degree of allegory” (8), we must be ready to discern in almost any work at least a small degree of SF.

Such correlations, however, do not make allegory and science fiction identical. Instead they indicate that allegory and SF are commensurate in size, scope, and relevance. Allegory and SF may belong to the same genus— both are “modes”— but they do not share the
same differentiae specificae. The defining qualities of allegory remain importantly distinct from the defining qualities of science fiction. Allegory is a mode whereby a text invites being construed “as if there were an ‘other’ sense to which it referred” (New Prince ton
Encyclopedia, 31). In par tic u lar, allegory involves what Gordon Teskey has identified as “an incoherent narrative” that “elicits continual interpretation as its primary aesthetic effect, giving us the feeling that we are moving at once inward and upward toward the
transcendental ‘other’ ” (4– 5). As with intransitive verbs (e.g., “to blossom,” “to evanesce,” “to spiral”), allegory takes no direct object. A narrative in the allegorical mode need not be about something. The purpose of allegory is not to refer to a specific object but to
incite the reader’s mind to exegesis. Meanwhile, the purpose of science fiction is not to instigate exegetical activity in the reader’s mind but to represent a cognitively estranging referent. Just as a transitive verb requires an object to complete its meaning (“to
represent ___ ,” “to address ___”), science fiction requires an object— or moreprecisely a referent— to complete its function.

Yet allegory and SF are not mutually exclusive. A text can qualify as both simultaneously. Consider the following two ways of approaching a grape. It is one thing to say: “This grape elicits continuous sense impressions in me: yellow- greenish hues; flavors sweet and
slightly acidic. . . .” It is another thing to say: “This grape performs a certain function in my body, making available to the tissues of my body specific nutrients— vitamins, sugars, fiber. . . .” The analogy is imperfect, but the difference between the two approaches
delineated above is not unlike the difference between allegory and science fiction. Both approaches to the grape, while dissimilar, can coexist without splitting the grape in half.

Let me discuss a literary case that serves more properly than the grape to illustrate the differences between allegory and science fiction. The case is a well- known Re nais sance allegory: Alma’s “House of Temperance” in book 2, canto IX of Spenser’s epic poem The
Faerie Queene. Alma, whose name means “soul,” is a young woman, “full of grace and goodly modestee” (stanza 18), who resides in a diligently maintained and vigilantly guarded home that Spenser describes in detail over the course of numerous pages. Among the
house hold members are a “Steward” named “Diet” who is “in demeanure sober, and in counsell sage” (27); an industrious “kitchin Clerke” named “Digestion” (31); and several unnamed workers who efficiently dispose of house hold waste by discarding it through
“secret wayes” that lead discreetly “to the back- gate” (32). The air inside the house is kept temperate by a “huge great paire of bellowes, which did styre / Continually, and cooling breath inspyre” (30). Atop the house is a “stately Turret” (44) where “Two goodly
Beacons” are “set in watches stead” (46). Seated “in siluer sockets bright,” these beacons are composed “most subtilly” of “liuing fire” and “Couer’d with lids deuiz’d of substance sly, / That readily they shut and open might” (46). Interestingly, the walls of the
architectural structure are “Not built of bricke, ne yet of stone and lime, / But of thing like to that Aegyptian slime” (21). Slime, then, is the primary building material that constitutes this building. Alma’s house is made of actively ambiguous goo— a substance both
living and inert, biological (mucus) and geological (mud). Since “no earthly thing is sure,” the house of Alma eventually “must turne to earth” again (21). For the time being, however, the ooze is molded to the unthinkably intricate “workemanship” that distinguishes
the overall structure of Alma’s house:

The frame thereof seemd partly circulare,

And part triangulare, o worke divine;

Those two the first and last proportions are,

The one imperfect, mortal, feminine;

Th’ other immortall, perfect, masculine,

And twixt them both a quadrate was the base,

 Proportioned equally by seven and nine;

Nine was the circle set in heavens place,

All which compacted made a goodly Diyapase. (Bk. 2, canto IX, stanza 22)

Such is the divine workmanship of Alma’s house of temperance as delineated in a stanza that Thomas Roche has annotated as “the most obviously complicated of Spenser’s stanzas” (1126).

As allegory, Alma’s house arouses our curiosity. It kindles our desire to seek latent significances. It impels us to ask questions that might move us toward that elusive “something else” that we sense in Spenser’s plan. What is the meaning of this strange residence?
Why is it so heavily fortified? How can we decipher characters with names such as “Digestion” and “Diet”? Why is there so much secrecy surrounding the back- gate through which house hold waste is “privily” discarded? Are the two bellows that “inspyre” breath
supposed to remind us of lungs and respiration? And the two watchful beacons set in bright sockets and covered with lids that shut and open— yes, those must be meant to remind us of eyes. Apparently, then, this architectural structure is designed to remind the
reader of a human body. But whose body is it? Or what kind of body? Because the house is portrayed as rigorously maintained by its conscientious inhabitants, we may infer that the body evoked by Alma’s house is a temperate one (as “House of Temperance”
indeed suggests). He/she— the gender is ambiguous— obviously takes care of this body, is mindful of what enters and exits it, and is extremely protective of its borders. For what purpose is the body maintained so carefully? The unusual composition of Alma’s house
offers some clues. A structure made of something as slippery as slime must require rigorous maintenance to forestall dissolution. Moreover, an architectural design so transcendently charged with obscure symbolism that it hovers on the brink of unintelligibility
can have been created only by an entity whose handiwork demands to be treated with reverent devotion. Particularly intriguing here is the juxtaposition of obscure slime with obscure numerology— the juxtaposition, in other words, of ever obscurer levels of
materiality (brute flesh constantly living and dying) withever obscurer levels of abstraction (form that idealizes the body as more than merely flesh). The juxtaposition creates an effect at once stereoscopic and kaleidoscopic— stereoscopic because it synthesizes a
three- dimensional illusion from two constituent images and kaleidoscopic because each image is forever shifting. Alma’s house is an ever- evolving constellation of allegory effects. From one angle it evokes the body of a young woman. From another angle it evokes
a slimy corpse. From yet another angle it evokes an architectural structure. It might be an unfinished sculpture of the boundary between outline and texture, the metaphysical boundary where the shapeliness of form simultaneously recedes into yet resurfaces from
the shapelessness of matter. It might be a statue on the verge of coming to life. What ever it is, it is always in the midst of transformation. It is a question of perspective— slowly but continuously mutating. It exists on the brink of indecipherability, just as it exists on
the brink of the anthropomorphic. Reading Spenser’s House of Alma as allegory is not unlike watching Optimus Prime (from the Transformers cosmos) in the midst of morphing intricately from truck to robot.

If the house of Alma in allegorical mode is an ongoing process of interpretive possibilities, the house of Alma in science- fiction mode is a powerful mimetic representation of a cognitively estranging referent, namely, the divinely awe- inspiring and exquisite
workmanship of the human body. Spenser accomplishes this representational task by literalizing the metaphor of human body as house. There are various ways of figuring the human body: for example, the body as costume, the body as temple, the body as prison,
the body as geography, the body as automobile. In the case of Spenser’s temperate body, the metaphor of a house is appropriate because it allows Spenser to develop a narrative situation in which a house is maintained in an orderly fashion. Alma’s residence is not
just a representation of the human body; it is more specifically a representation of a human body that is healthy and well maintained. Accordingly, the metaphor literalized through Alma’s house is not just the human body as a house but more specifically the healthy
and temperate human body as a house whose slimy material composition entails vigilant maintenance and whose transcendent design entails worshipful devotion.

I have been using a sixteenth- century text to illustrate my point, but equally relevant illustrations of the difference between allegory and science fiction can be found in contemporary texts. Take, for example, the TV show Lost (2004– 2010). As with the Faerie
Queene and so many other texts, Lost qualifies as both science fiction and allegory, but what makes the show allegorical is not what makes it science- fictional. What makes Lost allegorical is the ongoing process of interpretation that the show elicits as its primary
aesthetic effect: the series has generated a sizable and dedicated audience whose members use online forums to interpret, decode, and overanalyze every possible detail about the mysterious island. What makes Lost science- fictional is its power to make a
cognitively estranging referent (the afterlife of 9/11 in America) available for representation.

Yet as I said earlier, allegory and science fiction, while distinct, are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, the two modes are intimately interrelated. Allegory plays a vital role in assisting in science- fiction mimesis: the aesthetic plea sure that a reader derives from the
experience of “continuous interpretation” facilitates his or her recognition of what ever elusive referent is being made available for representation in a science- fiction text. Meanwhile, the alluring presence of a cognitively estranging yet ultimately knowable referent
at the end of the interpretive process is what gives this process its final meaning and importance. Science fiction and allegory, then, have a reciprocal relationship. They are each other’s significant other half. Each mode is the other mode’s reciprocal. Each completes
the other. Just as 1/x and x need to be multiplied by each other to equal one, allegory and science fiction need to be multiplied together to achieve the product of a total unity.

The Introduction Ends on a Historical Note

The science- fictional theory of representation offered in these pages may seem ahistorical. Insofar as elusive referents have always

been around and are unlikely to disappear anytime soon, science fiction has always existed and will
always continue to exist. That the term “science fiction” emerged in the 1900s need not prevent us from relating
it to texts predating the twentieth century. To apply “science fiction” to, say, Shelley’s Frankenstein is no more anachronistic than
applying the word “literature” to the Iliad, Macbeth, and other texts predating the nineteenth century (when this sense of the word
“literature” emerged).

Yet Do Metaphors Dream does have a kind of historical consciousness (or a historical
unconscious). Most of the texts discussed in this book are from the twentieth and twenty- first
centuries. “Mundane” reality has never been an uncomplicated matter, but the
case could be made that everyday reality for people all over the world has grown less
and less concretely accessible over the past several centuries and will continue to evolve in
that direction for decades (if not centuries) to come. In other words, cognitively estranging
referents are growing more and more prevalent. At the same time, the referents that
constitute our everyday reality are growing progressively estranging. Financial derivatives
are more cognitively estranging than pennies . Global climate change is more
cognitively estranging than yesterday’s local weather. Multinational conglomerates are more
cognitively estranging than in de pen dent retail shops. Korean American identity is more cognitively estranging
than Korean identity. Science fiction, then, is an increasingly appropriate and convenient
language for handling questions about so- called mundane reality. The five referents discussed in the next five chapters of
this book— the globalized world, cyberspace in the 1990s, war trauma, postmemory han, and robot rights— exemplify this trend
whereby the referents that constitute everyday reality grow more elusive.

All possible quantum outcomes, including the possibility of

Elysium, exist in this universe
Vaidman 21, Lev. “Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.” Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. Last substantive revision Aug 5, 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/
mvp

The fundamental idea of the MWI, going back to Everett 1957, is that there are
myriads of worlds in the Universe in addition to the world we are aware of. In particular, every
time a quantum experiment with different possible outcomes is performed, all outcomes are
obtained, each in a different newly created world, even if we are only aware of the world with
the outcome we have seen. The reader can split the world right now using this
interactive quantum world splitter. The creation of worlds takes place everywhere, not just
in physics laboratories, for example, the explosion of a star during a supernova.

If debate is a game we are playing it wrong. The status quo

results in the collapse of all political action - only a
reinvigoration of science fiction stories can create new
paradigms and possibilities
McCalmont 12 Jonathan McCalmont 10-3-2012 “Laziness and Irony: How Science Fiction Lost the
Future” ruthlessculture.com/2012/10/03/cowardice-laziness-and-irony-how-science-fiction-lost-the-
future/ (Film Critic and Author)//Re-cut by Elmer

While many of these books are excellent examples of their styles of writing, I cannot help but yearn for books that plunge
us into the world rather than aid our flight from it. The thing that unites humanity is not the trappings of
popular culture, but the realities of a world that needs to be both confronted
and understood if it is ever to change. It is now almost a cliché to say that we are living in a
science fictional world but it is genuinely astonishing to think about how much

science fiction writers have got right over the years: Every morning, I sit at my desk and fire up a
Twitter client that allows me to communicate with people around the globe in real time. Both a sounding board and a source of
information, Twitter has me bouncing my ideas off Australian graduate students and Indian journalists while other people retweet
links to their latest blog posts for the people living in different time zones. Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe (2004) predicted
much of what it meant to have one’s community exist in entirely different places and yet hardly any contemporary science fiction
novels acknowledge the existence of social media let alone engage with the social and psychological changes heralded by such a
radically different types of community. Having grown afraid of the political repercussions of putting soldiers in harm’s way, American
political elites have increasingly come to rely on the use of remote controlled
planes as a means of imposing
American political hegemony on remote parts of the globe. Increasingly sophisticated at the level of both software
and hardware, these drones are beginning to resemble the drones that appeared in Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels but while Banks’
predictions of a hard robotic hand inside a velvety human glove come to pass, Banks himself seems more interested in reimagining
the Culture as a fantastical backdrop similar to that of Vernor Vinge’s Zones of Thought series. I used the examples of Doctorow and
Banks as both are writers whose careers have played out against a background of ironic detachment. Indeed, between Doctorow’s
fondness for Disney’s Magic Kingdom and Banks’ increasing fondness for epic quest narratives, both Doctorow and Banks
demonstrate how even the most detached of writers can sometimes connect directly to the world around them. Indeed, the point of
this essay was never to make monolithic statements about the true nature of science fiction but rather to draw attention to a broad

narrative of detachment that has transformed the mainstream of science fiction into an airless postmodern vacuum. Science
fiction never completely stopped commenting on the world… it’s just that the works that do
comment on the world do not get as much attention as those that pointedly ignore it. Similarly, few writers have completely
abandoned writing about either the future or science, it is just that these ideas now lurk on the periphery rather than in the
foreground of the text. I am not calling for a complete re-think of the science fictional enterprise, rather I

would like to see the genre seize this historic opportunity and rediscover its heritage
of engagement and prediction. Part of what makes this moment so special is the fact that we have seen
cracks appear in the façade of neoliberalism. Francis Fukuyama once wrote of the end of history having been achieved
but the economic, social and political turbulence engulfing the world make it clear that history is very much alive and kicking. The

challenge facing contemporary science fiction is to widen the cracks and to peer through
neoliberalism in an effort to see what could one day come to pass. These
the fractured veneer of

futures, though speculative, must always remain anchored in the present moment as the
real challenge facing science fiction is not merely to create a possible future, but to create the type of
possible future that is currently deemed unthinkable . As Mark fisher puts it: The long dark
night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive
glimmers of alternative political
pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even

and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear

a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility
under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can
happen, suddenly anything is possible again. My greatest source of optimism for the
future of science fiction lays in the fact that science fiction has handled precisely this type of situation before. Back in the 1950s, the
British science fiction author John Wyndham wrote a series of novels attempting to make sense of the end of the British Empire.
Snarkily dubbed ‘Cosy Catastrophes’ by Brian Aldiss, these works painted a memorable image of middle-class folk struggling to cling
to their old lifestyles as the world fell apart around them. In The Day of the Triffids (1951) Wyndham describes middle-class people
being shackled to the sick and blind in a misguided effort to create a more equal society. Confronted by this nightmare of post-
Imperial socialist egalitarianism, Wyndham’s characters retreat to the Isle of Wight where they begin to draw up plans to re-impose
their middle-class values on the world. A similar terror of unchecked social change pervades Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos
(1957) as a group of villagers realise that their brilliantly gifted children are in fact a group of inhuman monsters that must be
destroyed lest their difference taint the entire planet. Looking back on Wyndham’s work, it is easy to laugh at the astonishing
narrow-mindedness of his concerns. Less than a decade after the publication of The Midwich Cuckoos, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would
take the idea of a generation of radically Other children and turned it into a franchise that sold millions of comics and inspired the
creation of a series of vastly successful blockbuster movies. We laugh at Wyndham’s social conservatism and cheer the X-men’s
celebration of difference in part because Wyndham did his job as a science fiction writer. By using genre techniques to isolate social
trends and force them out into the open where they can be discussed and analysed in a fictional context, Wyndham was helping an
entire generation process and come to terms with a period of intense social unrest, a period very similar to our own. We are living
through a period of instability. As government and businesses teeter on the brink of collapse and individuals acquire fortunes so vast
that they beggar belief, our cosy Western reality is beginning to fall apart. For the first time in decades, the next generation of
Westerners will be less well off than their parents as jobs, housing and opportunity decline across the board. Devoid of ideas and
clearly terrified by the responsibility of having to keep a decaying system together, Western leaders tear up a century of political
reform and strip the state back to its feudal origins: Armies to fight foreigners and a police force to fight everyone else. Faced with
such terrifying instability and the shadow of a hideous future being born, Western culture has responded by dutifully ignoring the
warning signs and encouraging us to buy more stuff. Don’t worry about your job… picture yourself as a Victorian airship captain!
Don’t think too much about what the government is doing with your taxes… read a series of novels about bloggers fighting zombies!
Don’t pay attention to real world inequalities… moan about how oppressed and mistreated you are for wanting to watch a cartoon
about magical ponies and friendship! Never has the term ‘cosy catastrophe’ seemed more fitting than it does today. Just as Joe
Haldeman once used science fictional tropes to process the experience of returning from Vietnam to find America completely
changed in The Forever War (1976) and Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975) addressed the changing nature of female identity,
contemporary science fiction must find a way to confront, process and make sense of the world as it is today. We are living in a

science fiction is in a unique position to

science fictional world and this means that

help us to make sense of a dangerously unstable world . By rediscovering its

ties to reality and using old tropes to explore new problems, science fiction can provide humanity with its
first draft of future history.

Politics and Science Fiction are co-productive – it is IMPOSSIBLE

to analyze politics without its fictional undercurrents
Weldes 2 [Senior Lecturer, Bristol University; PhD (Minn) (Jutta, “Popular culture, science fiction, and
world politics: exploring inter textual relations” in “To seek out new worlds: science fiction and world
politics” ed. Weldes, Palgrave Macmillan 2003, 15-16)] // JG
Crucial here is not only the reproduction, across the SF/world politics intertext, of similar images— whether of cyberspace, the post-
modern city, or spaceship Earth. 18 These are the easiest relations to illustrate but, although central to the production of common
sense, they are not ultimately the most significant aspect of the SF/world politics intertext. Instead, what renders this
intertext so crucial to our understanding of world politics is the deep metaphysical— epistemological
and ontological— overlap across its constituent texts. Their structural homologies, in other words, extend to their
most basic assumptions: the nature of Self and Other, the character of knowledge, the possibilities of knowing the Self, or
the Other, the nature of and relations between good and evil, the possibilities for community. The language of “inter-
text” subtly implies that different texts are produced in different spaces/times/cultures. These different texts then have an interface:
they meet and relate to one another. But if these texts already overlap at such fundamental metaphysical levels, then the notion of
an “intertext” relies too heavily on an ontology of difference. Quite different texts— the constituent elements of the
SF/world politics intertext— do get produced, but they share deeply rooted assumptions.

Thus the Role of the Ballot is to endorse the debater that best
performatively and methodologically opens up the debate space
to the pedagogy of science fiction.
Miller and Bennett 1 [Associate Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes,
Associate Director and CoPI of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society, and Chair of the PhD Program in
Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology at Arizona State University. He is also a Senior
Fellow in the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He
holds a PhD in electrical engineering from Cornell University AND PhD in biochemistry from Arizona State
University in 2003 and today is an Assistant Research Professor in the Consortium for Science, Policy and
Outcomes and the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (October, Clark A. and
Ira, “ Thinking longer term about technology: is there value in science fiction-inspired approaches to
constructing futures? ” Science and Public Policy, 35(8), Ebsco)] // JG

Over time, the most important project may be to try to identify mechanisms through which science fiction could be
meaningfully integrated into society’s practices and institutions for public engagement and technology
assessment. This will not be easy. American political culture is deeply oriented toward the present , especially with
regard to the framing of its regulatory gaze. As highlighted by the dissenting opinions to the recent Supreme Court ruling forcing the
Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, US regulatory culture is founded on the
axiom that only harms that are actual or imminent are generally subject to regulation and redress. Thinking prospectively
about the kinds of technological risks we may face in the future is , at best, not central to the framing of
US risk assessment or technology assessment enterprises . And yet, it would seem that finding ways to be
more future-oriented would add substantial value to our assessment processes . In some cases, growing
attention is being given within assessments to the practice of scenario-building — which in many ways is a form of science
fiction writing. Judicious mixing of science fiction writing sensibilities into scenario writing practices could
substantially enhance the public engagement possibilities associated with scenarios. This fact was recognized by the
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a major international scientific assessment, which used drama to communicate scenarios to a
range of publics in Africa. We should learn from this experience. But science fiction can be more than just a communication tool.
Citizens could be given new opportunities to contribute creatively to assessments through science fiction writing exercises, perhaps
working with scenarios, perhaps in other ways. Experiments with citizens writing scenarios in an ecological assessment conducted by
the University of Wisconsin showed that these methods have considerable power in facilitating citizen buy-in to
the assessment process, results, and policy recommendations . They also shaped the scenarios in directions
unexpected by the expert participants. Likewise, as a forerunner to a formal assessment process — such as the UK GM Nation
exercise, where citizens were asked to meet and dialogue about their preferences with regard to genetically modified organisms —
writers might be asked to develop multiple stories and dialogues that could be shared with the public alongside more technical
reports.

Sci-fi is the both product and producer of knowledge --- only our
role of the ballot can prioritize sci-fi imaginaries to create new
forms of subjectivity to create structures of scenario planning
Hellstrand 14 [Ingvil Hellstrand, associate professor at the University of Stavanger, Norway, 2014,
“Passing as human Posthuman worldings at stake in contemporary science fiction” Universitetet i
Stavanger, Accessed 8-18-2022,
https://www.academia.edu/12248991/Passing_as_human_Posthuman_worldings_at_stake_in_contemp
orary_science_fiction ww

Stories about phenomena or practices affect how we understand them. In this thesis, I explore
how stories of passing as human in the science fiction genre can highlight how our
understanding of or knowledge about what is ‘human’ reverberate in dynamics of identification
and differentiation. According to feminist philosopher Donna Haraway, knowledge, and the ways in which knowledge is formed, maintained and negotiated, is “a story-telling
practice” (1989: 4). She suggests that knowledge or truth claims are inextricably linked to socio-historical and ideological conditions, and that knowledge is thus developed under specific
conditions. In other words, knowledge, and how we understand the world in which we live, is not neutral, but located in time, technology, culture and politics. What are the interconnections

A literal, story-telling
between categories of identity and ontology as markers of belonging and existence and knowledges about sameness and difference? ∂

practice that is known for deliberately manipulating the conditions of possibility for knowledge
is science fiction. By creating alternative realities, science fiction establishes a productive
rupture with established truths and knowledges. In this way, science fiction brings to
light the societal and ideological structures that ground the reality one knows and understands
(de Lauretis 1980; Haraway and Goodeve 2000; Luckhurst 2005; Melzer 2006; Roberts 2006; Williams 1970). As Norwegian science

fiction writers and critics Jon Bing and Tor Åge Bringsværd phrase it, science fiction is a “crowbar against
conventional reality” (1967: 7, my translation). ∂ In this thesis I have seized on the crowbarring effects of science
fiction, and its capacity to expand on our collective cultural horizon of the possible, and engaged
in a discussion about the ways in which it constructs and negotiates the parameters of the
human as a specific and privileged identity and ontology. Haraway’s notion of knowledge production as story-
telling practices serves as a productive entry point for exploring the socio-cultural and ideological conditions for stories, structures
and practices of sameness and difference, and the power relations at stake. Understanding
knowledge production as
a kind of traffic, facts can depend on fiction to become communicable, and, likewise, fiction
often depends on reference points and the establishment of facts (Haraway 1989:15). In line with this, I
suggest that science fiction is both product and producer of knowledge about the
human and its limits. Considering that technological development is integral to the science fiction genre, I take as a starting point the belief that narratives and
representations in science fiction are particularly apt means of exploring the ways in which the conventional binary division between human and machine is under stress. How can
representations of technological non-humans passing as human in science fiction (re)produce and mediate understandings of the ontological identity of the human by addressing discourses of
normality, legitimacy and authenticity?∂ In four articles, I approach the notion of passing as a situation or strategy that subverts identity and ontology as stable parameters. The articles are (in
publishing order): ∂ “The shape of things to come? Politics of reproduction in Battlestar Galactica”. (Published 2011 in NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 19(1): 6–24). This

a politics of survival in the science fiction TV series Battlestar Galactica corresponds to

article suggests that

contemporary biopolitics in late modern Western society. I am particularly concerned with how
the female body is subjected to biopolitical regulation, and how the impact of technology in and
on the body brings the politics of ‘life itself’ to the fore.∂ “Are you alive? Kritisk intimitet i Battlestar Galactica”
[Are you alive? Critical intimacy in Battlestar Galactica]. (Published 2013 in Jørgen Lorentzen and Wencke Mühleisen (eds) Å være
sammen. Intimitetens nye kulturelle vilkår [Being Together: New cultural conditions for intimacy] Oslo: Akademika Forlag, pp. 177-
202). In this article, I suggest that critical encounters
between the human and non-human are posthuman
interventions in the established identity hierarchies that dominate human worldviews. I discuss the notion of
critical intimacy as a mode of ethical consideration that confronts binary systems of differentiation. ∂ “Politiske monstre. Å passere som menneskelig i science fiction-TV-seriene Star Trek og Battlestar Galactica”
[Political monsters: Passing as human in the science fiction TV series Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica] 1 . (Published 2014 in Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning [Journal for Gender Research] 38(2): 127–148). Here, I
identify a shift in the mode of embodying the Other in the histories of science fiction TV series: from visibly marked difference to technological hybridisation to passing. I develop the notion of political monsters as
a term for analysing how non-human characters in science fiction embody and enact Otherness in ways that highlight how ontological understandings of the ‘human’ are embedded in biopolitical norms and

‘not quite
ideologies. ∂ “Almost the same, but not quite: Ontological politics of recognition in science fiction” (To be published in Feminist Theory 2015). This article explores how issues of

human-ness’ expose the conditions of possibility of being considered human; of human

ontology. I refer to these dynamics of identifying sameness and difference as ontological politics
of recognition. I suggest a genealogy of passing as human in the science fiction genre, and trace the markers of ‘not quite
human-ness’ for the technological non-human through different media over the time span of four decades. I suggest that
enactments of passing as human in science fiction are interconnected with social and political
change, and argue that ‘not quite human-ness’ both inform and challenge the boundaries of the
human. In all the articles I identify an increase in representations of non-humans passing as human in the science fiction genre in the 2000s. This is interesting because it points to the notion of passing
∂

as a noteworthy trope in contemporary popular culture. What is at stake in stories of ‘real’ or ‘fake’ human identity and ontology? What can the trope of passing tell us about how identificatory categories are

passing as human in contemporary science fiction brings to

delimited, and how they (fail to) materialise? ∂ In this thesis, I suggest that

the fore issues of ontological (in)stability, performative identity practices and ethico-political
accountability. Through an indepth exploration of these issues throughout this overview document, I argue that these stories
of passing indicate a turn towards exchange and relationality, rather than a reinforcement of
conventional antagonisms. I explain this shift through positioning passing as an intervention in established knowledge
structures and power relations, and, particularly, the trope of passing as human in science fiction as a form of posthuman worldings2
. The notion of posthuman worlding is here understood as the stories, practices and knowledges
that constitute reality or worlds (Haraway 2011) in a contemporary landscape where the
boundaries of the human are in flux. I will elaborate on these terms and claims in more detail during the course of this
overview document, but before I turn to my methodologies, analysis and findings, I present the relevance of this study and the conceptual and theoretical
territories that support my analysis.

Sci-Fi builds realities that improve communication to those

outside the debate space – my mom can understand the general
thesis of Elysium but not people blitzing through cap cards that
are purely theoretical
Dahlstrom 14 [Michael F. Dahlstrom, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication Iowa State
University, 9-15-2014, “Using narratives and storytelling to communicate science with nonexpert
audiences” PNAS, accessed 9-7-2022, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183170/ ww

Storytelling often has a bad reputation within science (1). Viewed as baseless or
even manipulative, stories are often denigrated with statements such as, “the plural of anecdote
is not data.” Such a perspective is valuable within the context of scientific data collection to underscore the important
difference between making informed generalizations from systematically sampled populations versus overgeneralizations from small
and often biased samples.∂ However, when the context moves from data collection to the communication of science to
nonexpert audiences, stories, anecdotes, and narratives become not only more appropriate but potentially
more important. Research suggests that narratives are easier to comprehend and audiences
find them more engaging than traditional logical-scientific communication (3, 4). More pragmatically,
the sources from which nonexperts receive most of their science information are already biased
toward narrative formats of communication. Once out of formal schooling, nonexpert audiences
get the majority of their scientific information from mass media content (5).
Because media practitioners have to compete for the attention of their audiences, they routinely rely on
stories, anecdotes, and other narrative formats to cut although the information clutter and
resonate with their audiences. Although the plural of anecdote may not be data, the anecdote has a greater chance of
reaching and engaging with a nonexpert audience. The challenge for science communicators, then, is to
decide when and how narratives can effectively and appropriately help them communicate to
nonexperts about science.∂ The purpose of this article is to synthesize literature on narrative communication and place it within a science
communication context. The article begins with a review of narrative literature, as well as the mass media context through which most nonexpert audiences get
their information about science. The article then reviews the potential persuasive impacts of narrative communication and the ethical considerations of using
narrative to communicate science. Finally, future intersections of narrative with ongoing questions in science communication are introduced.∂ NARRATIVES∂ Most
individuals have an inherent understanding of what it means to tell a story. Communication scholars supplement this colloquial understanding of narrative through
the articulation of certain factors that distinguish narrative as a communication format. Narratives follow a particular structure that describes the cause-and-effect
relationships between events that take place over a particular time period that impact particular characters. Although there exist more nuanced factors that
scholars can use to further determine the narrativity of a message (6–8), this triumvirate of causality, temporality, and character represents a fairly standard
definition of narrative communication. Such a definition is independent of content and so narratives can be present within almost any communication activity or
media platform. Obvious examples include interpersonal conversation, entertainment television programs, and news profiles, but narratives can also present
themselves within larger messages as testimonials, exemplars, case studies, or eyewitness accounts.∂ Narratives are often contrasted with other formats of
communication, such as expository or argumentative communication (7), or with other types of explanations, such as descriptive, deductive, or statistical (6).

narratives are often contrasted with the logical-scientific communication

However, more generally,

underlying most of the sciences (3, 9). Three areas in particular where logical-scientific and narrative formats differ are in
their direction of generalizability, their reliance on context, and their standards for legitimacy.∂ Logical-scientific
communication aims to provide abstract truths that remain valid across a specified range of
situations. An individual may then use these abstract truths to generalize down to a specific case
and ideally provide some level of predictive power regarding that specific. Narrative
communication instead provides a specific case from which an individual can generalize up to
infer what the general truths must be to permit such a specific to occur (3, 10). In essence, the
utilization of logical-scientific information follows deductive reasoning, whereas the utilization of
narrative information follows inductive reasoning.∂ Logical-scientific communication is context-
free in that it deals with the understanding of facts that retain their meaning independently
from their surrounding units of information. As such, these facts represent the meaningful unit
of content and can be excised from a larger message and inserted into other messages, or even
presented alone, with little loss of understanding. In contrast, narrative communication is
context-dependent because it derives it meaning from the ongoing cause-and-effect structure of
the temporal events of which it is comprised (11–13). As such, it is much harder to break a
narrative into smaller units of meaningful content without either greatly altering the
understanding of the smaller unit or rendering the original narrative incoherent (3).∂ Finally, because
logical-scientific communication aims to provide general truths as an outcome, the legitimacy of its message is judged on the
accuracy of its claims. In contrast, because narrativecommunication instead aims to provide a reasonable
depiction of individual experiences, the legitimacy of its message is judged on the verisimilitude
of its situations. This difference confusingly allows logical-scientific communication and narrative communication with
opposing outcomes to be judged with equal levels of “truth” (3), and partially explains why narratives can rarely be effectively
countered with facts (14).∂ Such differences have in part led to a framework claiming that logical-scientific and narrative
communication are not just contrasting formats of communication, but represent two distinct cognitive pathways of comprehension
(3, 15, 16). The
paradigmatic pathway controls the encoding of science-based evidence, whereas
the narrative pathway controls the encoding of situation-based exemplars, leading to distinct
differences in comprehension and understanding based on the pathway used to process the
content.∂ Empirical studies support such a categorical difference between paradigmatic and
narrative processing, and suggest that narrative processing is
generally more
efficient. Narratives are often associated with increased recall, ease of
comprehension, and shorter reading times (17, 18). In a direct comparison with
expository text, narrative text was read twice as fast and recalled twice as well, regardless of
topic familiarity or interest in the content itself (19, 20). Graesser and Ottati (20) describe these and similar results
as suggesting that narratives have a “privileged status” in human cognition. These
benefits should not be assumed to come from simplicity, as coherent narratives demand a high
level of complexity in both internal complexity and alignment to cultural and social expectancies
(15, 21). Instead, narratives seem to offer intrinsic benefits in each of the four main steps of processing information: motivation and
interest, allocating cognitive resources, elaboration, and transfer into long-term memory (22).∂ As such, narrative
cognition
is thought to represent the default mode of human thought, proving structure to reality and
serving as the underlying foundation for memory (18). This reliance on narratives is suggested to be the result of
an evolutionary benefit because narratives provide their users with a format of comprehension to simulate possible realities (23),
which would serve to better predict cause-and-effect relationships and model the thoughts of other humans in the complex social

intrinsic benefits in comprehension could

interactions that define our species (24).∂ Such

benefit the communication of science. Indeed, such a movement is underway within

the science education literature (7, 25). Responding to various calls for reform in science education curriculum, some of
which specifically note the potential of narrative formats for learning (26), scholars are exploring how narratives may
improve upon the traditional ways science is taught. For example, Glaser et al. (22) describe
four factors that narratives offer, which could improve knowledge acquisition about science compared
with the traditional expository curriculum, namely dramatization, emotionalization, personalization, and fictionalization. Similarly, the
capacity model describes how both the narrative and educational components are processed when narratives are used in service of science education. Specifically,
educational content that is more integral to the plotline of the narrative requires less cognitive resources for comprehension and leads to enhanced learning (27), a
prediction that has found empirical support elsewhere in narrative research (12, 13).∂ Similarly, health communication is another area exploring the potential
benefits of using narrative, often to better educate or persuade individuals toward healthy behavior choices. Some studies empirically examine the effects of
narratives on perceptions of specific health issues, such as anticoagulant medication (28), breast cancer (29), or vaccinations (20–32), whereas others take a
broader view to justify the theoretical inclusion of narrative within health (33) or to provide a guide to its use (8). A meta-analysis of many of these health-related
narrative studies found mixed results with regard to a net narrative effect (34), although a lack of a consistent conceptualization of narrative (35) likely complicates
any generalization. Regardless of the complexities involved, calls for more narrative within health contexts continue to surface (36).∂ Although the benefits of
including narrative into science education and health contexts remain under investigation, there is another context where narratives have long been the norm in
the communication of science: the mass media.
 1AR – XT
Capitalist bordering explains the relation between Earth and
Elysium, where the 1% have found a safe haven locking the rest
into cycles of endless violence and oppression.
You vote aff to affirm that justice requires open borders for
human migration through which Earthlings can go to Elysium to
dismantle structures of plutocracy through small-scale
revolutionary subalterns that challenge the assumption of
capitalist governance.
Our analysis through sci-fi creates scenario planning that
reinvigorates politics and creates a space capable of
understanding and fighting for the telos of bordering in the
status quo which gives us independent offense for introducing
the pedagogy of Sci-Fi.
1AR – Case
 Presumption
If we win that sci-fi is good then you vote aff because our model
of debate provides an alt to squo scenario analysis in debate.
Independently, winning offense through Elysium gives us access
to the ballot.
1AR – T
 T – May not spec who open borders applies to
I meet – don’t specify a group of people. We get rid of the
rigorous citizenship requirements for all people on the Elysium.
There’s no conditioning – anyone who wants to go the Elysium
can, “earthlings” is just a term reserved to describe humanity.
 T – Everyone equal access
I meet – we give citizenship to any “earthling” and the ability to
access equal rights aboard the Elysium. They conceded Mirrlees
and Pedersen which explain how the telos of the aff is 100%
citizenship
 Reject T OV
Topicality and the definitions they read is not a rule – it’s a
contingent norm proven by things like hypo-testing at the NDT,
phil and values debate in the past – nowhere in the tournament
invite does it define words in the resolution – which means
reading topicality operates as a safety valve for speed elitist
debate – the ability to interpret rules for their own benefit is the
logic of xenophobic republicans who used 9/11 to justify the war
on terror – a fear of the unknown radiating from the securitized
anxiety of the west
 ROTB before Theory
1.Jurisdiction- the ROB speaks specifically to this round and how
the ballot should be signed, while theory is about norm-setting
which is out of the judge’s jurisdiction bc that is out of round
2.Offense- the ROB constrains what is and isn’t offensive so
theory must be contextualized to the framing or else it’s not
offensive so you can’t vote on it
3.Pedagogy- the ROB proves my pedagogy is good in debate
space which means it should come before theory since there’s
no guarantee of norm-setting but there is guarantee of
pedagogical value
4.Scope- the ROB methodology makes descriptive claims about
the world and thus how to operate within that world which
applies and can motivate action outside of the debate space
while theory only operates inside debate making my ROB more
valuable
5.Side Constraint- the kritik sets out a problem in society and the
ROB attempts to resolve it otherwise that societal bias can never
be solved and influences theory meaning it’s a side constraint on
effective theory
 A2 Fairness
1. Non-unique – coaching and resource disparities + differences
in ability and skill as well as un-reciprocal structure of the event.
2. Not an impact – it’s not portable the way our subject
formation is, and it’s empirically denied as key to the game –
people do cheaty shit but we still learn things.
3. I get to weigh the aff –
a. All their reasons idea testing is good are reasons we should
get the aff to test the shell.
b. Begs the question of what we lose – if their model of debate excludes the 1AC, I should get to weigh
the aff to justify my mode
 A2 Ground
1. No Abuse – you get all the same DAs, CPs, and NCs, and there
are tons of method Ks you could read – there’s no god-given
right to politics.
2. Turn – the ground you lose assumes My alternate model
reshapes debate as performative pedagogy along with a
revitalization of policymaking through science fiction. ANY
advantage my ROTB or pedagogy means an Aff ballot. If I win
that my model of education is better, then there’s zero abuse.
3. My reframing means both sides lose access to the same
ground, so its reciprocal. Even if you win fairness comes first, I
am ALWAYS the MOST fair.
4. You get MORE ground – you literally have to prove that
science fiction is bad to impact turn the aff.
 A2 Limits
OV to the Limits Debate: This is only an internal link to ground,
not an independent reason to reject. If I win any defense on
ground then there is no impact to limits.
1. The 1AC sets a functional limit – still uses the topic as a stasis
but opens up new discussion.
2. Making research harder isn’t an impact – if you wanna win the
TOC you gotta get good.
3. Your Limits are absolutely arbitrary
4. People are always stopped from
 A2 Paradigm Issues (DtD, CI, No RVIs)
Drop the Debater is incoherent – dropping the debate doesn’t
deter people from reading jank positions, people still read Tricks,
NIBs, skep, multiple codo PICS, etc.
 Wild asf card
They are misreading summers --- Should means what is probable
or expected.
Summers 94 (Justice Summers – Supreme Court Justice Oklahoma, Author of majority decision in Kelsey
vs Dollarsaver. <NAR> “Kelsey v. Dollarsaver Food Warehouse of Durant,” No. 81862885 P.2d 1353 1994
OK 123. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/kelsey-v-dollarsaver-food-893241715)

SUMMERS, Justice. Plaintiff (Appellee) was awarded a substantial judgment pursuant to a jury's verdict in
Bryan County. Defendant (Appellant) filed a timely Motion for New Trial and Motion for Judgment Notwithstanding the Verdict. On May

18, 1993, the trial judge signed and caused to be filed a handwritten document entitled
"Court Minute", which stated "the Court finds that the motions should be overruled."
On June 2, 1993, the judge signed and caused to be filed a typed Order as follows: "IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED, ADJUDGED & DECREED by the Court
that Defendant's Motion for New Trial and Motion for Judgment Notwithstanding the verdict be, and they are hereby, overruled." Defendant
commenced its appeal here on June 30, 1993. Plaintiff moves to dismiss for untimeliness, claiming the earlier writing commenced the appellate clock.
We deny the motion and allow the appeal to proceed. Our decision does not rest on whether judge-signed "court minutes" prior to the legislative
change of October 1, 1993 are or are not appealable orders.1 That is because the writing of May 18 here under neither view contains language

A statement that the motions should be overruled is

sufficient to make it an order of the court.

not the same as stating that the motions are overruled. Webster describes "should"
as a word used in an auxiliary function to express (1) condition (if he should leave his father his father would die); (2) propriety (this
is as it should be); (3) futurity (he realized she should have to do most of her farm work before sunrise); or (4) what is probable
or expected (they should be here before noon.) Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 1085 (10th ed. 1993). "Should" as
used by the judge here places his statement in the subjunctive mood rather than in either the indicative (or declarative) mood or the imperative mood.
See II G. Curme, A Grammar of the English Language, 391 (1980) and volume I of Dr. Curme's work at 224. The subjunctive mood is a verb form

representing an act or state, not as fact, but as contingent or possible. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary,
supra at P. 1172. In Jackson v. State of Indiana, 273 Ind. 49, 402 N.E.2d 947 (1980) the defendant on appeal argued that the trial court erred in
overruling his motion for a mistrial. The appellate court pointed out that the defendant had not made such a motion: Defendant now contends that the
trial court erred in refusing to grant his motion for mistrial. However, the record does not reflect that defense counsel made such a motion; rather, he

merely stated, "Your Honor, at this point, I should move for a mistrial." The use of the subjunctive, "should," reflects a
mere contingent or hypothetical action. Id. 402 N.E.2d at 951 (emphasis added). The trial judge in our case,
just as the defense counsel in Jackson, chose to set his statement in the subjunctive mood, here a representation that the motions were going to be,
but had not yet been, overruled. We also note that the trial court in its May 18 entry stated that "the Court finds that the motions should be
overruled." (emphasis ours) Our ruling today is consistent with Tillman v. Tillman, 199 Okla. 130, 184 P.2d 784 (1947). In that case the trial court had
stated for the record certain findings which seemed indicative of the court's opinion as to the extent of his jurisdiction. This Court said: A judgment ... is
distinct from findings of the court. [citation omitted] Findings and opinion of the court are never the judgment, but only expressions as to what the
court considers its judgment should be. Id. 184 P.2d at 785. (emphasis added). The language used by the court on May 18 falls short of amounting to an
order of the Page 1355 court. It announced that the motions should be overruled, but it did not overrule them. The later language used on June 2
declaring that the motions "be, and they are hereby, overruled", did not express futurity or probability, but was an indicative, declarative statement of
what the judge did with the motions. It overruled them. It was an order of the court, and it was timely appealed by Defendant's petition in error filed

The motion to dismiss is denied. HODGES, C.J., LAVENDER, V.C.J., and

June 30.

ALMA WILSON, KAUGER, WATT, JJ., concur. SIMMS, HARGRAVE and

OPALA, JJ., dissent. OPALA, Justice, with whom SIMMS and HARGRAVE, Justices, join, dissenting. ¶1 Concluding that the appellant's
petition in error was timely brought, the court holds today that the June 2, 1993 record entry, and not the May 18, 1993 filed memorial, I THE
SUBSTANTIVE CONTENT OF THE MAY 18 MEMORIAL DETERMINES WHETHER IT QUALIFIES AS AN ORDER ¶2 The meaning and effect of a legal
instrument depends on its substantive content rather than on the form or title provided by its author. II THE LEGAL EFFECT OF A RECORD ENTRY THAT
USES THE WORD "FINDS" AS A SYNONYM FOR OR AS INTERCHANGEABLE WITH THE VERB "ORDERS" IS DETERMINED BY THE JUDGE'S INTENT ¶3 In
concluding that the judge-signed direction is but a "finding",7 the court disregards the very essence of the May 18 entry. It memorializes the ruling
made upon the defendant's motion for judgment non obstante veredicto.8 When in a case calling for the assessment of the parties' relative negligence
a motion for judgment n.o.v. comes on for ruling, it is not within the nisi prius court's province to make any findings of fact.9 While the use of the verb
"finds" to overrule Dollarsaver's motion was perhaps grossly unartful,10 the context in which the word ("finds") is used unmistakenly indicates that it
was intended as a synonym for the verb "rules" or "orders".11 The court's construction today renders the entry nugatory. Its result, which is neither
mandated by nor consistent with the clear meaning and substance of the memorial's intended meaning, is both improvident and contrary to
precedent.12 [885 P.2d 1357] III IN TERMS OF THE POSTJUDGMENT MEMORIAL HERE UNDER REVIEW THE MEANING TO BE GIVEN THE WORD
"SHOULD" IS THE SAME AS THAT IN THE VERBS "ORDERS" OR "RULES", EVEN THOUGH "SHOULD" IS NOT FOLLOWED IMMEDIATELY BY THE TRITE; AND

The legal question to be resolved by the court is whether

ANCIENT PHRASE "AND HEREBY IS ¶4

the word "should" ¶5 Nisi prius orders should be so construed as to give effect to every words and every part of the text, with a
view to carrying out the evident intent of the judge's direction. IV
 BS Cards
The resolution is the ending of a story, where the conflict is
Resolved
Flanagan 21 [Mark Flanagan, 2-28-2021, “What Is Resolution in Literature?” Thoughtco, Accessed 9-1-
2022, https://www.thoughtco.com/shakespeare-4133223 ww

In a work of literature, the resolution is the part of the story's plot where the main problem
is resolved or worked out. The resolution occurs after the falling action and is typically where the story ends. Another term for the resolution is "dénouement," which comes from the French term dénoué, meaning "to untie." Freytag's Pyramid The dramatic structure of a
∂ ∂

story, whether it is a Greek tragedy or a Hollywood blockbuster, typically includes several elements. Gustav Freytag, a German writer, identified five essential elements—exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement—that together form a story's "dramatic arc." These elements can be plotted on a chart, known as Freytag's pyramid,
with the climax at the peak. Rising and Falling Action The left side of the chart, including the exposition and the rising action, represents the background information and the events that build toward the climax, the point of greatest interest in the story and the point where the protagonist typically undergoes a dramatic change or reversal of fate. The
∂ ∂

right side of the chart, including the falling action and the dénouement, is what follows the climax. This is the part of the story where conflicts are resolved and tension is released. Often there is a catharsis of some kind, an emotional release that brings satisfaction to the reader. During the dénouement, or resolution, questions and mysteries that arise
∂

during the story are typically—though not always—answered and explained. All complete stories have a resolution, even if the author doesn't disclose every last detail to the reader. Examples of Resolutions Because
∂ ∂ every story has a resolution —
whether the story is told through a book, a movie, or a play—examples of resolutions are ubiquitous. The examples below help explain the role of the resolution within the larger dramatic arc.

The colon modifies the rest

Walden [Walden University, No Date, “Colon Basics” Accessed 9-1-2022,
https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/formandstyle/writing/grammarmechanics/colons ww

Colons are punctuation marks used to signal when what comes next is directly related to the previous
sentence. They are used after complete sentences. It is especially important to remember that a colon is not used after a sentence fragment. See APA 4.05 for more
information on colons. Also see the post on The Colon.

Sci-Fi key to policy --- we are the most realistic model of debate
Menashy 20 [Francine Menashy, Associate Professor at Brock University, 2020,“Reimagining
Comparative Education through the Lens of Science Fiction: An Introduction to the Special Section of Book
and Media Essay Reviews” Comparative and International Education, Accessed 8-2-4-2022,
Society.https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/706849 ww

The comparative and international education field inherently grapples with what’s to come—policies,
goals, and educational “futures”(UNESCO 2019). Yet mainstream thinking, including both optimistic planning as well as critiques, arguably offers only limited and tempered
rearticulations of the pres-ent circumstances. Educators and students face some inevitable and drastic shifts that will affect

both schooling and the societies in which they live—for instance, the impacts of technological advancements and environmental crises. In order for us to

adequately face these radical changes, perhaps our approach to thinking about education must
be radical as well. This special section of Comparative Education Review’s book and media essay reviews offers are imagining of
our field, focusing on speculative and science fiction to understand and inform comparative and
international education research, policy, and practice. In this section, reviewers cast off the mainstream
ideal of objectivity that characterizes typical academic publishing and instead embrace
narratives that think beyond our current condition to alternative futures, times, and spaces.∂
Sci fi has long offered much more than entertainment through story telling by envisioning
ence ction

what we might face were humanity to continue on its current trajectory. As author Charlie Jane Anders recently wrote in a
Washington Post opinion piece: “ we need to imagine the future in order to survive it” (2019). And the present
moment spurs an urgency for this new imagining. The renewed popularity of dystopian classics including Margaret At wood’s The Handmaid’s Ta leand George Orwell’s 1984 reflects a widely understood function
of science fiction: to not merely envisage what might be,but to act as a mirror and unmask the here and now (Charles 2017; Marsh2017). The New York Times’ new series “Op-Eds from the Future”(2019) embraces
this sentiment, publishing pieces by fiction writers, scientists, and philosophers, all speculating on the future—and by extension, the present—of politics, business, technology, genetics, and the environment. ∂

And while scholars of anthropology, science and technology studies, and critical theory have
adopted science fiction as a lens through which to examine their respective fields (see Freedman 2013; Jasanoff
and Kim 2015; Jensen and Kemiksiz 2019), as this special section makes clear, so too can comparative educators. Science
fi help scholars and practitioners of international education contemplate a range of pressing
ction can

and complex issues in novel ways, perhaps as “thought experiments” on education and
schooling (Stengers 2014,12). For instance, subgenres of science fiction reimagine the present and future through speculative
fiction. Indigenous futurism and Afrofuturism offer alternative narratives often underpinned by
decolonial metaphors. Karen Mundy examines both these subgenres in her review of Nnedi Okorafor’s Bintiseries and Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves, contrasting two coming-of-
age stories and schooling set in very different futures. Recent “ cli-fi ” literature confronts head-on the potential impacts of the climate crisis . Euan Auld’s
review of Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide examines the dystopian future portrayed in this “eco-thriller” along with themes of globalization, surveillance, and the costs of unchecked economic growth. Casper Bruun
Jensen explores the ways in which clifi literature pushes us to envisage how researchers and educational institutions can more urgently respond to the climate crisis. And Iveta Silova’s review of feminist science

speculative works grapple with themes of gender equity and

fiction, focusing on Naomi Alderman’s The Power, explores how

power, disrupting the comforts of the present-day (sexist) status-quo and experimenting with
new world-making. These essay reviews together reveal how alternative narratives
might inform a
reimagining of both the educational present and future.
1AR – K
 Setcol
Story telling allows us to recognize the past and imagine the
future beyond it --- affirm speculative fiction as a part of the
afro-indigenous futurism to imagine world beyond colonialism
Enright 20 [Juleana Enright, (they/them) is an Indigenous, queer, non-binary writer, curator, sound and
theatre artist. They are a member of the Lower Brule Lakota Tribe, 8-28-2020, “Afro-Indigenous Futurisms
and Decolonizing Our Minds” Mn Artists, Accessed 9-17-2022, https://mnartists.walkerart.org/afro-
indigenous-futurisms-and-decolonizing-our-minds ww
Indigenous art is often perceived as resistance when, in fact, it is our very existence which is an act of resistance.∂ Elizabeth

LaPensée ∂ A parallel to Afrofuturism, Indigenous Futurism (coined by Anishinaabe professor Dr. Grace Dillon) is a
reclamation of Indigenous sovereignty from mainstream media. Transcending past, present, and
future, it “imagines a world where colonization hasn’t disrupted the civilization of Indigenous
people” and the representation of Indigenous people hasn’t been skewed in favor of the
colonial project. In this editorial series, I invite Black, Brown and Native narratives and agency to the
forefront, gesturing toward collective acts of resistance amid present-day modes of systemic
racism and erasure. By creating a glimpse of who came before us, who may come after us, and those who stand at the
precipice of those unions, we address the intertwined Afro-Indigenous histories of colonized life and
demand futures of decolonization in art and community. ∂ As a light-skinned Native American of Sinchangu
Lakota descent, I would be remiss not to address that I am residing on stolen Dakota land, and provide acknowledgment of those
who came before me. Ancestors whose bodies held pain, power, and knowledge, whose existence was a form of resistance, and
whose resilience and struggles of oppression I hold in my body as a blood memory. While carrying the currency of my own “white-
passing” body, I am here because of my relatives’ refusal to be wiped out by genocide, refusal to have their culture dismantled by
white oppressors, and continual fight to preserve language through storytelling of their own narrative. I think of the opening
minutes of the Indigenous Futurisms mixtape, collaboratively produced between RPM and the Native-produced kimiwan zine, where
Leanne Simpson envisions for us a world of reparations and justice: ∂ Speak to me of justice when the beneficiaries of genocide feel
the anguish of my ancestors and beg our forgiveness. When every one of the inheritors of stolen land engages in personal and
collective acts of reparative justice. When 38 white men swing from the gallows in Mankato…When our language is brought back
from the edge of extinction. When our people return from exile. ∂ Envisioning
Black, Brown and Indigenous bodies
throughout time and space, thriving in every space and time, dismantles the belief that we are
relics of the past (as colonial paradigms would have us believe), stuck in a world in which settler
colonialism has left us. This stretches beyond a mere understanding of the history of colonization, but addresses how a
system of white supremacy, superiority, and privilege has seeped into our own mindsets—from colorism to white guilt, from
privilege to access. It is a process of constant learning and unlearning, and of cultivating pleasure where we can. ∂ For
oppressed people to intentionally cultivate pleasure is an act of resistance.∂ Ingrid LaFleur ∂ The colonial
experience is nothing unique to us as Native people. It’s worldwide. So there’s that connective tissue between all of us. So using that
experience, transforming it into something funny and really exposing it for how dysfunctionally funny it is, it helps. It breaks down
those barriers between our communities and brings us together. ∂ Dallas Goldtooth on laughter as a collective aspect of trauma
response ∂ As Black and Native people continually witness an ongoing assault against our communities and culture, how do we push
through the dystopia of whiteness by using the rehearsal of our existence as resistance? When will we be able to speak of justice,
when justice was never meant to serve and protect Black, Brown and Indigenous bodies? What is the pathway to an equitable
future? Can inviting ourselves into cosmic spaces that transcend time and reality free our minds? ∂ Often heralded the “mother of
Afrofuturism” for her alternative communities and imaginative landscapes drawn from African race and culture, Octavia E. Butler’s

speculative fiction signaled towards a “dark colonial past” to reveal

work in

the emergence of the imaginary. Butler’s dystopian classic, Parable of the Sower, is disturbingly poignant:
we exist now in the futuristic decade in which it was set, and the novel’s early 2020s
environment disturbingly mirrors our current world of global climate change, economic crisis
and social chaos. In its intro, her protagonist Lauren Oya Olamina, the creator of the fictional
Earthseed religion, which is based on the idea that “God is Change”, speaks to omnipresence
through resilience:∂ Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what
remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism.
Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all. ∂ Through the lens of work like Parable of the Sower, or Saskatchewan-born
Cree/Métis writer/director Danis Goulet’s Wakening, there is an opportunity for those whose histories were not disrupted by
colonization to visit a world under occupation. With
these representations in film, lit, music, visual arts and
pop culture which riff off of the tropes of origin to explore alternate histories and timelines, we
are called to explore themes of Black and Indigenous “resistance, reconciliation, and identity via
visual storytelling mediums.”∂ Danis Goulet, Wakening (2014). Awarded Outstanding Canadian Short at
ReelWorld Film Festival 2014. “In the near future, the environment has been destroyed and society suffocates under a brutal military
occupation. A lone Cree wanderer Weesakechak searches an urban war zone to find the ancient and dangerous Weetigo to help

fight against the occupiers.”∂ As a cultural and artistic movement, LaFleur believes that Afrofuturism is an essential
lens for looking at systems change, because it “empowers Black people to imagine their role in
the future, even when the current reality is one of systemic discrimination, mass incarceration
and state violence…and offers a beautiful, almost entertaining, seductive approach to think
about the decolonial process. Another example of cultivating pleasure where we can.∂ There’s truly
never been a better time to investigate how Afro and Indigenous Futurism can empower future
realities for BIPOC and allow for collective healing and liberation, because it involves not simply
building on top of a cracked, crumbling, and corrupt foundation, but building without a
foundation. In our current climate, while calls are being made to abolish police, dismantle prison
structures and level-up on anti-racist work (both in self and society), while uprisings and protests are forcing those
previously silent to examine their roles in systemic racism, combining our past knowledge of culture and traditions with futuristic
utopian societies is essential. By
dissecting the frontiers of Afro and Indigenous histories (past, present
and future), the challenge no longer becomes how to reform a system of oppression, designed
to work just as it has in keeping marginalized groups of people without power—but instead asks
how to shift consciousness to decolonize our own minds and reclaim what it rightfully ours:
land, agency, narrative. ∂ We need to be more self-reflective…work to decolonize our own minds…without doing that self-
check, you’re likely going to do more harm than good.∂ Ingrid LaFleur ∂ This is not to say that self-reflection, and self-reflection

There is a responsibility that goes beyond

solely, is the solution to generational systemic racism.

the individual. Retracing Simpson’s words of returning land back to Indigenous people, I
think about the ongoing desecration where Mount Rushmore is situated , on the sacred

Paha Sapa (Black Hills), a signifier of the constant battle to remove statues and
memorial tributes of white historical figures whose very presence exemplifies the eradication of
culture, language, existence. Opposed by the Lakota people for generations, how would the closure of the national
monument indefinitely change the narrative for Indigenous people? Where are the reparations which are due to forge collective

Listening to the stories and teachings of those who came before us

healing?∂

to help us live intentionally with responsibility. Our actions in this moment inform
possible futures for those who will continue on after us. This is especially vital for the balanced
wellbeing of lands, waters, and all interconnected life. ∂ Elizabeth LaPensée (citing Cajete, 2000; Wildcat, 2005;
Freeland, 2015)
Science Fiction decolonizes the future against human
exceptionalism
Shukin 18 Nicole Shukin Animal Studies, Indigenous Spacecraft
http://www.frameliteraryjournal.com/31-1-animal-studies/1466/ Frame no. 31.1 May 2018 Nicole Shukin is an Associate Professor
in the Department of English at the University of Victoria, and member of the interdisciplinary graduate program in Cultural, Social,
and Political Thought (CSPT). //avery

Tellingly, Cooper draws attention to a fascination with extremophiles in the capitalist delirium excited by NASA’s space biology
program, “right-wing futurologists,” and others interested in capitalist growth without limit (20). After
all, extremophiles spark imaginative and economic speculation in the possibility of future life beyond a ruined Earth. The fascination
with extremophile life in Bök’s Xenotext is a first clue that his biopoetics may be more
aligned with forms of neoliberal
speculation than with the resistant occupation of speculative and science fiction genres that
Indigenous Futurisms represent. “I hope to engineer a microbe,” Bök says, “so that it becomes not only an archive for
storing a poem, but also a machine for writing a poem” (“Xenotext,” n. pag). He chose the bacterium D. Radiodurans as the host
both because it is “a benign life-form (with the lowest rating on the index of biohazards)” and because it can “withstand 1000 times
the dosage of gamma rays needed to kill a human being instantly” (“Xenotext,” n. pag). Bök remarks: [A]n organism with this kind of
radioresistance can survive nuclear warfare – and biologists have even suggested that an ancestor of this organism might have
evolved in outer space. By storing my poem in a durable archive, able to withstand Nicole Shukin 90 even the most inhospitable
environments […] I might create an artwork able to testify to our cultural presence upon the planet until the very hour when, at last,
the sun itself explodes. (“Xenotext,” n. pag) Although Bök flirts with an idea that is seductive for Animal Studies, namely, that a
poem may be a collaborative exchange between a human and another animal or life-form that is capable of responding, the above
words suggest that D. Radiodurans serves a near-maniacal desire for a bullet-proof, biological time-capsule capable of guaranteeing
that the “cultural presence” of Man will survive not only the destruction of Earth, but the solar system as well. For Derrida, the
madness of poetry springs from the fact that poets write from a position of “having been seen seen” by an animal, sensitive to the
fact that they write under the gaze of another that precedes and exceeds the auto-affection of any being (381). Yet far from
exemplifying the madness that Derrida attributes to poetry, Bök’s work raises the danger that poetry may fall prey to delirious
fantasies of total destruction, tasking other life-forms with keeping the human “lyric” interminably alive. Thankfully, Indigenous
Futurisms generate alternatives to the speculative futures hatched within the dominant cultural
imaginaries fueled by NASA, Elon Musk, or Christian Bök. Rather than securing a future for more
human exceptionalism, settler colonialism, and capital, Indigenous spacecraft strive to
decolonize the future by imagining it as a hospitable time-place capable of fostering ongoing
relations between Indigenous people, animals and aliens. If I am right in suggesting that one of the most
important roles of Animal Studies in our current era is to contest how futurity becomes imaginable for a
privileged few while becoming almost unimaginable for so many other earthlings, then a good
place to begin is in the company of Indigenous spacecraft.

Perm do both --- viewing SF through the lens of postcolonialism

allows for us to imagine new forms of existence beyond
prefigured notions of the human.
Lindig 12 [Allen Michael Lindig, , December 2012, “Subjugation, Occupation, and Transformation:
Exploring Postcoloniality in Battlestar Galactica” The University of Texas at Austin, Accessed 8-7-2022,
https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/19900 ww

‘TRANSFORMATION IS THE GOAL:’ HYBRIDITY IN THE THIRD SPACE ∂ In his effort to “intervene” in the process of
ideological construction (LoC 32), Bhabha proposes the “intervention of the third
space” (54) as a way of circumventing the problems associated with the politics of
multiculturalism and “cultural difference” (50- 51). The primary issues Bhabha has with these ideological
conceptualizations of difference have to do with the “ambivalence of cultural authority” (51). According to this, the ‘simple’ act
of recognizing difference may seem innocent enough; however, in the act of locating cultural
difference against a universal other (i.e. ‘different’ from a center, different from an accepted ‘standard’) cultural
authority is produced over that which it marks as different (51). Or, in other words, “although there is
always an entertainment and encouragement of cultural diversity, there is always also a
corresponding containment of it … because the universalism that paradoxically permits diversity
masks ethnocentric norms, values and interests” (“Third Space” 208). Instead, Bhabha argues for doing away
with practices which use histories to constitute “originary” notions of culture with which all
others can be compared to in favor of “identification” with hybridity, a “ ‘third space’ which
enables other positions to emerge” which also “sets up new structures of authority, new
political initiatives” (ibid 211). I believe this argument advocating for a new way of thinking about the
changes that take place through cultural and political struggles and negotiations is a useful way
to end both this chapter and my analysis of the BSG series. In the three-part series finale “Daybreak,” a daring rescue is planned to retrieve
∂

Hera from the Cavil-led Cylons who instigated her kidnap in an earlier episode.112 A rescue mission, we are told, was previously not an option as they were not able to find out where she was taken. With the
Battlestar on its last leg, plans for evacuation were in the works with colonial command transferring to the refuge Cylon baseship. However, at some point during these proceedings we see Adama begin to have a
change of heart after he sees a picture of Hera on the wall commemorating those lost. Soon after, he speaks to Anders who now functions similarly to a baseship Hybrid after being shot in the neck during an
earlier mutiny against Galactica command for their support of Cylons in the fleet.113 Resting in a pool of organic fluid, again similarly to the Cylon baseship hybrids, he is hooked into Galactica’s power grid so that
Adama can find out if he knows where Hera might have been taken. Apparently, Adama receives the information he’s looking for and soon thereafter begins planning the Galactica’s last mission starting with a

. It
is here we see the profound effects of this journey that began on very simple
volunteer request for crew

polemics of self vs. Other. However, like Adama much of the crew has been transformed through their
relations with one another, shared experiences of movement, occupying liminal spaces where
notions of purity and origin no longer seem to serve much purpose. President Roslin articulately expresses
this struggle and transformation in a previous episode when she begins to not only question, but also be changed through her
questioning of older political sites of knowledge: “What
if suddenly all your beliefs are called into question?
Up is down, black is white, scripture is fiction, home is thin air instead of solid ground.”114 On the hanger ∂

deck, Adama makes two separate, brief speeches. In one he states, “I’m sure you’re all aware that a child was abducted from this ship recently. I thought that a rescue mission was impractical. Well, I was wrong”
before announcing he will be planning a mission to find her.115 It is worth noting that Adama does not refer to Hera as the human-Cylon hybrid or use any other markers of identity as she’s generally been
referred to throughout much of the series. Instead, she is simply a child. The episode then allows time to hear the feedback of various crewmembers, including Cylons, who discuss the rescue. Ellen Tigh, one of the
final five, is shown responding to Tory’s belief that the mission is insane by saying, “What I know is that Hera has some meaning that transcends the here and now and is meant to fulfill a role, just as we were, so
we’re going.” After the camera has finished panning around the ship, we are back in the hanger deck of the ship and a few hundred people have joined the floor. Adama addresses the crowd informing them this is
likely to be a one way mission and that “no one should feel obligated to join this mission in any way. This is a decision I have made for myself. If it turns out that there are not enough personnel to crew Galactica, I
will lead a raptor assault with anyone who is willing to join me.” Showing leadership and conviction, Adama has always been representative of the bitter struggles and changes that take place through
transformation just as he was with the trust and appointment of Athena to lieutenant, as well as with his continuing reliance upon and friendship with Colonel Tigh after he discovers Tigh to be a member of the

Roslin,116 and others who

final five. ∂ Those who volunteer are many and represent all manner of character including humans and Cylons, the final five , President
have previously fought Cylons, mutinied against a command structure that did not police
boundaries between the two species, and supported racial discourse marking difference. All of these
characters not only have found some way to live amongst themselves, but are also willing to potentially sacrifice their lives in order to rescue a child, the first human-Cylon hybrid, a person
many of them have grown to love. I would argue this union and rescue mission can be read as existing within Bhabha’s third space reminding us that “hybridity is precisely about the fact that

All of these
when a new situation, a new alliance formulates itself, it may demand that you translate your principles, rethink them, extend them” (“Third Space” 216).

characters embody a sense of hybridity because many of them now recognize that within sites
of struggle, contestation, and negotiation “new sites are always being opened up, and if you
keep referring those new sites to old principles, then you are not actually able to participate in
them fully and productively and creatively” (216). Although I do draw a parallel between these theorizations and certain aspects pertaining to
∂

visions of hybridity in BSG, I do not mean to infer there is perfect alignment with these ideals or goals.

I think these parallels are better understood as the beginnings, the baby steps, of an ideal
Rather,

yet to be fully realized within our own global culture shaped by Western hegemony. In this way,
perhaps once again the genre of SF, when looked at through the lens of postcolonialism and
diasporic consciousness, can help viewers imagine possibilities for existence and
acknowledgement that go beyond their own personal boundaries for what they believe to be
true, natural, and inevitable.
The perm allows for new orientations towards tech to prevent
the erasure of racial difference
Morrison 17 [Mary Irene Morrison, Mary Irene Morrison, December 2017, “Decolonizing Utopia:
Indigenous Knowledge and Dystopian Speculative Fiction” UC Riverside, Accessed 9-16-2022,
https://escholarship.org/content/qt0f0152f9/qt0f0152f9.pdf?t=p4jy2a ww
Conclusion: Decolonizing information science and technology in the posthuman age∂ Afrofuturism is a site for imagining, among
other things, the decolonization of science and technology. Hopkinson's Afrofuturist reimagining of cyberspace and Artificial
Intelligence is in line with the growing body of work that challenges the hegemony of western ways of thinking about and practicing
science, as Bonaventura de Sousa Santos persuasively argues. De Sousa Santos shows how non-western peoples had been practicing
science long before “the west” existed, and that in a world of great human suffering and on the verge of environmental collapse, the
west must engage in a reciprocal relationship of information and knowledge exchange if humanity is to survive. ∂ Through sf,
postcolonial writers can, as Hopkinson does, reuse and remix hegemonic technological tropes for
anti-colonial purposes, in ways that go beyond such technologies in order to interrogate, for example, the
environmental politics of colonialism. The dazzling depictions of limitless high technology common to
cyberpunk, including information and communications technologies like the Internet, is the site
of such remixing that this article has focused on. Too often, techno-utopianism (of mainstream
cyberpunk and mainstream science alike) does not take into account the ways raw materials
needed for computer technology flow along similar routes as the colonial era, nor does it
account for how exploitative these resource extractions remain. Cyberpunk such as TRON:
Legacy quite often celebrates technology as if it had no material or environmental costs. ∂ Contrast
this to Midnight Robber, where cyberspace is, for Hopkinson, a complex trickster space inspired by Afro-
Caribbean tradition, a space that aids the lives of her utopians but at the same time can get
them caught up in a web of dependence and historical amnesia, and whose environmental costs
Tan-Tan must reckon with. Hopkinson's narrative challenges specifically the way that
neoliberalism — as the latest iteration of colonialism — tramples on the rights of Indigenous peoples in its
relentless pursuit of the resources that fuel these technologies. She calls on readers living within hegemony
to come to terms with the fact that they are being lured by false technofuturistic promises, and that oppression lies behind
the techno-utopian rhetoric they find in science and popular culture. ∂ Also appropriated by Hopkinson is
the trope of the dangerous, implicitly racialized AI and the host of fears that underlie
it. The most straightforward underlying fear is of course the fear of the Other, seen in the
racialized AI. Then there is a more complicated fear, outlined in LaGrandeur's argument concerning the danger of the artificial
slave: fear of the AI elides with a fear of losing our subjectivity because of our close proximity to our high-tech creations, along the
lines of the master-slave dialectic. He observes that: ∂ we do not perceive the slippery nature of the dialectical relationship between
them and us ... between master and servant; we do not keep in mind that we are, in terms of systems theory, always and already

enmeshed in a networked relationship with our prosthetic inventions. (234)∂ The Other is not just racialized ,
but anything not-us from the perspective of the white, technologically sophisticated hero. As representative of hegemony, he fears
that he cannot control the fact that humanity
is already posthuman, already enmeshed in our
technologies, and knows that these technologies intensify already-existing global power
structures while at the same time imperiling them. Indeed, a major aspect of the west's defense of its power is
cyber security, and the fear of the cyber terrorist or cybercriminal from outside the west — especially Africa, Russia, and China — is
often exploited. TRON: Legacy amplifies these fears in its Pocahontas reboot, enlisting the help of the noble savage to stop an evil
cyber dictator. ∂ Hopkinson, by contrast, backgrounds
the master-slave dialectic, suggesting that we might
instead look at information and computing technology through the epistemological lens of Afro-
Caribbean philosophy and values, showing that we need not reflexively racialize AI with colonial
subjectivities in an attempt to justify the racial domination that western technosciences
engenders, nor reflexively fear those who might use the west's own technological creations, for
example, by hacking against it. Boyle argues, focusing on Tan-Tan as a character whose body
decorporealizes in transit through dimensions, that Midnight Robber offers “a more fluid but
ultimately sustainable model of racial and gendered identity that can sustain itself in spaces of
technology, while remaining connected to material and narrative spaces of production” (190).
While Boyle does not directly allude to sustainability in terms of the environmental degradation that accompanies pursuit of science

reimagining technology and

and technology, her argument applies in this context too. Fundamentally

humans' relationship to it goes hand-in-hand with a more egalitarian

production and distribution of said technology.∂ Hopkinson's utopian hope thus
foregrounds embodiment and physicality — without erasing racial difference — while
keeping in mind our posthuman, postcolonial, and environmentally precarious world. She literalizes
LaGrandeur’s point about the master-slave dialectic by having Tan-Tan give birth to an AI-human hybrid: the fear of the master-slave
dialectic has come to pass, but it offers the chance for increased communication rather than loss. Together Tan-Tan and Tubman
might reconcile with the colonial past of Toussaint and the colonial present in New Half-Way Tree, appropriating the technology of
the eshu and 'Nansi Web to establish communications with the many marginalized communities of both worlds (including the
hacker-pedicab clan and the exiled prisoner communities). Hopkinson, then, suggests that non-western
epistemologies
enable us to acknowledge this already-existing enmeshment between human and machine, and
appropriate it in the style of Afro-futurism to decolonize the utopian imagination.

The process of story telling and science fiction --- allows us

rearticulate and imagine beyond colonial violence
Brown Spiers 16 (Miriam C Brown Spiers - assistant professor of English and interdisciplinary studies
at Kennesaw State University. “Reimagining Resistance: Achieving Sovereignty in Indigenous Science
Fiction.” Transmotion, 2(1&2), 52. https://doi.org/10.22024/UniKent/03/tm.224)
Like Rader, I am concerned with maintaining a distinction between texts that are "science fictional" and those that simply reflect
"the diversity of Indian narrative" (Rader 86). While Rader's genre is populated by texts like Thomas King's Green Grass, Running
Water and LeAnne Howe's Miko Kings, I would argue that there is also room for Indigenous science fiction, or "sf," as a related but
distinct category. Indigenous sf certainly reflects "a cultural experience of reality," partially by engaging
with elements of Native worldviews such as "creation stories, shape-shifters, [and] coyotes," but, unlike the Indian
invention novel, it also engages directly with Western science fictional tropes like aliens, apocalypse,
and alternate realities (Dillon 4, Rader 86).

The last of these categories, the alternate—or sometimes virtual—reality allows Native authors to explore
Indigenous concepts of time, including confrontations with traumatic historical events such as
Removal. Both Rader and Dillon point to the possibilities of such engagement: Dillon in her description of the Native slipstream
and Rader in his discussion of LeAnne Howe's theory of tribalography. Dillon argues that Indigenous science fiction
"allows authors to recover the Native space of the past, to bring it to the attention of
contemporary readers, and to build better futures," while Rader suggests that, through the lens of tribalography,
Native authors are able to depict "history and the contemporary intersecting at the ground zero of tribal identity" (4, 76). I propose
that the
trope of alternate/virtual realities does similar work, offering Indigenous writers new
ways to imagine and explore the intersections of the past and the present. In such stories, as
opposed to more conventional time travel narratives, characters are able to revisit and
reinterpret the past, but, notably, they lack the ability to change historical events.
One of the clearest examples of Indigenous science fiction is Cherokee writer Blake M. Hausman's 2010 novel, Riding the
Trail of Tears, which situates the science fictional trope of virtual reality within a decidedly
Indigenous text. By locating his story at the intersections of Native literature and science fiction,
Hausman is able to confront the traumatic story of Cherokee Removal and imagine a new
interpretation of those events while also acknowledging the ongoing influence of historical
narratives in the present day. If, as Thomas King has famously argued, "[t]he truth about stories is that that's all we are"
then the stories that we tell about the past must continue to shape our lives in the present (2). Thus,
the trope of virtual reality that Hausman employs is important primarily because of its narrative
approach, which defies a linear, Euro-American understanding of history and suggests that we
might more appropriately confront the trauma of Cherokee Removal by examining its effects,
not only on the particular time of the mid-nineteenth century, but within the particular space of
Cherokee territory as it continues to exist in both the past and the present.
Because Riding the Trail of Tears is set first in the near future and later within a virtual reality version of the 1830s, it is able to
confront the trauma of nineteenth-century Cherokee Removal while simultaneously depicting the importance of Indigenous
sovereignty in the twenty-first century. Hausman tells the story of a virtual reality ride based on the Trail of Tears, where tourists can
ostensibly learn about Cherokee history and culture while experiencing Removal for themselves. Thus, instead
of trying to
erase or reverse the history of Removal, Riding the Trail of Tears focuses on the ways that
contemporary peoples, both Cherokee and not, might understand and respond to that history. Hausman's
decision to use virtual reality rather than time travel is key: if he had introduced a time machine that allowed his characters to go
back in time and simply undo the past, the novel would become a work of fantasy, problematically erasing the very real people who
suffered and died along the Trail. Moreover, such a text would be less useful for contemporary Indigenous peoples, who have no
such time machine to improve their own lives. Instead, by telling a Cherokee story that is simultaneously set in two centuries,
Hausman offers a new model of resistance and empowerment in the face of historical trauma.

The alternative perspectives created from sf is key to criticize

colonialism
Alessio 11 (Dominic Alessio – “From body snatchers to mind snatchers: Indigenous science fiction,
postcolonialism, and Aotearoa/New Zealand history.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 47:3, 257-269,
https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2010.534616)

Science fiction and postcolonialism

Elleke Boehmer defines postcolonial literature as “that which critically or subversively scrutinizes the colonial
relationship” and “sets out [ … ] to resist colonialist perspectives” (qtd in Keown 25). These SF novels are,
therefore, unmistakably postcolonial in intent, in that they are designed to oppose what their
authors see as a continuing neo-imperial legacy. Part and parcel of this process involves
introducing “their own culture-bound material – legends, myths, fairy tales – to awaken or reawaken interest in
their own perhaps suppressed or forgotten culture” (Riemenschneider 16). Consequently, Sky Dancer and Black Rainbow
allow the reader to view historical events through different eyes, in both cases the perspectives of the
colonized. Like the new Aotearoa/New Zealand histories identified by Giselle Byrnes which have been influenced by the
postcolonialism of Said and Chakrabarty, this SF writing emphasizes “those who have been adversely affected by colonizing
processes” and perceives “history through other interpretative and cultural frames” (Byrnes 125). Thus the seabirds
and the
otherworlders have become substitutes for P keh and/or global imperialism. In each scenario
the invaders are bent on genocide, physically in the case of the seabirds overcoming the
landbirds, and culturally in the case of the Tangata Moni at the hands of a dystopian,
assimilationist, globalized new world order. Indeed, the Tangata Moni rebel Aeto is at one point in danger of being
eaten by an otherworlder couple on the lookout for new culinary flavours. On the one hand, such an incident reflects the
excesses of a capitalist globalized world consuming resources for short-term gain. On the other, this
image of P keh cannibalism is an intriguing inversion of the historical association of M ori with
cannibalistic practices that was used to justify the European settlement of Aotearoa/New
Zealand. This textual reversion now begs the question: who are the real “savages”?
Ihimaera and Wendt have borrowed much inspiration from SF. Although Sky Dancer is a reworking of pre-existing M ori myths and
many fantasy themes are also evident, there is a litany of references to E.T., Star Wars and the Alien films, not to mention the
obvious link with Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds (1963).5 Furthermore, despite the protagonists’ travelling through time by way of
a fantastical transformation (they appear to mutate magically into birds in a hidden sanctuary near Nelson), their return to normal
time is by way of a “wormhole” (305). The latter functions as Ihimaera’s novum, helping the novel to cross over from pure fantasy to
SF. Similarly, it is a fissure in space and time which allows the seabirds to obtain military recruits directly from the future, a SF device
common to television shows such as Star Trek or Dr Who. The conclusion of the novel is centred on a giant pouakai, a monstrous
bird from M ori mythology, but one which is akin also to the famous SF monster Rodan from the popular Japanese creature-features
of the 1950s. In Sky Dancerthe monster’s nest is described in overt SF terminology, orbiting in “deep space”, with Ihimaera’s
description of its blasted and desolate nature reading like something out of Alien (312).

Numerous SF references pepper Wendt’s novel, too. The future landscape of New Zealand’s capital city Wellington appears like a
scene from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), consisting of “identical skyscrapers modelled on some of the President’s favourite films:
Blade Runner and Star Trek” (69). There are references to Mad Max (84), 2001 A Space Odyssey (85), Nineteen Eighty-Four, The
Island, Star Wars, Aliens and Planet of the Apes (97). The scene in which the president tells Eric/Patimaori that he was his pet project
and that he thinks of him as a son resembles Return of the Jedi (dir. Richard Marquand, 1983), episode VI in the Star Wars series,
wherein Darth Vader informs Luke of his true parentage. Intriguingly, Eric at the end of the novel tries to escape otherworlder
control by choosing permanent death rather like John the “Savage” in Brave New World.

While they borrow ideas from western SF, Ihimaera and Wendt have made it their own too,
extolling what the anthropologist James Clifford has termed “rearticulating indigeneity”, whereby elements of a
culture are “made, unmade, and remade” in order to tackle oppression (Clifford 182). This process is
played out physically in Wendt’s novel when the aforementioned Aeto escapes the cannibalistic couple by learning the computer
program controlling their house and re-programming it so he can get away. Yet the use of the fantastic in Ihimaera’s and Wendt’s
work is not only a Pacific version of a westernized construct. As Keown notes, “many Pacific writers draw extensively upon their own
precolonial oral, mythopoeic, and artistic traditions” (7). There is a significant “tall-tale” corpus of Pacific writing, such as the short
story collection entitled Tales of the Tikongs (1983) by Epeli Hau’ofa. Fantastic devices in these stories, such as the creation of a
fictional Pacific island, allow the author “a certain freedom of movement in critiquing socio-economic problems throughout the post-
independence Pacific” (Keown 176). It has been pointed out that the use of such tropes is a device “to provide a substitute for what
some perceive as the alienating dominance of Western ways” (Durix 13). If this is the case, then such Pacific tall-tales are not a world
away from the SF texts examined here. Nor is such an Indigenous take on SF unique to the world of the Pacific. Recent non-western
forays into SF film production, such as the Bollywood blockbuster Koi … Mil Gaya (dir. Rakesh Roshan, 2003), whilst borrowing
heavily from Hollywood precedents, also makes use of local Hindu culture. Moreover, this merging of western and Indigenous
traditions in SF mirrors a similar process of “coming together” identified in fantasy literature by Dieter Riemenschneider. In
examining Indian and M ori writing, including Sky Dancer, which also falls into the fantasy category, he argues that such narratives
“construct ‘imagiNations’ of a transnational nature” which move beyond the binary world of the postcolonial to “form part of a
[new] glocal literary discourse as a post-postcolonial literature” (Riemenschneider 17). This is exemplified in the SF examined here by
Wendt’s invention of the term Tangata Moni and his inclusive vision of multi-ethnic cooperation.

If SF is being used by Indigenous authors for political reasons to re-examine historical epistemes
(and Ihimaera’s and Wendt’s work offer a strong case for this), then such an approach might help to address critics amongst non-M
ori groups “who have questioned the extent to which Polynesian representations of ‘the supernatural’ are appropriate to textual
forms derived from a ‘western literary tradition’” (qtd in Keown 200). Magic Realism, which reflects the “inclusion of any mythic or
legendary material from local written or oral cultural traditions[ … and which] is seen to interrogate the assumptions of western,
rational, linear narrative and to enclose it within an indigenous metatext”, has frequently become the target of such rebuke: “some
critics [ … ] suggest that it becomes a catch-all for any narrative device that does not adhere to western realist conventions”
(Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 119). If this use of the fantastic is seen now to be part of a SF genre which emerged out of a realist
European metropolitan canon, as opposed to a mythic Indigenous one, then such Eurocentric criticisms are no longer valid.
However, there is a nasty taint of particularism about such criticisms as they also ignore
the fact that
magic-realist/supernatural texts demonstrate Indigenous cultural resistance. As such they are as
deserving of study, at least from an historical perspective, as any other sources, for they indicate
that the colonized were not always assimilated and dominated by the colonizer.
SF came into being as a popular genre during a specific time period in European history, the high
age of empire. Consequently, it is not surprising to see that it has developed into a useful critical tool
to approach the study of imperialism, highlighting “fantasies of appropriating land, power, sex,
and treasure [ … as well as] nightmarish reversals of the positions of colonizer and colonized in
tales of invasion and apocalypse” (Rieder 47). For critics like John Rieder, SF is “the obverse of the celebratory narratives
of exploration and discovery” (123–24). It is no coincidence that the Comanche art critic Paul Chaat Smith has written on a plaque at
the entrance to the Smithsonian’s Native American Museum in Washington, DC the observation that the European sailing vessels
first arriving along the US seaboard must have been, in Indigenous eyes, “the spaceships of their time”. Consequently, an
examination of the work of Ihimaera and Wendt demonstrates that the SF genre deserves serious study, both within and
outside of Aotearoa/New Zealand, and that it should not be relegated to literary ghettos. Indeed, the SF elements in these novels
have been enriched by their Indigenous backgrounds. SF texts not only reflect, therefore, the societies producing
them, in turn becoming as valid a primary source as many other artefacts from the past, but
they also offer alternative perspectives on historical, political, and cultural events. In this case
they allow M ori and Pacific Island viewpoints to become “central to the narrative”, as opposed
to remaining “appendages” or being “simply not included at all” , which according to N pia Mahuika, Linda
Tuhiwai Smith and others has been a long-standing dilemma with mainstream P keha history (Mahuika 133). The Indigenous SF
examined here, while on the one hand presenting the reader with a postcolonial historical perspective that
refuses always to privilege the imperial narrative, also moves beyond a simplistic Orientalist binary paradigm.
Instead, it creates “a glocal representation of a transcultural imagination” by merging European and Pacific history and literature
into a new kind of Hegelianesque synthesis (Riemenschneider 22). This process of imaginative reconstruction identified by
Riemenschneider in fantasy now also appears corroborated with its literary cousin SF. Therefore, SF does not just highlight the
ghetto and its origins; it also suggests potential routes out.