__PL__
Analizowana w książce temponautyka literacka, przy pierwszych z nią spotkaniach sprawiają... more __PL__
Analizowana w książce temponautyka literacka, przy pierwszych z nią spotkaniach sprawiająca wrażenie hermetycznej, w rzeczywistości otwarta jest na konteksty. Wykorzystuje nie tylko koncepcje naukowe, ale również idee filozoficzne i historiozoficzne.
Książka zawiera przegląd problematyki obecnej w temponautyce, analizę rozwiązań narracyjnych i światostwórczych, omówienie kontekstu mentalnych podróży w czasie.
__EN__
Time travel stories and films analysed in the book may appear hermetic at first glance. Actually, they are open to many contexts. Writers use not only scientific concepts but also philosophical ideas. Time travel is therefore always a philosophy of history.
The book contains a review of issues present in time travel, an analysis of narrative and world-building factors, and a discussion of mental time travel.
"""Polish dystopian fiction of the 80′s was usually described as a diagnosis of the totalitarian ... more """Polish dystopian fiction of the 80′s was usually described as a diagnosis of the totalitarian system and a reservoir of political allusions. I attempted to look at the subgenre from a different perspective, tracking in the footsteps of utopia as a way of thinking, a courage of combining intellectual rigor with imagination. The book “Polish >>fantastyka socjologiczna<<” (“Polska fantastyka socjologiczna. Poetyka i myślenie utopijne”, 2008) can be thus seen as a sequel to my 1998 book “Stanislaw Lem and utopia” (“Stanisław Lem wobec utopii”), which proposed a new perspective on Lem’s works, leading to a conclusion that utopia is a means of discovering and organizing values and ideas.
In “Polish social SF” I tried to prove that the cognitive charge carried by them reaches far beyond equations of allegory, which means, it transgresses the popular encryption of the political situation connected with the martial law in Poland (December 1981 - July 1983), and remains more than just a satire on the mechanisms of totalitarianism in Polish reality of the 1970s and 1980s. Works of Marek Oramus, Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński, Maciej Parowski, Janusz A. Zajdel and others, embed strong allusions though, but they are mostly local. This is partly because of censorship. An analysis contained in my book is meant to show undermining and overwhelming tradition of utopian thinking in works usually interpreted as unambiguous dystopias. This is the foundation, which cannot be reduced to negative experience of totalitarianism. Both utopia and its dystopian counterpart are embedded in a greater meaningful environment of utopian thinking. My view of utopian thinking doesn’t focus on (suppressed and subversive) political activity, but nevertheless it keeps this activity in intentionally radical, intentionally fictitious limbo. Utopianism is interpreted here then as deeply and etymologically rooted in (science) fiction and evaluative cognitive activity, involving knowledge of economics, information technology, the science of control (cybernetics and systems theory), and ethics. A way of understanding our reality rather than social criticism.
The characteristic features of utopian thinking - seen as a conventionally fictitious writing/reading activity - include: complexity, paranoid imagination, apocalyptic imagination and subversion. They are stuck in the genetic equipment of science fiction genre, which can be put to good use in the works manifesting its power.
Complexity should be associated with the need to construct the framework of fiction different from the empirical world, but potentially coherent, and at the same time not immune to basic assumptions rationalization. It is this assumption to see the legacy of utopia, but you can also see the debt of this kind of fiction to science and scientific hypotheses requirements. However, as the utopia is in the self-conscious play with entrenched ideologies (as 'non-place'), so science fiction has developed the courage to operate conventional fiction and potential states of affairs. Utopia goes thus above and beyond, while creating its own dystopian contradiction, but also goes beyond politics and futurology by putting a priority mark to possibility, not necessity.
Paranoid imagination. Following in the footsteps of the dynamics of utopianism and dystopian fiction, it should be noted that in utopian fiction looking for consequences of basic assumptions simultaneously designate the boundaries, either in restraining the temptation of crossing, or by manifesting transgressiveness. Science fiction with ease - often excessive - launches a global perspective of change and (meta)history. Science fiction instead of fear of irrational manifests a fear of hyperrational system, inscrutable plan, something that - at first glance - seems to be chaotic, but after shifting to a higher plan could possibly (or in fictional fact) infect a perverse complexity. Consistency is always suspicious, never satisfactorily self-explaining, consequently always projects a higher plane or an overwhelming authority.
Apocalyptic narrative is born inside the consciousness of crisis, nourished by the prospect of radical change, as Kermode once wrote. Quite easily it forces a manipulation with our understanding of the past and with our image of the future. With these frictions science fiction, equipped with an apocalyptic dimension so conceived, constantly returns to the flesh. What is particularly interesting to determine the specificity of utopian thinking, is that abstract category of "omniscience" can be embodied in a science-fictional narrative, and often is in Polish social SF. So, apocalyptic imagination means a “fleshy” co-existence of conventionally perceived utopia and dystopia, thanks to a big charge of “the-end-is-nigh” obsession."""
""EN
Utopian theme and stories of famous Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem are in the ... more ""EN
Utopian theme and stories of famous Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem are in the center of this book. The author proposes a new perspective on Lem’s works, working out his own tools of description, in the course of interpreting, The analysis, carried out in the context of literary utopia and science fiction, leads to the satisfying conclusion - for Lem utopia is a means of discovering and organizing values. Further research is required to justify that the above statement applies to the whole science fiction genre.
PL
Tematyką książki są utopijne wątki w dziełach Stanisława Lema. Autor proponuje nowe spojrzenie na twórczość pisarza, wypracowując w toku interpretacji własne narzędzia porządkowania i opisu. Analiza, przeprowadzona w kontekście utopii literackiej i fantastyki naukowej, prowadzi w sposób przekonywający do stwierdzenia - u Lema utopia służy odkrywaniu i porządkowaniu wartości. Dalszych badań wymaga uzasadnienie tezy, że powyższe twierdzenie odnosi się do całej literatury science fiction.""
Niemożliwe jest określenie i podsumowanie pełnego wachlarza istniejących i możliwych religii, ale... more Niemożliwe jest określenie i podsumowanie pełnego wachlarza istniejących i możliwych religii, ale z pewnością łączy je przekraczanie doczesności. Fantastyka naukowa zajmowałaby, wobec tak pojmowanej religii, miejsce tuż obok realizmu, jako dominującego w kulturze Zachodu obrazu tego, co dotykalne, możliwe do zbadania, decydujące o naszej egzystencji tu i teraz. Nieczęste występowanie wątków i tematów religijnych, a częste instrumentalne ich ujęcie, nie powinny być zatem traktowane jako cecha specyficzna fantastyki naukowej. Realizm, wewnątrz fikcji mimetycznej, takoż określa się w konfrontacji z kreacją niemimetyczną, m.in. mityczną.
Niemożliwe jest także określenie granic religii. Z jednej strony jest ona bliska wyobraźni mitycznej, a z drugiej – wyobraźni „kosmicznej”. Stąd wiele punktów zapalnych albo celowego rozmywania różnic: wypiętrzenie kolektywnego umysłu w powieści Olafa Stapledona Star Maker zbliża się do boskości, obce mity zyskują pełny wyraz dzięki spotkaniu z mentalnością ziemsk w Lewej ręce ciemności Ursuli K. Le Guin. Metasystemy i powtarzające się relacje podporządkowania (czy nieskończone?) wiodą ku myśleniu religijnemu w Końcu dzieciństwa Arthura C. Clarke’a... Dyskusję o sztucznych bóstwach wydatnie ożywia i dopełnia skalowanie światostwórstwa: człowiek może być bogiem dla istot niższych, per analogiam powinien też oczekiwać, choć dowieść tego nie może, że sam nie jest w tym sensie istotą najwyższą. Trop ten znajdziemy w Ze wspomnień Ijona Tichego I Stanisława Lema, Ubiku Philipa K. Dicka, Robocie i „teorii Nadistot” Adama Wiśniewskiego-Snerga i wielu innych fantastycznonaukowych utworach.
Studium zatytułowane Teoria listu zajmuje w dorobku Stefanii Skwarczyńskiej miejsce szczególne. W... more Studium zatytułowane Teoria listu zajmuje w dorobku Stefanii Skwarczyńskiej miejsce szczególne. Wydane w 1937 nakładem Towarzystwa Naukowego we Lwowie, stało się podstawą pierwszej w Polsce habilitacji z teorii literatury. Oparte na historycznoliterackich konkretach, jest egzemplifikacją zdefiniowanego przez Skwarczyńską w Szkicach z zakresu teorii literatury (1932), a dla budowanej przez nią teorii kluczowego i rozwiniętego m.in. we Wstępie do nauki o literaturze (1954-65), rozróżnienia między literaturą stosowaną i czystą. Jest do dziś bezkonkurencyjną monografią listu jako rodzaju literatury stosowanej, na granicy sztuki i życia otwartego na wartości i utylitarne, i estetyczne. Cechuje się zarówno przejrzystością wywodu, jak też rozległością erudycji i wyrafinowaniem w doborze materiału. Niniejsze wznowienie tej książki opracowano na podstawie pierwodruku.
Science fiction is often depicted as literature of ideas. It is reasonable, but – in its essence ... more Science fiction is often depicted as literature of ideas. It is reasonable, but – in its essence – science fiction relies upon visual imagination, inherited from utopia, and it draws toward rhetoric visualisation thanks to such rhetorical devices as metaphor or hyperbole. It is placed at the very intersection of word and picture. Many movies, TV series, novels and stories share this principle, mainly in the form of basic but powerful meta-religious division between light and darkness, surprisingly borrowing its persuasive force from the sublime. One of the most interesting case here is cyberpunk, a dystopian genre reinforcing the idea and symbol of transparency.Mariusz M. Leś - dr, adiunkt w Zakładzie Teorii i Antropologii Literatury, Instytut Filologii Polskiej, Uniwersytet w Białymstoku. Autor książek: Stanisław Lem wobec utopii (Białystok 1998), Fantastyka socjologiczna. Poetyka i myślenie utopijne (Białystok 2008) oraz szeregu artykułów poświęconych poetyce utopii i fantastyki n...
The author of the article analyses Jacek Dukaj’s science fiction novella The Cathedral (2000), wh... more The author of the article analyses Jacek Dukaj’s science fiction novella The Cathedral (2000), which inspired the famous animated short film released under the same title in 2002. The eponymous pseudo-building was founded on the grave of Izmir Predú, a man who has sacrificed himself to save his travel companions’ lives. It is built using programmed nanoparticles and has formed itself – chaotically – into a cathedral-like asymmetrical, fractal structure. The novella’s main character, a Catholic priest, has been sent onto a planetoid to validate rumours about Predú’s holiness. The author of the article argues that the process of incarnating the protagonist into the Cathedral’s body leads him to the point of holistic transformation of the body, psyche and knowledge, similar to technological singularity, which is indistinguishable from a mystical, religious act. It is limited to earthly life, though, and brings the risk (as a transhuman act) of losing humanity. Jacek Dukaj offers the re...
Bibliotekarz Podlaski Ogólnopolskie Naukowe Pismo Bibliotekoznawcze i Bibliologiczne, 2021
As the author of the article claims, there exist close and lasting links between astronomy and sc... more As the author of the article claims, there exist close and lasting links between astronomy and science fiction genre. First and foremost, both of these phenomena developed in parallel since antiquity, and both have fiction at their centre as a socially established type of imagination. Scientific hypotheses use justified fabrication, and science fiction offers images of fictional cosmologies. Many writers of proto-science fiction brought astronomical concepts into social play. Among them were astronomers and philosophers who extensively used plot devices based on mythology or allegorical transformations: from Lucian of Samosata to Johannes Kepler. Space travel, beginning with Jules Verne’s prose, is an important part of the thematic resource of science fiction. Astronomy played an important role also in the beginnings of Polish science fiction, thanks to works of Michał Dymitr Krajewski and Teodor Tripplin.
The article presents a critical analysis of a monograph by Gavin Miller, Science Fiction and Psyc... more The article presents a critical analysis of a monograph by Gavin Miller, Science Fiction and Psychology (2020), and offers a subjective reading of the book. The author of the article believes that Miller’s book presents an inspirational and thorough reading of the classical and contemporary science fiction which revises the interaction between two spheres of human activity, cultural and scientific. By analyzing the presence of utopian thinking which provides the groundwork for Miller’s considerations, the author notes that the scholar places great emphasis on scientific discourse and methodology.
Author of the article offers an insight into three threads of utopian thinking in a world wide we... more Author of the article offers an insight into three threads of utopian thinking in a world wide web environment. In the first of them, cyberspace operates—in terms of Gibson’s protypical Neuromancer—as a space of decentralized exchange of ideas. In the second, hypertext brings a promise of non-linear and democratized perception, an open-ended eutopia of shared knowledge. In the third, the web is a place of an intriguing meeting of man and machine inside posthumanism and digital humanities movements.
Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Literacka, 2017
Time travel is one of the most popular themes in science fiction. Usually it is discussed from a ... more Time travel is one of the most popular themes in science fiction. Usually it is discussed from a perspective of technological and scientific possibilities for the realization of fantastic visions. Researchers focus on logical paradoxes implied by traveling back in time. The author of this article, inspired by David Wittenberg’s Time Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative, draws attention to metanarrative functions of time travel theme, which becomes a challenge for writers and narrative techniques.
Monografia zawiera studia poświęcone fantastyce naukowej w jej różnych wymiarach: od światostwórs... more Monografia zawiera studia poświęcone fantastyce naukowej w jej różnych wymiarach: od światostwórstwa i strategii narracyjnych po walory edukacyjne. Autor traktuje literaturę fantastycznonaukową jako istotny czynnik współkształtujący współczesną wyobraźnię zbiorową.
Cyberspace and Senses. As the author of this article claims, science fiction as a worldcentric co... more Cyberspace and Senses. As the author of this article claims, science fiction as a worldcentric convention, creates a fictitious world through the activation of the difference between the norm and the extraordinariness. A configuration of possible worlds arises, in the center of which is the current world of fiction. Science fiction enjoys a great variety of possibilities of confronting worlds. A particularly interesting variant is realized by the cyberpunk containing creations of simulated space or cyberspace.
Internet as extropy. An introduction
Author of the article offers an insight into three thread... more Internet as extropy. An introduction
Author of the article offers an insight into three threads of utopian thinking in a world wide web environment. In the first of them, cyberspace operates – in terms of Gibson’s prototypical Neuromancer – as a space of decentralized exchange of ideas. In the second, hypertext brings a promise of non-linear and democratized perception, an open-ended eutopia of shared knowledge. In the third, the web is a place of an intriguing meeting of man and machine inside posthumanism and digital humanities movements.
__PL__
Analizowana w książce temponautyka literacka, przy pierwszych z nią spotkaniach sprawiają... more __PL__
Analizowana w książce temponautyka literacka, przy pierwszych z nią spotkaniach sprawiająca wrażenie hermetycznej, w rzeczywistości otwarta jest na konteksty. Wykorzystuje nie tylko koncepcje naukowe, ale również idee filozoficzne i historiozoficzne.
Książka zawiera przegląd problematyki obecnej w temponautyce, analizę rozwiązań narracyjnych i światostwórczych, omówienie kontekstu mentalnych podróży w czasie.
__EN__
Time travel stories and films analysed in the book may appear hermetic at first glance. Actually, they are open to many contexts. Writers use not only scientific concepts but also philosophical ideas. Time travel is therefore always a philosophy of history.
The book contains a review of issues present in time travel, an analysis of narrative and world-building factors, and a discussion of mental time travel.
"""Polish dystopian fiction of the 80′s was usually described as a diagnosis of the totalitarian ... more """Polish dystopian fiction of the 80′s was usually described as a diagnosis of the totalitarian system and a reservoir of political allusions. I attempted to look at the subgenre from a different perspective, tracking in the footsteps of utopia as a way of thinking, a courage of combining intellectual rigor with imagination. The book “Polish >>fantastyka socjologiczna<<” (“Polska fantastyka socjologiczna. Poetyka i myślenie utopijne”, 2008) can be thus seen as a sequel to my 1998 book “Stanislaw Lem and utopia” (“Stanisław Lem wobec utopii”), which proposed a new perspective on Lem’s works, leading to a conclusion that utopia is a means of discovering and organizing values and ideas.
In “Polish social SF” I tried to prove that the cognitive charge carried by them reaches far beyond equations of allegory, which means, it transgresses the popular encryption of the political situation connected with the martial law in Poland (December 1981 - July 1983), and remains more than just a satire on the mechanisms of totalitarianism in Polish reality of the 1970s and 1980s. Works of Marek Oramus, Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński, Maciej Parowski, Janusz A. Zajdel and others, embed strong allusions though, but they are mostly local. This is partly because of censorship. An analysis contained in my book is meant to show undermining and overwhelming tradition of utopian thinking in works usually interpreted as unambiguous dystopias. This is the foundation, which cannot be reduced to negative experience of totalitarianism. Both utopia and its dystopian counterpart are embedded in a greater meaningful environment of utopian thinking. My view of utopian thinking doesn’t focus on (suppressed and subversive) political activity, but nevertheless it keeps this activity in intentionally radical, intentionally fictitious limbo. Utopianism is interpreted here then as deeply and etymologically rooted in (science) fiction and evaluative cognitive activity, involving knowledge of economics, information technology, the science of control (cybernetics and systems theory), and ethics. A way of understanding our reality rather than social criticism.
The characteristic features of utopian thinking - seen as a conventionally fictitious writing/reading activity - include: complexity, paranoid imagination, apocalyptic imagination and subversion. They are stuck in the genetic equipment of science fiction genre, which can be put to good use in the works manifesting its power.
Complexity should be associated with the need to construct the framework of fiction different from the empirical world, but potentially coherent, and at the same time not immune to basic assumptions rationalization. It is this assumption to see the legacy of utopia, but you can also see the debt of this kind of fiction to science and scientific hypotheses requirements. However, as the utopia is in the self-conscious play with entrenched ideologies (as 'non-place'), so science fiction has developed the courage to operate conventional fiction and potential states of affairs. Utopia goes thus above and beyond, while creating its own dystopian contradiction, but also goes beyond politics and futurology by putting a priority mark to possibility, not necessity.
Paranoid imagination. Following in the footsteps of the dynamics of utopianism and dystopian fiction, it should be noted that in utopian fiction looking for consequences of basic assumptions simultaneously designate the boundaries, either in restraining the temptation of crossing, or by manifesting transgressiveness. Science fiction with ease - often excessive - launches a global perspective of change and (meta)history. Science fiction instead of fear of irrational manifests a fear of hyperrational system, inscrutable plan, something that - at first glance - seems to be chaotic, but after shifting to a higher plan could possibly (or in fictional fact) infect a perverse complexity. Consistency is always suspicious, never satisfactorily self-explaining, consequently always projects a higher plane or an overwhelming authority.
Apocalyptic narrative is born inside the consciousness of crisis, nourished by the prospect of radical change, as Kermode once wrote. Quite easily it forces a manipulation with our understanding of the past and with our image of the future. With these frictions science fiction, equipped with an apocalyptic dimension so conceived, constantly returns to the flesh. What is particularly interesting to determine the specificity of utopian thinking, is that abstract category of "omniscience" can be embodied in a science-fictional narrative, and often is in Polish social SF. So, apocalyptic imagination means a “fleshy” co-existence of conventionally perceived utopia and dystopia, thanks to a big charge of “the-end-is-nigh” obsession."""
""EN
Utopian theme and stories of famous Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem are in the ... more ""EN
Utopian theme and stories of famous Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem are in the center of this book. The author proposes a new perspective on Lem’s works, working out his own tools of description, in the course of interpreting, The analysis, carried out in the context of literary utopia and science fiction, leads to the satisfying conclusion - for Lem utopia is a means of discovering and organizing values. Further research is required to justify that the above statement applies to the whole science fiction genre.
PL
Tematyką książki są utopijne wątki w dziełach Stanisława Lema. Autor proponuje nowe spojrzenie na twórczość pisarza, wypracowując w toku interpretacji własne narzędzia porządkowania i opisu. Analiza, przeprowadzona w kontekście utopii literackiej i fantastyki naukowej, prowadzi w sposób przekonywający do stwierdzenia - u Lema utopia służy odkrywaniu i porządkowaniu wartości. Dalszych badań wymaga uzasadnienie tezy, że powyższe twierdzenie odnosi się do całej literatury science fiction.""
Niemożliwe jest określenie i podsumowanie pełnego wachlarza istniejących i możliwych religii, ale... more Niemożliwe jest określenie i podsumowanie pełnego wachlarza istniejących i możliwych religii, ale z pewnością łączy je przekraczanie doczesności. Fantastyka naukowa zajmowałaby, wobec tak pojmowanej religii, miejsce tuż obok realizmu, jako dominującego w kulturze Zachodu obrazu tego, co dotykalne, możliwe do zbadania, decydujące o naszej egzystencji tu i teraz. Nieczęste występowanie wątków i tematów religijnych, a częste instrumentalne ich ujęcie, nie powinny być zatem traktowane jako cecha specyficzna fantastyki naukowej. Realizm, wewnątrz fikcji mimetycznej, takoż określa się w konfrontacji z kreacją niemimetyczną, m.in. mityczną.
Niemożliwe jest także określenie granic religii. Z jednej strony jest ona bliska wyobraźni mitycznej, a z drugiej – wyobraźni „kosmicznej”. Stąd wiele punktów zapalnych albo celowego rozmywania różnic: wypiętrzenie kolektywnego umysłu w powieści Olafa Stapledona Star Maker zbliża się do boskości, obce mity zyskują pełny wyraz dzięki spotkaniu z mentalnością ziemsk w Lewej ręce ciemności Ursuli K. Le Guin. Metasystemy i powtarzające się relacje podporządkowania (czy nieskończone?) wiodą ku myśleniu religijnemu w Końcu dzieciństwa Arthura C. Clarke’a... Dyskusję o sztucznych bóstwach wydatnie ożywia i dopełnia skalowanie światostwórstwa: człowiek może być bogiem dla istot niższych, per analogiam powinien też oczekiwać, choć dowieść tego nie może, że sam nie jest w tym sensie istotą najwyższą. Trop ten znajdziemy w Ze wspomnień Ijona Tichego I Stanisława Lema, Ubiku Philipa K. Dicka, Robocie i „teorii Nadistot” Adama Wiśniewskiego-Snerga i wielu innych fantastycznonaukowych utworach.
Studium zatytułowane Teoria listu zajmuje w dorobku Stefanii Skwarczyńskiej miejsce szczególne. W... more Studium zatytułowane Teoria listu zajmuje w dorobku Stefanii Skwarczyńskiej miejsce szczególne. Wydane w 1937 nakładem Towarzystwa Naukowego we Lwowie, stało się podstawą pierwszej w Polsce habilitacji z teorii literatury. Oparte na historycznoliterackich konkretach, jest egzemplifikacją zdefiniowanego przez Skwarczyńską w Szkicach z zakresu teorii literatury (1932), a dla budowanej przez nią teorii kluczowego i rozwiniętego m.in. we Wstępie do nauki o literaturze (1954-65), rozróżnienia między literaturą stosowaną i czystą. Jest do dziś bezkonkurencyjną monografią listu jako rodzaju literatury stosowanej, na granicy sztuki i życia otwartego na wartości i utylitarne, i estetyczne. Cechuje się zarówno przejrzystością wywodu, jak też rozległością erudycji i wyrafinowaniem w doborze materiału. Niniejsze wznowienie tej książki opracowano na podstawie pierwodruku.
Science fiction is often depicted as literature of ideas. It is reasonable, but – in its essence ... more Science fiction is often depicted as literature of ideas. It is reasonable, but – in its essence – science fiction relies upon visual imagination, inherited from utopia, and it draws toward rhetoric visualisation thanks to such rhetorical devices as metaphor or hyperbole. It is placed at the very intersection of word and picture. Many movies, TV series, novels and stories share this principle, mainly in the form of basic but powerful meta-religious division between light and darkness, surprisingly borrowing its persuasive force from the sublime. One of the most interesting case here is cyberpunk, a dystopian genre reinforcing the idea and symbol of transparency.Mariusz M. Leś - dr, adiunkt w Zakładzie Teorii i Antropologii Literatury, Instytut Filologii Polskiej, Uniwersytet w Białymstoku. Autor książek: Stanisław Lem wobec utopii (Białystok 1998), Fantastyka socjologiczna. Poetyka i myślenie utopijne (Białystok 2008) oraz szeregu artykułów poświęconych poetyce utopii i fantastyki n...
The author of the article analyses Jacek Dukaj’s science fiction novella The Cathedral (2000), wh... more The author of the article analyses Jacek Dukaj’s science fiction novella The Cathedral (2000), which inspired the famous animated short film released under the same title in 2002. The eponymous pseudo-building was founded on the grave of Izmir Predú, a man who has sacrificed himself to save his travel companions’ lives. It is built using programmed nanoparticles and has formed itself – chaotically – into a cathedral-like asymmetrical, fractal structure. The novella’s main character, a Catholic priest, has been sent onto a planetoid to validate rumours about Predú’s holiness. The author of the article argues that the process of incarnating the protagonist into the Cathedral’s body leads him to the point of holistic transformation of the body, psyche and knowledge, similar to technological singularity, which is indistinguishable from a mystical, religious act. It is limited to earthly life, though, and brings the risk (as a transhuman act) of losing humanity. Jacek Dukaj offers the re...
Bibliotekarz Podlaski Ogólnopolskie Naukowe Pismo Bibliotekoznawcze i Bibliologiczne, 2021
As the author of the article claims, there exist close and lasting links between astronomy and sc... more As the author of the article claims, there exist close and lasting links between astronomy and science fiction genre. First and foremost, both of these phenomena developed in parallel since antiquity, and both have fiction at their centre as a socially established type of imagination. Scientific hypotheses use justified fabrication, and science fiction offers images of fictional cosmologies. Many writers of proto-science fiction brought astronomical concepts into social play. Among them were astronomers and philosophers who extensively used plot devices based on mythology or allegorical transformations: from Lucian of Samosata to Johannes Kepler. Space travel, beginning with Jules Verne’s prose, is an important part of the thematic resource of science fiction. Astronomy played an important role also in the beginnings of Polish science fiction, thanks to works of Michał Dymitr Krajewski and Teodor Tripplin.
The article presents a critical analysis of a monograph by Gavin Miller, Science Fiction and Psyc... more The article presents a critical analysis of a monograph by Gavin Miller, Science Fiction and Psychology (2020), and offers a subjective reading of the book. The author of the article believes that Miller’s book presents an inspirational and thorough reading of the classical and contemporary science fiction which revises the interaction between two spheres of human activity, cultural and scientific. By analyzing the presence of utopian thinking which provides the groundwork for Miller’s considerations, the author notes that the scholar places great emphasis on scientific discourse and methodology.
Author of the article offers an insight into three threads of utopian thinking in a world wide we... more Author of the article offers an insight into three threads of utopian thinking in a world wide web environment. In the first of them, cyberspace operates—in terms of Gibson’s protypical Neuromancer—as a space of decentralized exchange of ideas. In the second, hypertext brings a promise of non-linear and democratized perception, an open-ended eutopia of shared knowledge. In the third, the web is a place of an intriguing meeting of man and machine inside posthumanism and digital humanities movements.
Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Literacka, 2017
Time travel is one of the most popular themes in science fiction. Usually it is discussed from a ... more Time travel is one of the most popular themes in science fiction. Usually it is discussed from a perspective of technological and scientific possibilities for the realization of fantastic visions. Researchers focus on logical paradoxes implied by traveling back in time. The author of this article, inspired by David Wittenberg’s Time Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative, draws attention to metanarrative functions of time travel theme, which becomes a challenge for writers and narrative techniques.
Monografia zawiera studia poświęcone fantastyce naukowej w jej różnych wymiarach: od światostwórs... more Monografia zawiera studia poświęcone fantastyce naukowej w jej różnych wymiarach: od światostwórstwa i strategii narracyjnych po walory edukacyjne. Autor traktuje literaturę fantastycznonaukową jako istotny czynnik współkształtujący współczesną wyobraźnię zbiorową.
Cyberspace and Senses. As the author of this article claims, science fiction as a worldcentric co... more Cyberspace and Senses. As the author of this article claims, science fiction as a worldcentric convention, creates a fictitious world through the activation of the difference between the norm and the extraordinariness. A configuration of possible worlds arises, in the center of which is the current world of fiction. Science fiction enjoys a great variety of possibilities of confronting worlds. A particularly interesting variant is realized by the cyberpunk containing creations of simulated space or cyberspace.
Internet as extropy. An introduction
Author of the article offers an insight into three thread... more Internet as extropy. An introduction
Author of the article offers an insight into three threads of utopian thinking in a world wide web environment. In the first of them, cyberspace operates – in terms of Gibson’s prototypical Neuromancer – as a space of decentralized exchange of ideas. In the second, hypertext brings a promise of non-linear and democratized perception, an open-ended eutopia of shared knowledge. In the third, the web is a place of an intriguing meeting of man and machine inside posthumanism and digital humanities movements.
The article contains a description of the evolution of the narrative strategies used by authors w... more The article contains a description of the evolution of the narrative strategies used by authors who have contributed to the tradition of literary utopia. The author approaches utopia as a literary topos. Adopting such an attitude makes it possible to integrate the theory of fictional discourse, narratology, and embedded ideology. The conclusion of the argument is that that narrative strategies considered in spatial metaphors (e.g. smooth transformations, an escape from the center, or a move towards it) enable an applicative modulation inside the utopian topos and a discourse built around it.
Motywy religijne we współczesnej fantastyce, red. M.M. Leś, P. Stasiewicz, 2014
Author of this article enumerates different ways of encompassing religious imagination in science... more Author of this article enumerates different ways of encompassing religious imagination in science fiction. The genre is capable of metaphorizing spirituality and the sublime, but it also brings some revelations of social aspects of religion.
In terms of narrative aspect of science fiction genre, its reluctance to an authorial narrative, we can tell the crucial and dominant difference between pantheistic and gnostic variations of religious imagination.
“And I Am the Only Proof”. On Science-Fiction Poetry. The author of the article presents three co... more “And I Am the Only Proof”. On Science-Fiction Poetry. The author of the article presents three concepts of the existence of poetry in the framework of the science fiction literary genre. The first of the concepts, concretized by Suzette Haden Elgin, recognizes a possibility of creating a lyrical monologue from inside of an assumed fantastic reality. The other one, more risky, confronts the scientific discourse
with an intimate confession in the framework of allegory and hyperbole. The third one, represented by Samuel R. Delany, Adam Roberts and Seo-Young Chu’s views, recognizes the existence of poetry as a holistic dimension science fiction.
The author of the article discusses a special manner of existence of constructed languages create... more The author of the article discusses a special manner of existence of constructed languages created within the boundaries of science fiction. The subject matter occupies a special place in the general theory and practice of science fiction within the frames of the confrontation of languages and modification of the existing linguistic systems. The article contains a brief outline of constructed languages categorization, in the background of which selected science fiction works focused on language communication, as well as the presentation of two most popular fantasy systems – Laadan and Klingon.
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Books by Mariusz M Leś
Analizowana w książce temponautyka literacka, przy pierwszych z nią spotkaniach sprawiająca wrażenie hermetycznej, w rzeczywistości otwarta jest na konteksty. Wykorzystuje nie tylko koncepcje naukowe, ale również idee filozoficzne i historiozoficzne.
Książka zawiera przegląd problematyki obecnej w temponautyce, analizę rozwiązań narracyjnych i światostwórczych, omówienie kontekstu mentalnych podróży w czasie.
__EN__
Time travel stories and films analysed in the book may appear hermetic at first glance. Actually, they are open to many contexts. Writers use not only scientific concepts but also philosophical ideas. Time travel is therefore always a philosophy of history.
The book contains a review of issues present in time travel, an analysis of narrative and world-building factors, and a discussion of mental time travel.
In “Polish social SF” I tried to prove that the cognitive charge carried by them reaches far beyond equations of allegory, which means, it transgresses the popular encryption of the political situation connected with the martial law in Poland (December 1981 - July 1983), and remains more than just a satire on the mechanisms of totalitarianism in Polish reality of the 1970s and 1980s. Works of Marek Oramus, Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński, Maciej Parowski, Janusz A. Zajdel and others, embed strong allusions though, but they are mostly local. This is partly because of censorship. An analysis contained in my book is meant to show undermining and overwhelming tradition of utopian thinking in works usually interpreted as unambiguous dystopias. This is the foundation, which cannot be reduced to negative experience of totalitarianism. Both utopia and its dystopian counterpart are embedded in a greater meaningful environment of utopian thinking. My view of utopian thinking doesn’t focus on (suppressed and subversive) political activity, but nevertheless it keeps this activity in intentionally radical, intentionally fictitious limbo. Utopianism is interpreted here then as deeply and etymologically rooted in (science) fiction and evaluative cognitive activity, involving knowledge of economics, information technology, the science of control (cybernetics and systems theory), and ethics. A way of understanding our reality rather than social criticism.
The characteristic features of utopian thinking - seen as a conventionally fictitious writing/reading activity - include: complexity, paranoid imagination, apocalyptic imagination and subversion. They are stuck in the genetic equipment of science fiction genre, which can be put to good use in the works manifesting its power.
Complexity should be associated with the need to construct the framework of fiction different from the empirical world, but potentially coherent, and at the same time not immune to basic assumptions rationalization. It is this assumption to see the legacy of utopia, but you can also see the debt of this kind of fiction to science and scientific hypotheses requirements. However, as the utopia is in the self-conscious play with entrenched ideologies (as 'non-place'), so science fiction has developed the courage to operate conventional fiction and potential states of affairs. Utopia goes thus above and beyond, while creating its own dystopian contradiction, but also goes beyond politics and futurology by putting a priority mark to possibility, not necessity.
Paranoid imagination. Following in the footsteps of the dynamics of utopianism and dystopian fiction, it should be noted that in utopian fiction looking for consequences of basic assumptions simultaneously designate the boundaries, either in restraining the temptation of crossing, or by manifesting transgressiveness. Science fiction with ease - often excessive - launches a global perspective of change and (meta)history. Science fiction instead of fear of irrational manifests a fear of hyperrational system, inscrutable plan, something that - at first glance - seems to be chaotic, but after shifting to a higher plan could possibly (or in fictional fact) infect a perverse complexity. Consistency is always suspicious, never satisfactorily self-explaining, consequently always projects a higher plane or an overwhelming authority.
Apocalyptic narrative is born inside the consciousness of crisis, nourished by the prospect of radical change, as Kermode once wrote. Quite easily it forces a manipulation with our understanding of the past and with our image of the future. With these frictions science fiction, equipped with an apocalyptic dimension so conceived, constantly returns to the flesh. What is particularly interesting to determine the specificity of utopian thinking, is that abstract category of "omniscience" can be embodied in a science-fictional narrative, and often is in Polish social SF. So, apocalyptic imagination means a “fleshy” co-existence of conventionally perceived utopia and dystopia, thanks to a big charge of “the-end-is-nigh” obsession."""
Utopian theme and stories of famous Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem are in the center of this book. The author proposes a new perspective on Lem’s works, working out his own tools of description, in the course of interpreting, The analysis, carried out in the context of literary utopia and science fiction, leads to the satisfying conclusion - for Lem utopia is a means of discovering and organizing values. Further research is required to justify that the above statement applies to the whole science fiction genre.
PL
Tematyką książki są utopijne wątki w dziełach Stanisława Lema. Autor proponuje nowe spojrzenie na twórczość pisarza, wypracowując w toku interpretacji własne narzędzia porządkowania i opisu. Analiza, przeprowadzona w kontekście utopii literackiej i fantastyki naukowej, prowadzi w sposób przekonywający do stwierdzenia - u Lema utopia służy odkrywaniu i porządkowaniu wartości. Dalszych badań wymaga uzasadnienie tezy, że powyższe twierdzenie odnosi się do całej literatury science fiction.""
Niemożliwe jest także określenie granic religii. Z jednej strony jest ona bliska wyobraźni mitycznej, a z drugiej – wyobraźni „kosmicznej”. Stąd wiele punktów zapalnych albo celowego rozmywania różnic: wypiętrzenie kolektywnego umysłu w powieści Olafa Stapledona Star Maker zbliża się do boskości, obce mity zyskują pełny wyraz dzięki spotkaniu z mentalnością ziemsk w Lewej ręce ciemności Ursuli K. Le Guin. Metasystemy i powtarzające się relacje podporządkowania (czy nieskończone?) wiodą ku myśleniu religijnemu w Końcu dzieciństwa Arthura C. Clarke’a... Dyskusję o sztucznych bóstwach wydatnie ożywia i dopełnia skalowanie światostwórstwa: człowiek może być bogiem dla istot niższych, per analogiam powinien też oczekiwać, choć dowieść tego nie może, że sam nie jest w tym sensie istotą najwyższą. Trop ten znajdziemy w Ze wspomnień Ijona Tichego I Stanisława Lema, Ubiku Philipa K. Dicka, Robocie i „teorii Nadistot” Adama Wiśniewskiego-Snerga i wielu innych fantastycznonaukowych utworach.
Papers by Mariusz M Leś
Author of the article offers an insight into three threads of utopian thinking in a world wide web environment. In the first of them, cyberspace operates – in terms of Gibson’s prototypical Neuromancer – as a space of decentralized exchange of ideas. In the second, hypertext brings a promise of non-linear and democratized perception, an open-ended eutopia of shared knowledge. In the third, the web is a place of an intriguing meeting of man and machine inside posthumanism and digital humanities movements.
Analizowana w książce temponautyka literacka, przy pierwszych z nią spotkaniach sprawiająca wrażenie hermetycznej, w rzeczywistości otwarta jest na konteksty. Wykorzystuje nie tylko koncepcje naukowe, ale również idee filozoficzne i historiozoficzne.
Książka zawiera przegląd problematyki obecnej w temponautyce, analizę rozwiązań narracyjnych i światostwórczych, omówienie kontekstu mentalnych podróży w czasie.
__EN__
Time travel stories and films analysed in the book may appear hermetic at first glance. Actually, they are open to many contexts. Writers use not only scientific concepts but also philosophical ideas. Time travel is therefore always a philosophy of history.
The book contains a review of issues present in time travel, an analysis of narrative and world-building factors, and a discussion of mental time travel.
In “Polish social SF” I tried to prove that the cognitive charge carried by them reaches far beyond equations of allegory, which means, it transgresses the popular encryption of the political situation connected with the martial law in Poland (December 1981 - July 1983), and remains more than just a satire on the mechanisms of totalitarianism in Polish reality of the 1970s and 1980s. Works of Marek Oramus, Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński, Maciej Parowski, Janusz A. Zajdel and others, embed strong allusions though, but they are mostly local. This is partly because of censorship. An analysis contained in my book is meant to show undermining and overwhelming tradition of utopian thinking in works usually interpreted as unambiguous dystopias. This is the foundation, which cannot be reduced to negative experience of totalitarianism. Both utopia and its dystopian counterpart are embedded in a greater meaningful environment of utopian thinking. My view of utopian thinking doesn’t focus on (suppressed and subversive) political activity, but nevertheless it keeps this activity in intentionally radical, intentionally fictitious limbo. Utopianism is interpreted here then as deeply and etymologically rooted in (science) fiction and evaluative cognitive activity, involving knowledge of economics, information technology, the science of control (cybernetics and systems theory), and ethics. A way of understanding our reality rather than social criticism.
The characteristic features of utopian thinking - seen as a conventionally fictitious writing/reading activity - include: complexity, paranoid imagination, apocalyptic imagination and subversion. They are stuck in the genetic equipment of science fiction genre, which can be put to good use in the works manifesting its power.
Complexity should be associated with the need to construct the framework of fiction different from the empirical world, but potentially coherent, and at the same time not immune to basic assumptions rationalization. It is this assumption to see the legacy of utopia, but you can also see the debt of this kind of fiction to science and scientific hypotheses requirements. However, as the utopia is in the self-conscious play with entrenched ideologies (as 'non-place'), so science fiction has developed the courage to operate conventional fiction and potential states of affairs. Utopia goes thus above and beyond, while creating its own dystopian contradiction, but also goes beyond politics and futurology by putting a priority mark to possibility, not necessity.
Paranoid imagination. Following in the footsteps of the dynamics of utopianism and dystopian fiction, it should be noted that in utopian fiction looking for consequences of basic assumptions simultaneously designate the boundaries, either in restraining the temptation of crossing, or by manifesting transgressiveness. Science fiction with ease - often excessive - launches a global perspective of change and (meta)history. Science fiction instead of fear of irrational manifests a fear of hyperrational system, inscrutable plan, something that - at first glance - seems to be chaotic, but after shifting to a higher plan could possibly (or in fictional fact) infect a perverse complexity. Consistency is always suspicious, never satisfactorily self-explaining, consequently always projects a higher plane or an overwhelming authority.
Apocalyptic narrative is born inside the consciousness of crisis, nourished by the prospect of radical change, as Kermode once wrote. Quite easily it forces a manipulation with our understanding of the past and with our image of the future. With these frictions science fiction, equipped with an apocalyptic dimension so conceived, constantly returns to the flesh. What is particularly interesting to determine the specificity of utopian thinking, is that abstract category of "omniscience" can be embodied in a science-fictional narrative, and often is in Polish social SF. So, apocalyptic imagination means a “fleshy” co-existence of conventionally perceived utopia and dystopia, thanks to a big charge of “the-end-is-nigh” obsession."""
Utopian theme and stories of famous Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem are in the center of this book. The author proposes a new perspective on Lem’s works, working out his own tools of description, in the course of interpreting, The analysis, carried out in the context of literary utopia and science fiction, leads to the satisfying conclusion - for Lem utopia is a means of discovering and organizing values. Further research is required to justify that the above statement applies to the whole science fiction genre.
PL
Tematyką książki są utopijne wątki w dziełach Stanisława Lema. Autor proponuje nowe spojrzenie na twórczość pisarza, wypracowując w toku interpretacji własne narzędzia porządkowania i opisu. Analiza, przeprowadzona w kontekście utopii literackiej i fantastyki naukowej, prowadzi w sposób przekonywający do stwierdzenia - u Lema utopia służy odkrywaniu i porządkowaniu wartości. Dalszych badań wymaga uzasadnienie tezy, że powyższe twierdzenie odnosi się do całej literatury science fiction.""
Niemożliwe jest także określenie granic religii. Z jednej strony jest ona bliska wyobraźni mitycznej, a z drugiej – wyobraźni „kosmicznej”. Stąd wiele punktów zapalnych albo celowego rozmywania różnic: wypiętrzenie kolektywnego umysłu w powieści Olafa Stapledona Star Maker zbliża się do boskości, obce mity zyskują pełny wyraz dzięki spotkaniu z mentalnością ziemsk w Lewej ręce ciemności Ursuli K. Le Guin. Metasystemy i powtarzające się relacje podporządkowania (czy nieskończone?) wiodą ku myśleniu religijnemu w Końcu dzieciństwa Arthura C. Clarke’a... Dyskusję o sztucznych bóstwach wydatnie ożywia i dopełnia skalowanie światostwórstwa: człowiek może być bogiem dla istot niższych, per analogiam powinien też oczekiwać, choć dowieść tego nie może, że sam nie jest w tym sensie istotą najwyższą. Trop ten znajdziemy w Ze wspomnień Ijona Tichego I Stanisława Lema, Ubiku Philipa K. Dicka, Robocie i „teorii Nadistot” Adama Wiśniewskiego-Snerga i wielu innych fantastycznonaukowych utworach.
Author of the article offers an insight into three threads of utopian thinking in a world wide web environment. In the first of them, cyberspace operates – in terms of Gibson’s prototypical Neuromancer – as a space of decentralized exchange of ideas. In the second, hypertext brings a promise of non-linear and democratized perception, an open-ended eutopia of shared knowledge. In the third, the web is a place of an intriguing meeting of man and machine inside posthumanism and digital humanities movements.
In terms of narrative aspect of science fiction genre, its reluctance to an authorial narrative, we can tell the crucial and dominant difference between pantheistic and gnostic variations of religious imagination.
with an intimate confession in the framework of allegory and hyperbole. The third one, represented by Samuel R. Delany, Adam Roberts and Seo-Young Chu’s views, recognizes the existence of poetry as a holistic dimension science fiction.