#119 = Volume 40, Part 1 = March 2013
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE
Another Look at “Four Little Ships”: The July 2012 issue of SFS contained a paper on the works of Murray Leinster, Thomas M. Barrett’s “Heart of a Serpent? The Cold War Science Fiction of Murray Leinster” (195-220). I was particularly interested in his discussion of the short story “Four Little Ships,” as I had just completed a note about the same story, “Wartime Stories in Astounding” (SFS 39.3 [Nov. 2012]: 556-58). This allows me to provide some clarification of statements made by Barrett regarding the technology in the story. In addition, the information provided by Barrett is used to suggest an alternative explanation to a claim regarding World War II censorship.
We begin by considering two statements made by Barrett. In the first, he discusses the technology introduced into certain stories: “a four-sided kite that drops bombs, a cybernetic underwater device that navigates itself to an enemy harbor and explodes itself, and sonar detonated mines (“Terror Above” [1939], “The Wabble” [1942], “Four Little Ships” [1942]) (200).
Later he claims that Leinster had problems with military censorship since the story “depicted a method of disrupting enemy shipping through underwater sound transmission, another technology that was under development” (202).
To analyze these statements, we must consider the technology actually presented in “Four Little Ships.” The four ships are minesweepers that are part of a small American naval force facing a showdown with a more powerful Japanese force. Each minesweeper is equipped with (1) a system for locating metal inductively, (2) reflective material such as is used on road signs, (3) a system developed from a means of prospecting for petroleum, and (4) an underwater noisemaker. As I stated in my note, the third item was mentioned but then never used in the story.
It is not clear what Barrett meant in his first statement by “sonar detonated mines.” There are two basic types of naval mines: contact and influence. The contact mine, as the name implies, requires that a ship strike some portion of the mine to cause it to detonate. A spherical mine with projecting “horns,” as seen in some war movies, is of this type. The influence mine is triggered by some change in its environment when a ship is nearby. There are three types of influence mines: magnetic, acoustic, and pressure. Barrett appears to mean an acoustic mine that would be triggered by the engine noises of a nearby ship. Although information on acoustic mines indicates that they could employ active sonar rather than passive listening, I have been unable to find any indication that active sonar mines were used in World War II.
Leinster stated that the original use of the underwater noisemaker was to detonate acoustic mines, but that such mines are designed so that sudden loud sounds make them insensitive. The inductive system is used to locate the mines and they are each marked with a float topped with the reflective material. At a later point in the story, the American ships use small explosive charges instead of the noisemakers temporarily to render each marked mine inert and incapable of exploding, which permits the ships to pass safely through the minefield.
Barrett’s second statement had as its source an article by Robert Silverberg (“The Cleave [sic] Cartmill Affair: Two” Asimov’s Science Fiction [Oct.-Nov. 2003]: 4-8). It refers to underwater sound, which occurs at only two places in the story. The first, as described above, makes use of small explosive charges. The second employs the underwater noisemakers in the attack on a lurking Japanese submarine. The racket created by the noisemakers of the four minesweepers rendered the sound detection equipment of the submarine useless during the attack. This is clearly a case of “disrupting enemy shipping through underwater sound transmission,” but in a very restricted sense. Underwater sound transmission in the form of sonar was used during the war in attacks on enemy shipping, but does not correspond to anything featured in the story. Therefore, I have serious doubts regarding the claim that this involved Leinster with the military censors.
Immediately before the second statement quoted above, Barrett referred to a problem that Leinster had with another naval story: “In 1943 Esquire had to scrap a story of his that was set in type and illustrated because the Navy objected. Apparently he had described some ultra-secret device that they were using. The Navy demanded that even the proofs of the story be destroyed; nothing is left of it except the title, ‘A Slugman’s Gotta Be Tough’” (201-202).
To understand the importance of this quotation, let us return to “Four Little Ships.” Albert I. Berger’s The Magic That Works (1993) discusses the government investigation following the description of an atomic bomb in Cleve Cartmill’s “Deadline,” which appeared in the March 1944 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction. The investigators spoke with a number of people, including Leinster. Much of the detail provided by Berger was taken from the files of the investigators and he was able to point out many errors in those files, such as the misidentification of Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp, who were then working with Robert A. Heinlein at the Naval Aircraft Factory. A statement is presented by Berger that “One of Leinster’s stories, ‘Four Ships,’ had been squelched by Navy Department Censorship” (62).
It is my impression that this statement is directly based on the government files. We have two problems here. First, the story is incorrectly named. Second, it is stated that the story was “squelched,” which I would interpret as “suppressed” or “killed.” Since this story did appear in the November 1942 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, what is the basis of the above statement?
Given the misnaming of the story and the errors specifically identified by Berger, I would suggest that at least one more error was made by the investigators regarding the identity of the Leinster story that was suppressed by the Navy. It is my contention that the two Navy-related stories were confused by the wartime investigators and that the characterization of “A Slugman’s Gotta Be Tough” as a story that was definitely “squelched” was incorrectly assigned to “Four Little Ships.” This may be the basis for statements made by others that Leinster had problems with the military censors because of that story.—Edward Wysocki, Orlando, Florida
Response from the Author: Mr. Wysoski’s speculation on the censorship issues with the two Leinster stories mentioned has no basis in fact. According to the available sources, “A Slugman’s Gotta Be Tough,” which was never published, and “Four Little Ships,” which was, were separately investigated by the Navy. Here is what Leinster wrote in the preface to his edited collection Great Stories of Science Fiction (1953), referring, as I discovered, to himself:
A writer of my acquaintance sold an imaginary story to Esquire, during the last war. It was about some kind of visionary wartime gadget. He was paid, spent the money and Esquire set the story in type and of course offered a proof of it to the Navy for checking. The Navy made uphappy noises and forbade its publication because it violated ‘basic naval security.’ The poor chap had to give the money back. To this day he can’t print the story because the gadget—whatever it is—is still top-secret stuff. (xxiv-xxv)
The papers in the William Fitzgerald Jenkins Collection housed in the Special Collections Research Center at the Syracuse University Library provide further details about this incident. A 26 August 1943 letter from the literary agency Curtis Brown Ltd. makes reference to the Navy refusing to publish the story “A Slugman’s Gotta Be Tough” (Box 3, Curtis Brown Ltd. 1943-46). Leinster himself in a 22 August 1946 letter to Peter Margolies of Crown Publishers confirmed that Esquire scrapped a story of his that was set in type and illustrated “because the Navy threw fits,” continuing “In all innocence I had described, accurately, some ultra-secret devices in actual use and which I had cooked up out of my head.” He tells Margolies that the proofs had to be destroyed (Box 1, Correspondence, Crown Publishers).
Alfred Berger was kind enough to provide me with a copy of the report of the War Department’s investigation of Cleve Cartmill. Here is what it says in regards to a story that is clearly “Four Little Ships”: “On one other occasion Campbell had a brush with Naval Censors, an outgrowth of a story submitted by Jenkins concerning a secret project of interest to the Navy which passes ships through Japanese Mine Fields.”
Whatever the reason why Leinster was investigated, all of this minutia bears little relevance to the point I was making in that part of my article: that he had a keen knowledge of contemporary science and technology, wrote several stories that anticipated technological developments, was investigated by military censors, and treaded carefully after the war when writing potentially controversial stories.—Thomas Barrett, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Correction. Grzegorz Trębicki’s last name in the March Books in Review section was inadvertently misspelled Trźbicki. My apologies to the reviewer for the error and my thanks for his coverage of a work of Polish sf criticism that our readership might otherwise not have been exposed to.—Rob Latham, UC Riverside
Correction. During editing of Umberto Rossi’s March Notes report on the Philip K. Dick Festival at San Francisco State University, the qualifier “in the States” was removed from a sentence, resulting in an inadvertent error. The Note reported this was the “the first PKD event held at a university.” This is incorrect: it was the first held at an American university. PKD events have been held on European university campuses before, including one held in Macerata in 2000, organized by Rossi. My apologies to the Note author.—Sherryl Vint, UC Riverside
Writing Ourselves In: Report on the Octavia E. Butler Celebration of the Fantastic in the Arts. On 24 February 2006, black science fiction writer and MacArthur Award winner Octavia Estelle Butler died unexpectedly. She was one of the first, if not the first, black woman sf writers in the US. Her work dealt unflinchingly with human-on-human aggression, with race and gender power imbalances, with the nature of God, with the sacrifices we make for love. Her fiction brought and still brings affirmation, confirmation, and joy to so many readers. She managed to be simultaneously soft-spoken and outspoken, imposing and retiring. She had a quietly mischievous sense of humor, and an equally understated bravery. (I remember hearing her describe a research trip she made to the jungle in order to master her fear of certain types of insects.) Her passing left a hole in our hearts, and in our genre.
This March, author Tananarive Due, as the culminating event of her tenure as the Cosby Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Spelman College, organized the Octavia E. Butler Celebration of the Fantastic in the Arts. Spelman College in Atlanta was one of the first historically black colleges for women. It seemed an apt venue for the event. Due, who with her husband, author Steven Barnes, had been neighbors and friends of Octavia’s, said she was tired of sorrowing over Octavia’s death and was finally ready to remember her with joy. I was one of the invited authors scheduled on a panel that would close out the celebration. The others were Steven Barnes, Samuel R. Delany, Due herself, Jewelle Gomez, Brandon Massey, Nisi Shawl, and Sheree Renée Thomas. For me, the exhilaration began the evening before, when I connected with Nisi, Jewelle, and Chip (Delany) as we arrived one by one at our hotel.
When I arrived at Spelman the following day, along with Chip, Jewelle, Nisi, and Sheree, an excited Tananarive and Steve met us at the door. The lobby of the building had been converted into an art gallery. Black images of science fiction and fantasy adorned the walls, with a painting of Octavia presiding over it all. Steve escorted us to the green room, made sure we were comfortable, and began our communion with one simple question: “So, what’s everyone up to nowadays?” The hours that followed will remain one of the most joyous experiences of my life. Many of us hadn’t seen each other in years. We caught up, shared, laughed, commiserated, testified. I won’t give details of our private conversation, except this; at one point, Steve ran from person to person, hugging us all and declaring his love. The feeling was mutual. We talked so long that we missed the film screenings. But, we decided, the time together felt so precious, so needful, such a healing balm. We don’t know yet how we’re going to manage it, but we’ve resolved to try to come together every year or so.
Though I missed the film screening, there was a later showing of M. Asli Dukan’s canny trailer for her documentary on black science fiction <http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQGyCR7NsiI>. Among the films screened were Wanuri Kahiu’s sf film “Pumzi” and Keith Josef Adkins’s pilot for “Abandon,” his online horror series <http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=dtD-mN3sFY8>. Both directors need support to take their work to the production phase. Yes, that’s a hint.
Then it was on to DJ Lynnée Denise’s excellent multimedia performance presentation: “Planet Rock: Techno, House Music & Afrofuturism” <http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=REyKeEDNvk4> and <http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=DGBaI5561V4>.
After a break, the gathering filled the auditorium. First we witnessed a staged reading of Earthseed, the principles of god and change that Octavia invented for her protagonist Laura Olamina in her Parable novels. The performers, students from the theater department, were commendably poised and passionate.
Finally, the invited writers, including Brandon Massey, took the stage for a panel about Octavia, led by Tananarive. I can’t recap the whole talk, but here are a few highlights that I remember:
Chip told those present about meeting a young Octavia when she was a student at the Clarion Writers Workshop, championed by Harlan Ellison. He said that Octavia was quiet, but that “when she opened her mouth, you could tell she had something to say.”
Nisi Shawl shared Octavia’s playful side with us. She told us that Butler had had a single word of advice for how to cure writer’s block: masturbation. (The audience exploded with laughter.) Nisi said that the story wasn’t one she could share with her students. When we reminded her that the panel was being live-streamed to the Internet, she leapt out of her chair in embarrassment and ran out of the auditorium. But she did listen to our pleas to return. And I think she did more to humanize Octavia for those present than any of us did. It’s good to remember that our heroes are people, just like us.
When Tananarive opened the discussion to audience participation, the conversation turned, as it will, to the challenges of being a writer.
Brandon, in an hilarious rant reminiscent of comedian Eddie Murphy’s “haunted house” skit (Delirious, 1983), talked about the special challenges of writing horror for black people, our lives being already at risk from everyday racism. If you write of a ghost haunting a black man’s house, he’s going to leave the house. So how to preserve dramatic tension? And, unlike in so many horror movies, a black woman alone at home who sees a sinister figure sneaking around her backyard late at night isn’t going to go out to investigate unarmed and wearing next to nothing.
Steve described his dilemma as a younger black man seeking out action adventure stories but having to swallow a whole lot of racism along with them. (“I sacrificed my melanin on the altar of my testosterone.”)
The morning after the event, Lynnee, Tananarive, Nisi, Sheree and I had breakfast together at the hotel. That was a delightfully raucous end to the festivities.
To be a black writer of fantasy, horror, or science fiction means to be multiply alienated. Black friends and relatives ask us why we’re even interested in a genre that so routinely excludes or demonizes us. The genre community sees our skin first, and either can only focus on that or want to deny the impact on us of being artists living in racialized bodies. (“But you don’t see yourself as a black writer, do you? You just think of yourself as a writer, don’t you? Your race doesn’t matter, right?”) There is little room for us to claim both/and/ or/neither/it depends. We are ping-ponged between erasure of ourselves and erasure of our sociopolitical realities. Let me stress that I’ve also found empathy, community and support aplenty in the genre community, from people of many stripes and persuasions. Yet there is a blessedness, a calming-breathed lowering of the shoulders, that happens in the company of fellow black aficionados of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. We don’t have to defend our love of the genre, or our love of our Africanness. We don’t have to explain our jokes, or work to soothe ruffled white feathers. With the Octavia E. Butler Celebration of the Fantastic in the Arts, Tananarive had created a sacred space, a temporary autonomous zone (thank you, Hakim Bey, for the concept) in which we could come together for a few hours.—Nalo Hopkinson, UC Riverside
2014 PKD Festival. The third Philip K. Dick Festival will be held on 25-26 April 2014 at UC Irvine, California. Though it is not a purely academic conference, scholars who wish to present papers and/or panels are welcome. The organizers are particularly interested in giving young scholars who are researching Dick and his worlds (fiction, films, comics, TV programs, etc. based on his work) an opportunity; they are also looking for contributions that will help place Dick in the wider literary context of science fiction, postmodernist fiction, and US and world literature. Since the Festival will take place in Orange County, the organizers especially welcome presentations dealing with the works Dick wrote while living in the area, from Flow My Tears, The Policemen Said (1974) to The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982), as well as the later stories and the Exegesis. Proposals should be sent to Umberto Rossi at <teacher@fastwebnet.it> before 31 December 2013.—Umberto Rossi, Rome
Stanley Kubrick Returns to Los Angeles. Between 30 October 2012 and 30 June 2013, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) housed the first American run of the Stanley Kubrick Exhibition, designed originally for the Deutsches Filmmuseum in 2004. With an impressive array of archival material, annotated scripts, photographs, costumes, cameras, equipment, set models, and props culled from Kubrick’s archive, the exhibition offered an unprecedented view into the filmmaker’s work process. Iconic pieces such as the ape costumes and the Starchild from 2001: A Space Odyssey or Jack’s typewriter and axe from The Shining were on prominent display, but it was the behind-the-scenes material that proved to be most fascinating. A display of numerous camera lenses at the entrance resonated with the sight of a prop lens used for HAL 9000's eye (a Nikon Nikkor 8mm F8) in the 2001 section. Comparably, mysterious annotations in Kubrick’s copy of Stephen King’s The Shining, unused effects from the Stargate sequence, concept art for A.I., and research material for the unrealized projects Napoleon and The Aryan Papers evoked intriguing alternative film histories. The LACMA exhibition differed from previous incarnations by the placement of related works of art alongside the material, such as a plank resembling the 2001 monolith by John McCracken, and Robert Rauschenberg’s Stoned Moon Series: Sky Garden in connection with Dr. Strangelove. The gesture smacked of an attempt to justify the inclusion of popular film inside a museum rather than intertextual curation, an approach that was more successful in the accompanying film series. In addition to a complete retrospective of Kubrick’s career (including his early shorts), LACMA screened “Science Fiction after Kubrick,” an overview of 1970s sf cinema (e.g., Solaris, Phase IV, The Man Who Fell to Earth).—Pedro Groppo, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
2013-14 Mullen Fellows Announced. I would like to announce the winners of the fifth annual R.D. Mullen Research Fellowship, which is funded by SFS in the name of our late founding editor to support archival research in the Eaton Science Fiction Collection at UC Riverside. The committee—chaired by me and consisting of Jane Donawerth, Joan Gordon, Roger Luckhurst, and John Rieder—reviewed a number of excellent applications and settled on a slate of three winners for 2013-14:
James M. Lohmar is a PhD student in Classics at the University of Florida. His dissertation studies representations of violence in ancient Roman epic and their echoes in modern horror media. He has presented his work at the Classical Association of the Middle West and South and at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, and has published a review in Classical Outlook and has another forthcoming in Extrapolation. While at the Eaton, he will review coverage of horror cinema in such publications as Famous Monsters of Filmland, Cinefantastique, and Gore Creatures, and will also survey the collection’s holdings of EC Comics.
Michelle K. Yost is a PhD student in English at the University of Liverpool. Her dissertation—which has already been enriched by archival research at Ohio State University and the Library of Congress—seeks to develop a comprehensive bibliography of “hollow earth” narratives and to offer a critical-historical study of their speculative geology. She has written reviews for Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction and entries for the third edition of the Science Fiction Encyclopedia. During a three-week trip to the Eaton, she plans to read several very rare hollow earth stories, as well as to explore more recent pastiches of the genre in professional and fan publications.
Mark T. Young is a PhD student in English at the University of California, Riverside. His dissertation examines modes of musical “retro-futurism” in postwar American literature, including sf. He has presented work at the annual SFRA Conference, the Eaton Conference, and the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference, and his reviews have appeared in most major outlets in the field: Science Fiction Studies, The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Extrapolation, and The SFRA Review. The fellowship will provide summer support enabling him to examine representations of jazz, blues, and rock music in magazine science fiction of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, as well as coverage of the rock scene in sf fan publications.
I am very grateful to my committee for their work in vetting the applications, and my congratulations to the three winners.—Rob Latham, UC Riverside
2013 New Genre Army Conference. The first international conference on the writing of British sf writer Adam Roberts took place on 5 April 2013 in Lincoln, UK. The conference was hosted by the University of Lincoln, sponsored by the academic publisher Gylphi, and organized by me and Caroline Edwards.
The keynote speakers were Farah Mendlesohn and Andrew M. Butler and, of course, Adam Roberts himself. Our invited speakers were Edward James, Niall Harrison, and Damien Walter.
The day started with Butler’s very entertaining and theatrical keynote titled “Splinter Swiftly: The Hermeneuting Parallax of Adam Roberts’s Generic Auteurship.” During his keynote, Butler announced not only that the author is dead, but the keynote also. He started by introducing a number of irrelevant people also named Adam Roberts (or Robert Adams), every time throwing away the papers with the wrong name before concluding with the question, “what is an author?” at which point he went on to speak on our own Adam Roberts. We all agreed it was an excellent way to start the conference.
Next was a panel titled “Before Roberts: Literary Inheritances.” Paul March-Russell, Anna McFarlane, and Daniel Jupp spoke on Jack Glass (2012), the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and the scatological imagery in Roberts and Swift respectively.
Next, and after lunch, was a panel on “History, Politics and New Model Army,” where Andrew Liptak presented his paper on New Model Army and Military History via WebEx (or, as Roberts tweeted: “Andrew Liptak is being Skyped onto the big screen like the Great and Mighty Oz!”) and Thomas Wellman came all the way from Germany to speak on “Visions of Europe in Roberts’s New Model Army (2010).”
The next panel, titled “After Roberts: Experiments in Form,” consisted of a paper by Roberts’s own PhD student, Susan Gray, who spoke on Roberts’s utopian thought-experiments, and Paul Graham Raven, who spoke on “New Model Army as an Ephemeral Anarchist Utopia.”
Farah Mendlesohn then gave her keynote on “The Disassociated Hero in the Works of Adam Roberts” (which is available here: <http://fjm.livejournal. com/1235907.html>). She is an excellent speaker and hers was a very insightful approach to the total of Roberts’s work.
A roundtable discussion followed with our invited speakers Edward James, Damien Walter, and Niall Harrison. They discussed post-genre literature, the academic reception of sf in the twenty-first century, and why Roberts’s work is significant to contemporary sf (including mention of Roberts’s recent BSFA Award for Jack Glass).
Finally, Roberts gave what can only be described as a stand-up performance, spoke about the love of the sf community for cats, among other things, and read a scene from a novel he is currently writing. The scene involved a dialogue with a talking cow and Roberts did indeed read it with a cow voice. To give you an impression of the atmosphere, I will cite Caroline Edwards’s twitter: “If you’re not at #newgenrearmy and are wondering why the hashtag’s gone quiet, it’s because we’re all laughing too hard.” But apart from comical, it was a very existential approach that reminded us of the Adam Robots story (in Roberts’s short-story collection of the same name).
It was, in general, a friendly and humorous conference and I have the impression that everyone felt very welcome. A selection of the papers presented at the conference will be published as Adam Roberts: Critical Essays by Gylphi in 2014. They have also published a Critical Essays book on David Mitchell and volumes are forthcoming on China Miéville, Maggie Gee, Patricia Duncker, and Tom McCarthy.
In the introduction to the conference, I announced our next project: the first, to my knowledge, international conference on Science Fiction Theatre. This will take place in the University of Royal Holloway next year. The Call for Papers should be online soon. For updates on this, the Adam Roberts: Critical Essays collection, and post-New Genre Army discussion, one may follow @newgenrearmy on twitter. There are also relevant links on Gylphi’s website: <http://gylphi.co.uk/conferences/AdamRoberts>.—Christos Callow, Jr., University of Lincoln, UK
Women and Science Fiction. On 13 March 2013, I gave the Women in America Lecture, one of four major lectures given each year at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. My topic was “Women in Science Fiction: In the Chinks of the World Machine.” I talked about the protocols of sf, how they applied first to Tiptree’s “The Women Men Don’t See,” then to Karen Joy Fowler’s “What We Didn’t See,” and then to this year’s Tiptree Award Winners. I even wove in Adrienne Rich’s “Dreams Before Waking” for an audience of students and faculty generally unfamiliar with science fiction. They were especially interested in how the protocols of sf (things like subjunctivity, the megatext, and novum) could be applied to other fields, and, happily, in the reading lists I provided of feminist science fiction and criticism and of this year’s Tiptree winners and runners up. My host, Professor Nancy St. Clair of English and Women’s Studies, not only made it possible for me to have this opportunity, she also took me to many flea markets and antique malls, making the experience ideal. Is this Utopia? No, it’s Iowa.—Joan Gordon, Nassau Community College
ICFA 2013. The 34th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts was held 20-24 March 2013 at the Mariott Orlando Airport Hotel in Orlando, Florida. The conference theme for this year was “Fantastic Adaptations, Transformations, and Audiences.” The Guest Scholar was Constance Penley and the Guests of Honor were Neil Gaiman and Kij Johnson. Penley’s keynote address was primarily focused on her previous work rather than on current projects, and it focused on her involvement in a fan culture art piece that created scripts and props for the soap opera Melrose Place (1992-99) to sneak subversive political messages and sexual content past network censors. Gaiman used his keynote address, “The Pornography of Genre. Or the Genre of Pornography. Or Something,” to discuss his litmus test for genre; as he put it, genre points to the parts of a story that would disappoint a reader if they were missing, just as the absence of sex acts in a pornographic film would disappoint a viewer regardless of the quality of the frame narrative. Neil Gaiman and Kij Johnson gave well-attended and engaging readings, and Gaiman additionally agreed to perform in the IAFA Ten-Minute Play Festival as a mugger who stole people’s stories.
In keeping with the conference theme, there were a number of exciting panels exploring adaptation theory going beyond the limiting concept of fidelity to engage critically with adaptation as an intertextual process, culminating in a stellar trio of papers from Paweł Frelik, John Rieder, and Rebekah Sheldon on the panel “Explorations in SF Theory.” Other conference high points included Grace Dillon’s screening and discussion of a series of short Indigenous Futures films; Brian Attebery’s coining the term “temporal slingshots” to explain contemporary sf stories that use alternative histories in order to launch their narratives into utopian futures; a panel discussion of fairy-tale adaptations with Kij Johnson, Charles Vess, Delia Sherman, and others; a fascinating “Language and Perception in SF” panel exploring how constructed alien languages and linguistic systems function within speculative fiction; and a clear and compelling reading by Kathryn Hume of the mythic structure of Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novels.
Next year’s conference will be held from 19-23 March 2013 and will focus on the theme “Fantastic Empires.” It will have as its Guests of Honor Nnedi Okorafor and Ian McDonald and Guest Scholar Istvan Csicery-Ronay, Jr. More information about the conference and paper submissions is forthcoming at <www.iafa.org>.—Stina Attebery, UC Riverside
Eaton/SFRA 2013. The conference ran from 11-14 April 2014 at the Marriott Hotel, Riverside, with some additional events at the picturesque surroundings of the Mission Inn Hotel and Spa and the University’s Culver Center. Across the three days the conference offered a bewildering array of papers, over 160 in total, spread over seven parallel streams. Among this academic smorgasbord were other panels devoted to discussion and debate on issues such as Hollywood Science, Parabolas, Video Games, and others. In addition the conference hosted poetry readings, displayed concept art from various media, and was treated to readings by authors Maureen McHugh and Nalo Hopkinson.
It was clearly impossible to see even a fraction of all that was available, and no doubt there were superb papers and panels that I was unable to attend; however the stand-out panel for which I was present was “Consciousness and Character in Science Fiction,” which contained lively and fascinating papers by Taylor Evans, Steven Shaviro, and Neil Easterbrook. The Science Fiction Studies Symposium, entitled “SF Media(tions),” saw three plenary papers in the impressive setting of the Spanish Art Gallery at the Mission Inn. In principle, three hours of plenaries back-to-back seemed like it might appear testing for an audience, but intriguing and entertaining papers from the three speakers soon proved this to be a misconception. Mark Bould used oscillations of interpretation to appreciate the potential deeper meaning of special effects in effect-heavy films, using examples from Dredd (2012) and Looper (2012). Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr’s “The Eye of Gort” was a deconstruction and analysis of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), centered on the relationships among Helen Benson, Klaatu, and Gort and in particular the symbolism and directorial highlighting of eyes. And Vivian Sobchack presented a survey of the state of contemporary sf cinema and television, charting its relative decline alongside the modern rise of the fantasy genre. An additional plenary was held at the Culver Center on the second evening with director and screenwriter Craig Baldwin, which provided an entertaining synopsis of his career, complete with an analysis of his rather unique take on his craft and the motivations that feed into it. This was followed by a screening of his 1999 film Specters of the Spectrum, an eccentrically brilliant pseudo-documentary combining live action with clips from Baldwin’s personal collection of old television shows, particularly educational science programming. The joint conference was brought to an end by the banquet on Saturday evening, which saw the presentation of the SFRA awards as well as the J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Awards to Ursula Le Guin (for 2012) and Ray Harryhausen and Stan Lee (two awards for 2013).—Glyn Morgan, University of Liverpool
From Housewife to High Tech: Biohacking and Synthetic Biology. In the last five years groups of DIY-biologists have opened public labs all over the world in the name of bringing laboratory science outside its enclosed spaces (in university and industry) and into contact with the public, art, and independent entrepreneurship. Bringing a new angle to this way of making the practice and craft of science public, and simultaneously challenging preconceptions about which activities take place in exhibitions, Medical Museion in Copenhagen installed a biohacking lab and exhibition Biohacking: Do It Yourself! (24 January to 30 June 2013) <http://www.museion.ku.dk/biohacking-web-exh/>. The exhibition presents homemade lab apparatus with a focus on the basic tools needed to work with DNA, and explores the biohacking movement and its links to the new field of synthetic biology. Oscillating between exhibition space and active laboratory, the room has also hosted hands-on workshops, following the shared goal to democratize and open up for view the processes of biological science.
The lab was constructed in collaboration among the museum, biohackers, and exhibition and interaction designers. It is put together from private biohacker lab equipment, discarded furniture from the medical faculty, lamps and shelves from the museum attic, and kitchen cupboards and stools from IKEA and a local woodwork shop. In this way the lab installation is in itself a hack—a creative way of using materials at hand. The eclecticism of the assemblage is further highlighted by luggage tags indicating, for example, that the fridge comes from the lab of a professor expelled from the university for fraud.
Visitors are met by a central table with high chairs inviting them to sit down before counters that display hacked instruments that can be touched and investigated. These include a web-microscope hacked from an ordinary cheap web-cam by taking out the lens, turning it, and thus changing its function from wide-angle to magnification. The lab bench also holds a centrifuge made from a drill motor, a metal bowl, and numerous elastic bands. Traces of activity mark the lab. Glassware is left to dry and the cupboards can be opened to reveal a mixture of the mundane and mysterious, from mashed potato powder to chemical dyes. On top of the counters and cupboards a projection shows biohackers at work, so that the lab is “inhabited” even when not in active use.
The goals and visions of biohacking and open science, and their complicated relations to synthetic biology, are presented on a board of texts and images outside the lab, where green threads also weave intricate patterns illustrating the networked nature of the communities.
Synthetic biology is a field of research that has grown out of genetic engineering, and it is often described as taking an engineering approach to biological organisms. From this perspective, the DNA inside living cells can be viewed as a code that is programmable in the same manner as computer codes. Organisms and DNA codes become “biological bricks” or “tool kits” of standardized parts through which useful biological systems can be easily assembled and engineered. It is the ideas of DNA as “code” and biological systems as “bricks” that allow the hacker culture from computer and electronics to move into biology.
Thus, together with increased knowledge sharing and 3D printing of equipment, the ease with which one can begin to experiment with engineering biology opens up possibilities for non-traditional and non-regulated scholars and private persons to get their hands dirty in open labs. In addition, synthetic biology brings a twist to the idea of technology intervening in nature: here, nature is harnessed to create technology and vice versa, troubling the distinction between the two.
The texts in the exhibition space also point to uncertainty surrounding the future for synthetic biology and controversies about the way it should be regulated. Media coverage of synthetic biology tends to focus either on bright technological futures of sustainable and cheap methods for cell-based production of biofuels, biochemicals, or drugs; or on an impressive cast of frightening characters: synthetic creations that run amok, “unnatural” humans, and reckless scientists.
Focus needs, however, also to be directed to the more gritty, immediate questions about what lab biologists and synthetic biologists are actually doing, on the short-term prospects and the barriers they face day to day. What kind of democratization does open science or biohacking actually provide? (see C. Marris and N. Rose, “Let’s Get Real on Synthetic Biology,” New Scientist [2012]: 28-29).
These behind-the-scenes, practical aspects of synthetic biology and biohacking were explored by hosting open house days in the laboratory at Medical Museion, where visitors could chat with the biohackers and join them in simple experiments, such as extracting DNA from spit or onions. Questions raised in these conversations ranged from “what can a humanities person like me do in the lab?” to “how much can actually be done with equipment like this?” Thus audiences echoed a key theme of the scientific and ethical debate in this area, enquiring about the limits of biohacking—how “open” is it and how much can it technically achieve? At this early stage in its development—while key tools for biotech research such as enzymes are still not cheaply hackable—perhaps biohacking neither lives up to being truly accessible nor to really challenging industry. Perhaps its current significance lies rather in surrounding debates, which challenge current boundaries and practices, pointing to new ways of doing laboratory science.
The limits of biohacking were more thoroughly tested in practice and debate at two evening events. At DIY-Biology Workshop participants tried their hand at two aspects of biohacking. One team worked on fermented foods such as sourdough, yoghurt, kimchi (fermented cabbage), and tempeh (fermented soy-beans), thus exploring age-old ways of using—or hacking—biology to improve the longevity and taste of food. Old wives’ tricks are rediscovered in search of a closer relation between consumers and production of food. A second team extracted DNA from spit and onions and investigated the results by running the sample through a gel to produce the iconic striped patterns used for genetic fingerprinting.
Taking interactions with biology from housewife to high tech in one event reflected the diverse landscape of biohacking, mirrored in an audience that mixed hippies, artists, and engineering students. Making this connection between biology in the home and in the lab suggests that genetic labs may in the future be challenged in the same way as food collectives challenge industrialized food.
The event Doing and Debating Synthetic Biology opened the floor for discussion of open science, synthetic biology, and relations between the two. The event began with short introductions to synthetic biology and biohacking—concepts that are often new to our visitors—followed by a panel debate fuelled by audience questions. The resulting debate ranged far beyond questions of managing risk.
Professor and synthetic biologist Birger Lindberg Møller started by arguing for the beauty of applicable science, the potential of synthetic biology to address pressing environmental concerns, and the necessity for free movement of knowledge. He saw the biohacking movement as a breathing hole of open access for universities more and more concerned with commercialization—emphasizing with fellow panelist philosopher Sune Holm that everyone has something to gain from such collaborations.
When asked whether the future should therefore be a hybrid between hackerspaces and universities, allowing for life-long learning, biohacker Martin Malthe Borch welcomed collaboration but argued that hacker spaces need to maintain their own identity. Public engagement researcher Sarah Davies also reminded us that this event brought together one particular university and two specific biohackers, but biohacking is a very broad church and caution is necessary when making general statements about identity and goals.
During the panel debate, biohacker Rüdiger Trojok presented one of the instruments from the lab installation that engendered much discussion when the exhibition opened—a hacked gene gun. Gene guns are a classic biotech tool invented in the mid-1980s, used to “shoot” DNA into cells and thus produce transgenic plants. In the hacked version, Trojok mounted cheap components such as a cartridge for blowing up bicycling tires and bits of a ballpoint pen on a branch shaped like a primitive toy gun, raising questions about who should have access to potentially dangerous technologies.
In an interesting echo of this crafted provocation, an artist in the audience called for synthetic biology and biohackers to take off the kid gloves of political caution and do more controversial work, following the example of bioartists. Other audience members wanted clarification about what exactly is possible now, and a discussion evolved about the relationship between self-regulation and institutional regulation, drawing on the metaphor of martial arts providing both training in fighting skills and an ethos regarding how to use such skills. And finally, the local hacker space Labitat acquired some newly converted members.
After the event the biohackers worried whether they spend too much time talking about biohacking rather than doing it, continuing a conversation begun at the recent 4S/EASST conference on sociology of science in Copenhagen about the disproportionately high level of interest of sociologists in hacker movements. And so both the debating and the doing continue—in labs, kitchens, university meeting rooms, and a small exhibition space in the center of Copenhagen. —Karin Tybjerg and Louise Whiteley, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen
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