In Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway’s use of the cyborg is, for the most part, metaphorical. She is only tenuously invested in robotics and uses the techno figure of the cyborg to partially refer to the information systems of the cyberneticists like Weiner, Shannon, Kieber, Turing and McCulloch, but mostly to present a de-essentialized feminist vision, one not in need of Edenic metanarratives of patriarchal genesis. As far as information theory goes, she is interested in intersections of a posthuman consciousness vis a vis Katherine Hayles that is free of embodiment.
Isaac Asimov was more than a sci-fi writer. He was also a historian, a futurist, a thinker. With Foundation, Asimov considered the broad scope of American history along with speculative technological development. But Asimov's purpose for writing Foundation was foremost an exploration of the major iterations of American history.
Books received: Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds. Tor Books: 2019.
Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds might be Reynolds' most beautiful book. Its literary qualities--the weight of images tied to the narrative and a light touch with language--are as impressive as the conceit of time travel through sophisticated X-ray devices: computed tomography machines (CT scanners).
Not all science fiction is created equal. While works like Frankenstein forever loom over all else, other sci-fi haunts our bottom shelves, every bit as terrifying as a Frankensteinian ubermensch electrified into wakefulness. Funny enough, most really bad sci-fi is Frankensteinian, made up of pieces of good stuff from the genre but put together poorly, all the pieces forced to fit into a narrative as if the only thing it takes to create science fiction is a smattering of not-so-new novums and worn-out genric elements. And no matter how good some of the stuff is, when it's sewn unnaturally into a hulking whole, it just stinks.
Joe Haldeman's The Forever War is military sci-fi that doesn't operate with the expected thesis of the expected military sci-fi narrative. Haldeman's military sci-fi criticizes political strategies of waging continuous war, pointing out the social evils that accompany a war-based society. Military sci-fi began as a celebration of state militarism, a kind of send-up and affirmation of the military might of a nation. Heinlein used the military sci-fi subgenre to praise the importance of the military, arguing for universal military service in the US. Considering that British sci-fi and American sci-fi was the only science fiction for most of the history of sci-fi, it's clear to see that the winners of the military SF war were the societies capable of policing the world with their militaries.
