Recent articles on cities and Science Fiction
Science Fiction captures the attention and inspires the imagination of readers with its fantastic worlds and futuristic metropolises. What can the urban planning discourse, what can planners and designers learn from its cosmic cities, today and in the future?
Cosmic Cities of tomorrow (Topos 107): Science Fiction captures the attention and inspires the imagination of readers with its fantastic worlds and futuristic metropolises. The epic Perry Rhodan series, the world's longest-running consecutive Science Fiction adventure, is no exception. What can the urban planning discourse, what can planners and designers learn from its cosmic cities, today and in the future? Link: researchgate academia
Utopia to some, dystopia to others (Topos 107): Utopias propose worlds that claim to be better than the one we live in. Yet, at a closer look, they all reveal dystopian tendencies. Still, utopias play an important role within planning and design disciplines. It is therefore necessary that students of these disciplines learn about the dystopian risk embedded in utopia's core, and how it can affect their own planning and design decisions. Science Fiction offers the key to understanding this circumstance. Link: researchgate academia
Kleine Fluchten, grosse Visionen: Wim Vandemaan (Baumeister 9/19): Wie werden urbane Zukünfte gestaltet sein? Insbesondere die Science Fiction beinhaltet Visionen alternativer Realit?tsentwürfe, prismatisch den Blick der Autoren auf ihre Lebenswirklichkeit reflektierend. Das deutschsprachige Science Fiction-Flaggschiff heisst Perry Rhodan, erscheint seit 1961 w?chentlich in Heftform und wird von einem Autorenteam verfasst. Grund für uns, mit den Autoren über ihre Lieblingsstadt der spekulativen Zukunft einer Menschheit im Kosmos zu sprechen. Link: researchgate academia
Wir sind das Buch! Von kosmischen Bibliotheken der Science Fiction (Flachware, Hrsg. Martin Hochrein, Eyk Henze): Die Idee zur modernen Bibliothek entstand in der Zeit der industriellen Revolution im Scho? bürgerlicher Gesellschaften, die sich republikanische Verfassungen gaben. Sie wurde zu einer r?umlich pr?senten Institution jener Gesellschaften, in denen das Wissen einer Nation in der Gestalt von Büchern den Bürgern verfügbar gemacht wurde. Die Bibliothek wurde damit zu einem Haus für die Weisheit. Und nun stellt die Digitalisierung alles auf den Kopf… Link: researchgate academia
Kosmische St?dte der Perry Rhodan-Serie (SOL 95): Spekulativ ausgeformte Zukunftswelten sind ebenso ein Kernbestandteil der Science Fiction wie kosmische St?dte. SF-Leser "begegnen" vielen interessanten und spannenden Stadtvisionen. Man k?nnte die Frage stellen, ob und wie die urbanen Fiktionen der SF-Literatur – am Beispiel der Perry Rhodan-Serie – mit realen Prozessen der Stadtentwicklung in Verbindung zu bringen sind ... Link: researchgate academia
Futuristic Vistas and Cosmic Technoscapes: Perry Rhodan Vol. 3000 (Topos Online Edition): Who is Perry Rhodan? He is the central figure of an epic Science Fiction phenomenon created by German-speaking authors. Science Fiction is gaining importance for contemporary planning efforts, and both SF literature and its images inspire planners and designers by offering fantastic visions of speculative futures and humanity’s cosmic destiny. Link: researchgate academia
Emancipated Nature: Tree People from Dystopia (Topos 103): Trees as sentient beings that belong to diverse, cosmopolitan or even cosmic communities appear repeatedly and prominently within narratives of Fantasy or Science Fiction. What does it mean when we consider elements of nature as individuals that we can communicate with? Link: researchgate academia
Blade Runner und Blade Runner 2049: Gesichter der hyperpostmodernen Stadt? (Baumeister B4/18): Hardly any other film is considered so seminal in its presentation of a visionary urban utopia than the moving picture version of ?Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?“, written by the American Science Fiction master, Philip K. Dick. In "Blade Runner" director Ridley Scott compresses the best of the best of fantastic literature and graphic art of the 1970s and 1980s into an ideal city of the (near) future that seems to permanently overshadow our own perception of the present. Through its stylistic density, this parallel universe communicates its own historicity in a very convincing way. Link: researchgate academia
Der Andere Ort: Gibt es die "Kosmische Bibliothek"? (Baumeister 3/18): In his film "Inception" Christopher Nolan folded urban environments together in impossible ways. By doing so, he created atmospheric chambers of wonder to startle his viewers. His Science Fiction epic "Interstellar" goes one step further and compresses an entire family biography into an n-dimensional backstage area beyond the fictional reality of the film storyline. Situated directly beneath the event horizon of a black hole, there is a space beyond space that subdivides time into physically accessible dimensions and transforms it into a stylistically sublime cosmic library. Link: researchgate academia
Twin Peaks von David Lynch – Der ultimative "Andere Ort"? (Baumeister 2/18): Met by great success and receiving rave reviews, David Lynch's cult TV series "Twin Peaks" reappeared with a third season of episodes. In his revolutionary TV series, Lynch establishes an impossible space that is both the subconscious substrate and also the central psychological place of a phantasmagorical "whodunnit": the "Red Room." More than simply a pragmatic film maker's hat trick by transforming the stage curtain into an environment, the Red Room becomes a space where the action reaches its climax and where the real and surreal protagonists of the series get together. Link: researchgate academia
Der andere Ort. Fantastischer Film – Die Architektur des Postfaktischen (Baumeister 2/18): The German term most used for "post-truth" is "postfactual" and refers to an information strategy that makes use of marketing methods in order to manipulate audiences. By simplification and emphasis on polarization, complexity is eroded and reality is put into question as parallel realities are constructed for and by recipients. Film is interesting in this regard because it features representations of milieus and spaces. Perhaps it also indicates how fact and fiction, truth and untruth can be reconciled? Link: researchgate academia