Tag Archives: sciencefiction

Prof. Jason Ellis Talks About Science Fiction and Society on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk Radio, May 30, 2019

Leave a reply

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Jason Ellis.

Prof. Jason W. Ellis appeared on the May 30, 2019 episode of Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk Radio program on “Creating Science Fiction, with Gale Anne Hurd.” Representing City Tech and the City Tech Science Fiction Collection, Prof. Ellis shared his expertise on science fiction and its cultural influence in a wide-ranging discussion connecting popular ideas about science and technology, SF’s influence on the popular imagination, and SF’s overlapping roles as entertainment, social commentary, and imaginative inspiration. Listen to the episode embedded below or available on the StarTalk website here.

https://soundcloud.com/startalk/creating-science-fiction-with

The StarTalk Radio Website describes the episode as:

The Terminator, The Walking Dead, Aliens, and a lot more. Those are just some of the producing credits for this week’s main guest on StarTalk Radio. Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with producer-extraordinaire Gale Anne Hurd to explore what it takes to bring great science fiction to life. Neil is joined by comic co-host Chuck Nice, science fiction expert Jason Ellis, PhD, and volcanologist Janine Krippner, PhD.

Because science fiction comes in many different forms and through many different avenues, there are many ways to get into it. You’ll learn how Gale’s childhood love of Marvel comic books and science fiction novels translated into a career “making what she likes to see.” She tells us how she served as a science fiction consultant to her local library to make sure their stock was up to date. Jason shares why not being able to see Star Wars in the theater sparked a rebellious love for science fiction.

You’ll hear about the history of science fiction and how it combines the STEM fields and the humanities. We debate if science fiction informs the future of every technological invention. You’ll find out about a lawsuit H.G Wells brought upon military figureheads because he claimed they stole his idea from one of his science fiction stories. Explore using science fiction as social commentary. Discover more about the famous kiss between Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura, and how William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols purposely flubbed takes to make sure it stayed in the episode.

We take a deep dive into Dante’s Peak as volcanologist Janine Krippner stops by to share her take on the film. She explains why she thinks it’s still the best volcano movie even with its flaws. Gale gives us a behind-the-scenes look on how she fought for even more scientific realism to be in the film but encountered pushback from the studio. Neil also confronts Gale on the famous scientific inaccuracies of Armageddon. Chuck shares his love for The Expanse, we discuss Interstellar, and Neil tells us about his involvement in The Europa Report.

Lastly, you’ll also find out the differences between creating science fiction for television and film. According to Hugo Gernsback, the father of science fiction, sci-fi should be 75% romance and 25% science – is that still the goal? All that, plus, Jason caps it off with a story on how he was criticizing the film Sunshine right in front of director Danny Boyle’s family.

City Tech Science Fiction Collection Inventory Continues

Leave a reply
Jason Ellis, Lavelle Porter, and Jessica Roman

L to R: Jason Ellis, Lavelle Porter, and Jessica Roman

From July 9 to July 11, City Tech faculty and students continued to inventory the City Tech Science Fiction Collection. Over the last two years, we inventoried the 4000+ magazines and 1700 monographs and anthologies. This year’s goal is to complete the finding aid database with the remaining scholarly journals and novels.

On July 9, Prof. Jason Ellis spent three hours in the archives and an hour at home entering information into the collection’s finding aid for all of the scholarly journals.

Prof. Laura Westengard

Laura Westengard

On July 10, Profs. Laura Westengard and Jason Ellis cataloged almost 300 novels over three hours.

Lavelle Porter and Julia Roman

L to R: Lavelle Porter and Jessica Roman

On July 11, Profs. Lavelle Porter, Lucas Kwong, and Jason Ellis, and City Tech student Jessica Roman cataloged about 350 novels over four hours.

Lucas Kwong

Lucas Kwong

Over these three days, we accomplished an inventory of two-and-a-half bookcases, which leaves eleven-and-a-half bookcases to inventory.

Special Issue on Star Wars: The Force Awakens Published in NANO: New American Notes Online

Leave a reply

Star Wars collage

Special Issue Co-Editors Jason W. Ellis and Sean Scanlan (both in City Tech’s Department of English) are pleased to announce the publication of NANO: New American Notes Online issue 12 on Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Narrative, Characters, Media, and Event. Focusing on the transmedia aspects of the continuation of the Star Wars film saga following Lucasfilm’s acquisition by Disney, this issue’s contributors explore how transmedia storytelling is leveraged in different aspects of fanfiction, promoting ideologies of global capitalism, and reconfigures Joseph Campbell’s hero myth. Also, we are honored to present an interview with Cass R. Sunstein, author of The World According to Star Wars. Now that The Last Jedi is in theaters, there is much more to be said on the issues these contributors debate. Follow the link below to read the current issue.

https://nanocrit.com/issues/issue12

NANO Issue 12: Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Narrative, Characters, Media, and Event

– Editor’s Introduction for NANO Special Issue 12: Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Narrative, Characters, Media, and Event by Jason W. Ellis and Sean Scanlan

– Welcoming the Dark Side?: Exploring Whitelash and Actual Space Nazis in TFA Fanfiction by Cait Coker and Karen Viars

– Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily: How Fandom Negotiates with Transmedia Characterization by Chera Kee

– Interpellation by the Force: Biopolitical Cultural Apparatuses in The Force Awakens by Simon Orpana

– The Force Awakens: The Individualistic and Contemporary Heroine by Payal Doctor

– An Interview with Cass R. Sunstein: Author of The World According to Star Wars by Jason W. Ellis and Sean Scanlan

 

NANO: New American Notes Online is an interdisciplinary academic journal. Our goal is to invigorate humanities discourse by publishing brief peer-reviewed reports with a fast turnaround enabled by digital technologies.

 

Currently open NANO calls for papers include:

– Issue 13: Special Issue on The Anthropocene, Guest Editors: Kyle Wiggins and Brandon Krieg

Deadline: January 12, 2018

– Issue 14: Special Issue: Captivity Narratives Then and Now: Gender, Race, and the Captive in 20th and 21st American Literature and Culture, Guest Editors: Megan Behrent and Rebecca Devers

Deadline: May 15, 2018

Visit https://nanocrit.com/Submissions for details and instructions for submitting your writing.

Videos of 2nd Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium

Leave a reply

Below are videos of the presentations made at the 2nd Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on Extrapolation, Interdisciplinarity, and Learning held on Dec. 6, 2017. They are included in the order from the program with the last video being the very special keynote address by Samuel R. Delany. If you’d like to watch all these as a playlist on YouTube, follow this link.

Call for Papers: Extrapolation, Interdisciplinarity, and Learning: The Second Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction [Updated: Keynote Speaker, Samuel R. Delany]

Leave a reply

Extrapolation, Interdisciplinarity, and Learning: The Second Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction

 

Date:               Wednesday, December 6, 2017

 

Location:         New York City College of Technology, 300 Jay St., Namm N119,

Brooklyn, NY

 

Keynote Speaker: Samuel R. Delany

 

            Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise—even in their own field.

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. . . . That is all wrong. . . . If we go through the history of human advance, we find that there are many places where art and science intermingled and where an advance in one was impossible without an advance in the other.

–Isaac Asimov, A Roving Mind (1983)

 

Over twenty years after C. P. Snow published The Two Cultures, the unparalleled writer, scientist, and educator Isaac Asimov defends the “interconnection” between the sciences and the arts. In fact, he demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinarity—both within STEM fields as well as between STEM and the humanities—through his unsurpassed 500+ books ranging from Biblical scholarship to biochemistry, and science to science fiction. He shows how disciplines inform and strengthen one another to create greater knowledge and wisdom, which in turn leads to greater understanding and new insights. While significant strides have been made in promoting interdisciplinarity, Asimov’s defense continues to echo today.

 

Join us for a one-day symposium in the spirit of Asimov’s defense by exploring interdisciplinarity through the lens of science fiction—a mediating ‘third culture’ (borrowing Snow’s term) that combines the sciences and the humanities to extrapolate new worlds while reflecting on our own. This symposium aims to explore science fiction as an interdisciplinary literary form, a tool for teaching interdisciplinarity, and a cultural art form benefiting from interdisciplinary research approaches.

 

We invite presentations of 15-20 minutes on SF and interdisciplinarity. Possible presentation topics include, but are not limited to:

 

  • Explorations of interdisciplinary ideas, approaches, and themes in SF (or what disciplinary boundaries does SF bridge)
  • SF as an interdisciplinary teaching tool (or what SF have you used or want to use in your classes to achieve interdisciplinary outcomes)
  • SF’s interdisciplinary imaginative functions (or Gedankenexperiment, considering ethical issues, unintended consequences, or unexpected breakthroughs)
  • Studying SF through an interdisciplinary lens (or combining otherwise discipline-bound approaches to uncover new meanings)
  • Bridging STEM and the humanities via SF (or SF as an interdisciplinary cultural work that embraces STEAM—Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics)
  • SF and place (or how SF’s settings are interdisciplinary, or where it is written fosters its interdisciplinarity)
  • Interdisciplinarity and archival work in SF collections (or making the City Tech Science Fiction Collection work for faculty, students, and researchers across disciplines)

 

Please send your abstract (no more than 250 words), brief bio, and contact information to Jason Ellis (jellis@citytech.cuny.edu) by Oct. 31, 2017.

 

The program will be announced by Nov. 15, 2017 on the Science Fiction at City Tech website here: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sciencefictionatcitytech/.

 

Hosted by the School of Arts and Sciences at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY.

 

The annual Symposium on Science Fiction is held in celebration of the City Tech Science Fiction Collection, an archival holding of over 600-linear feet of magazines, anthologies, novels, and scholarship. It is located in the Archives and Special Collections of the Ursula C. Schwerin Library (Atrium Building, A543C, New York City College of Technology, 300 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201). More information about the collection and how to access it is available here: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sciencefictionatcitytech/librarycollection/.

Call for Papers: NANO New American Notes Online Issue 12 on Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Leave a reply

tfa-cast-falcon

NANO New American Notes Online is an online, peer-reviewed journal edited by Prof. Sean Scanlan and supported by the New York City College of Technology, CUNY. Prof. Jason Ellis is on NANO’s editorial board. Together with their colleague Prof. Alan Lovegreen of Orange Coast College, they are co-editing an upcoming special issue focused on Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Their call for papers is included below and the original CFP is available on the NANO website.

Call for Papers: NANO New American Notes Online Issue 12 on Star Wars: The Force Awakens

 

Deadline: February 1, 2017

 

Special Issue: Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Narrative, Characters, Media, and Event

 

Guest Editors: Jason W. Ellis, Alan Lovegreen, and Sean Scanlan

 

This thing [Star Wars] communicates. It is in a language that is talking to young people today, and that’s marvelous.

–Joseph Campbell in conversation with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (1988)

 

There are certainly many more themes in The Force Awakens that speak to us, and help us to learn more about these characters and what makes them tick.

–Dan Zehr, “Studying Skywalkers” column on starwars.com (May 18, 2016)

 

It is the aim of this special issue of NANO to address the significance of the latest installment of Star Wars by exploring its narrative, characters, media, and event. Across nearly four decades, audiences spanning generations have experienced Star Wars through films, television programs, books, video games, special events such as the annual “celebrations,” and other storytelling media, including action figures and LEGO. Following Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, George Lucas’ production company, audiences experienced a new transmedia event and a continuation of the old stories with the release of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens in 2015. Joseph Campbell’s earlier observations about the first film raises new questions that deserve to be answered about the latest: How does this new film communicate? What language does it use? And, to whom is it speaking?

 

One way to approach these issues of communication and language is through the convergence of the film’s narrative and characters, especially how the transmission of this convergence gets revealed through a variety of media as an event. For example, how does the film’s narrative respond to, continue, and challenge those that it follows? And what about the cast of characters—some returning and some new? What do these characters and their performance of the narrative have to say about the here-and-now as well as the past? Of course, the narrative is told through media, which includes different film technologies, digital distribution, DVD and Blu-Ray discs, websites, video games, and apps. And stepping back for a larger perspective, the release of the film and its transmedia supporting elements inform The Force Awakens as an event, in part orchestrated by Disney/Lucasfilm, and in part connected to contemporary events, including #oscarssowhite, #womeninfilm, and #paygap. Furthermore, how does its event(s) relate to those of the past, including specifically those centered on the release of the earlier films and subsequent events awakening fans’ nostalgic enthusiasm. The Force Awakens’ considerable box office performance and tie-in successes signal how significant this film (and its progenitors) is, and it is the aim of this special issue to explore the promise and pitfalls of its cultural influence.

 

This issue welcomes multimodal essays up to 4,000 words (excluding works cited) exploring topics relating to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, including but not limited to the following:

 

* transmedia storytelling and The Force Awakens (including “Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens” publications, such as Chuck Wendig’s novel, Star Wars: Aftermath, and comic books Star Wars: Shattered Empire and Star Wars: Poe Dameron

* media transformation and adaptation (e.g., comparing the film with Alan Dean Foster’s novelization)

* materiality and The Force Awakens (e.g., LEGO, play, and collecting)

* Star Wars fandom and cosplay

* Star Wars reference materials and publications

* starwars.com and the official Star Wars app

* Star Wars videogames including LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Battlefront, and the now defunct Disney Infinity tie-ins

* Jakku Spy VR experience

* Star Wars Celebration and ComicCon special events

* social and political movements’ coinciding/connecting with The Force Awakens

* the hero’s journey and the heroes’ journeys

* movement and storytelling

* vehicles as characters

* nostalgia and familiarity

* inclusive casting/characters

* droids and aliens

* hidden bodies/cgi characters (e.g., Maz Kanata/ Lupita Nyong’o and Captain Phasma/Gwendoline Christie)

* race and gender in The Force Awakens

* terrorism, insurgency, war, and militarism

* surveillance

 

Direct questions to the Special Issue co-editors: Jason W. Ellis [jellis@citytech.cuny.edu], Alan Lovegreen [alanlovegreen@yahoo.com], and Sean Scanlan [sscanlan@citytech.cuny.edu].

 

NANO is a multimodal journal. Therefore, we encourage submissions that include images, sound, or video in support of a written argument. These multimodal components may consist of objects and data sets that go beyond traditional media. The multimodal components of the essay must be owned or licensed by the author, come from the public domain, or fall within reasonable fair use (see Stanford University Libraries’ Copyright & Fair Use site, http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/ and the U.S. Copyright Office’s Fair Use site, http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html for more information. NANO’s Fair Use Statement is available on its submission page, http://www.nanocrit.com/submissions-information/).

 

For questions about video, audio, or image usage, please contact NANO: editornano@citytech.cuny.edu.

 

NANO uses modified MLA (Modern Language Association) formatting and style.

 

Submission style guidelines: http://www.nanocrit.com/submissions-information/style-guide-nano/

 

Submission form: http://www.nanocrit.com/submissions-information/submission-form-page-nano1

 

Keywords and abstract: Each author is asked to submit 5 keywords and a 150-word abstract to accompany their submission.

 

Schedule: Deadlines concerning the special issue to be published in NANO:

 

* Submission deadline: February 1, 2017

* Complete comments and peer review June 2017

* Pre-production begins August 2017

 

We look forward to receiving your contributions.