Shapes of the Past and the Future: Darwin and the Narratology of Time Travel
TL;DR: The authors trace the development of time travel, from H. G.G. Wells's The Time Machine to post-modern science fiction as a brief history of a-historicity.
Abstract: "'Scientific people/ proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required for the proper assimilation of this, 'know very well that Time is only a kind of Space'" (The Time Machine 268). What is at stake in treating time "as a kind of space," politically, philosophi cally, and narratologically? While time travel has often been dismissed as merely a popular science-fictional gimmick, it seems far more productive to regard it as an in scription of a specific ideology of temporality. The roots of this ideology are in the evolutionary debate of the fin-de-siecle but its contemporary offshoots have become part of postmodernity's problematic relationship with time and history. The post modern trouble with time finds its expression in the "spatial turn" in narrativity, which includes the topos of time travel (Smethurst 37). In this essay, I will trace the development of time travel, from H. G. Wells's The Time Machine to postmodern science fiction as a brief history of a-historicity. As opposed to most narrative conventions, time travel originates in a single text, H. G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895).1 In his first novel, Wells invents not just a new plot but a new chronotope. Chronotope, as Mikhail Bakhtin defines it, is the spa tial-temporal configuration of the narrative text, "the intrinsic connectedness of tem poral and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature" (15). The
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01 Jan 2020
TL;DR: The authors draw parallels between perhaps the earliest complete American fiction set in Berlin and some of the most recent, by comparing urban space and its treatment in Theodore Sedgwick Fay's The Countess Ida: A Tale of Berlin (1840), Chloe Aridjis's Book of Clouds (2009), and J.S. Marcus's The Captain's Fire (1996), all three novels treat foreign German urban space as one which is inherently violent, with a violence that must be repressed, deflected, or fled by the New World protagonists negotiating its thematic spaces.
Abstract: This chapter draws parallels between perhaps the earliest complete American fiction set in Berlin and some of the most recent, by comparing urban space and its treatment in Theodore Sedgwick Fay’s The Countess Ida: A Tale of Berlin (1840), Chloe Aridjis’s Book of Clouds (2009), and J.S. Marcus’s The Captain’s Fire (1996). Though the authors juggle enormously different social, historical, political, and cultural themes of their respective periods, all three novels treat foreign German urban space as one which is inherently violent, with a violence that must be repressed, deflected, or fled by the New World protagonists negotiating its thematic spaces.
1 citations
14 Feb 2012
TL;DR: In this article, Bordwell introduces a distinction between fabula/story and syuzhet/plot, which is the actual arrangement and presentation of the fabula in the film, and show that the arrangement of events in the plot, in terms of order, duration and frequency, can aid or prevent the construction of the narrative logic and the story time.
Abstract: In alternative and time travel narratives, our everyday conception of time is often challenged. Similarly, in counterfactual history, various parallel realities exist. In time travel narrative, it is possible to travel in the past or in the future. In all of these cases, there are clues that help viewers to comprehend new ideas of time and, in some cases, the construction of the story time is not sufficient to comprehend the story. In order to solve some of the main logical paradoxes, personal time needs to be considered and discussed. In alternative narrative, the clues are often to be found in the plot and story time, as well as in the mise-en-scene. In some examples of counterfactual history, for example Groundhog Day, and in some time travel narratives, the spectator has to reconstruct the time traveller's personal time through story and plot time and mise-en- scene, as in Twelve Monkeys, or they have to deduce story time from personal time and mise-en-scene, as is the case in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The relationships between plot, story and personal time can be visualized through graphics which can also help us to draw conclusions about A-series and B-series. There are films in which time becomes the film's very theme and subject matter, and which challenge our everyday conception of time. This happens mostly in narratives that present alternative or counterfactual history and in time-travel films. Counterfactual history occurs when a story is dominated by different versions of the same protagonist and these alter egos occupy another, parallel reality which, however, occurs in the same time-space. If the alter egos occupy a different time, but the same space, we have a time-travel narrative. As regards the story time, David Bordwell introduces a distinction between fabula/story and syuzhet/plot: Presented with two narrative events, we look for causal or spatial or temporal links. The imaginary construct we create, progressively and retroactively, was termed by Formalists the fabula (sometimes translated as "story"). More specifically, the fabula embodies the action as a chronological, cause-and-effect chain of events occurring within a given duration and a spatial field. . . The syuzhet (usually translated as "plot") is the actual arrangement and presentation of the fabula in the film. (Narration in the Fiction Film 49-50 emphasis in original) Three principles link the fabula and the syuzhet: time; space; and narrative logic, which mostly refers to causality. The arrangement of the events in the plot, in terms of order, duration and frequency, can aid or prevent the construction of the narrative logic and the story time (51). The plot time is the time that a film takes to present a story, and the story time is the time of what is represented by a film. Sometimes, the story time is insufficient to understand the story and to solve its logical paradoxes. For example, in counterfactual history it is usually possible to reconstruct the story time from the plot, but there are films, such as
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Cites background from "Shapes of the Past and the Future: ..."
...In alternative narratives, the world described is different from the actual one because an event changes the course of history (Ryan 2006; Gomel 2009)....
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01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: Huang examines Charles Yu's use of the time travel narrative and the immigrant narrative in his debut novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010) to critically reimagine American utopianism.
Abstract: Huang examines Charles Yu’s use of the time travel narrative and the immigrant narrative in his debut novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010) to critically reimagine American utopianism. Yu deploys the device of a time machine to map, over time, the marginal and invisible spaces to which immigrants are all too often consigned. The quest reveals the crippling melancholy that undergirds one of the most powerful romances of American utopianism: the American Dream. The novel sheds light on how that melancholy ironically fuels immigrant attachments to the Dream and how that attachment can be severed without sacrificing a life-sustaining utopian outlook.
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors examine three of Chiang's time-travel thought experiments: "Story of Your Life" (1998), "What's Expected of Us" (2005), and "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" (2007).
Abstract: ABSTRACT:Ted Chiang's sf narratives—"thought experiments," in his words—are written in a variety of genres and cover a variety of ideas, including considerations of temporal issues such as time travel. Here I examine three of these time-travel thought experiments: "Story of Your Life" (1998), "What's Expected of Us" (2005), and "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" (2007). As I argue, Chiang implicitly predicates each narrative on the block universe theory of the universe, whereby past, present, and future all coexist simultaneously; and he structures the narratives so as to reinforce this temporal fixedness. Concurrently, however, each narrative highlights key ideas relating to free will, such as knowledge, predictability, and agency, thus exploring what a meaningful definition of free will might be that is compatible with determinism.
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01 Jan 1991
TL;DR: In this paper, a wide-ranging survey of postmodernism is presented, from high art to low art, from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk” film, from video art to literature.
Abstract: Now in paperback, Fredric Jameson’s most wide-ranging work seeks to crystalize a definition of ”postmodernism”. Jameson’s inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from “high” art to “low” from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk” film, from video art to literature.
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01 Jan 1986
TL;DR: A brilliant and controversial book which demonstrates that evolution by natural selection is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do the authors exist.
Abstract: ***30th Anniversary Edition*** Cover note: Each copy of the anniversary edition of The Blind Watchmaker features a unique biomorph. No two covers are exactly alike. Acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution written in the last hundred years, The Blind Watchmaker offers an inspiring and accessible introduction to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. A brilliant and controversial book which demonstrates that evolution by natural selection - the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Darwin - is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist?
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2,171 citations
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01 Jan 1995
TL;DR: In this groundbreaking and very accessible book, Dennett, the acclaimed author of Consciousness Explained, demonstrates the power of the theory of natural selection and shows how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of our place in the universe as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In this groundbreaking and very accessible book, Daniel C. Dennett, the acclaimed author of Consciousness Explained, demonstrates the power of the theory of natural selection and shows how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of our place in the universe. Following Darwinian thinking to its logical conclusions is a risky business, with pitfalls for everybody. Creationists and others who reject evolution are not the only ones to fall into the traps. Many who accept the validity of Darwin's conclusions hesitate before their implications and distort his theory, fearful that it is politically incorrect or antireligious, or that it robs life of all spirituality. Dennett explains the scientific theory of natural selection in vivid terms, and shows how it extends far beyond biology.
2,075 citations
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01 Jan 1989
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history and find that it holds the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived.
Abstract: High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived-a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.
1,901 citations