science fiction | Platypus

All These Worlds Are Yours Except Europa: Building Colonies without Colonization

 Savannah Mandel  September 13, 2022

Beneath Europa’s frozen surface is an ocean thought to contain twice as much water than that on Earth (Planetary Science Communications Team 2021). Above its surface, temperatures are lethal, ranging from -210 degrees Fahrenheit to -370 degrees Fahrenheit (Planetary Science Communications Team 2021). This is the same moon of Jupiter which harbored indigenous life in Robinson’s 2312 (and was protected because of it) (2012). The same moon that Russian cosmonauts were warned to avoid in Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two (1982) due to its geologically unstable nature (fig. 1). The moon named after a Phonecian Princess, who was made the first Queen of Crete after she was abducted and raped by Zeus. (read more...)

Pain-Free Mouse, being ‘human,’ and more-than-human ethics

 Julianne Yip  September 21, 2020

In the opening scene of Blade Runner, a fictional diagnostic called the Voigt-Kampff test distinguishes human from android. The test, as imagined in Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi novel and later adapted into the film adaptation, exploits a primary autonomic response: the so-called ‘shame’ or ‘blushing’ reaction to a “morally shocking stimulus.” In the novel, the ‘moral shock’ stimulus invariably involves nonhuman animals: (read more...)

The Nerd is Dead, Long Live the Nerd!

 Lina Eklund  June 27, 2017

Editor’s note: This is a co-authored post by Lina Eklund and Evan Conaway. On the internet, a war for identity is being fought in the previously hidden depths of nerd subcultures. In this post we offer a view from the trenches, examining the rise of a new nerd as different opposing sides embrace the networked structure of online social life. We propose that shifting nerd identities offer new venues for thinking through how technology shapes and is shaped by culture. During the last half-decade, “alt-righters” (we are using the term loosely) and so-called “social justice warriors” (or SJWs) have exchanged blows on social media networks, forums, news-sites, etc. Seemingly everywhere on the internet the right to define oneself as a nerd is being contested at institutional, commercial, technical, and social levels. Originally the preoccupation of a select group of white men, being a nerd is now available to everyone, everywhere as subcultures expand into mainstream culture. (read more...)