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<div><em style="font-size: 12px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Apologies for cross-posting</em></div>
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<div>Dear all,</div>
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<div>Episode 9 of <em>Deletion</em>: the online, open access forum in science fiction, has just been released. The edition compiles a selection of papers presented at the inaugral
<em>Deletion|Deviation </em>science fiction symposium and can be found here: <a href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/episode-9-deletiondeviation/">http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/episode-9-deletiondeviation/</a> <br>
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<div>Please share and circulate amongst any interested colleagues and networks! See further details below.<br>
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<p>Best,<br>
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<div class="PlainText" style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Dr. Grady Clare Hancock</div>
<div class="PlainText" style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Casual academic/Sessional tutor</div>
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Deakin University<br>
School of Communication and Creative Arts<br>
Email: <a href="mailto:gha@deakin.edu.au">gha@deakin.edu.au</a><br>
Website: <a tabindex="0" href="http://deakin.academia.edu/GradyHancock" target="_blank" id="NoLP">http://deakin.academia.edu/GradyHancock</a></div>
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<a tabindex="0" href="http://deletionscifi.org.au" id="NoLP">deletionscifi.org.au </a><br>
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<p>________ </p>
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<p style="border:0px; font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size:16px; margin-right:0px; margin-bottom:1.5em; margin-left:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px 20px 0px 0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(64,64,64); line-height:20px">
Deletion’s two-day symposium, Deletion/Deviation, presented a constellation of new perspectives on contemporary science fiction and its many perversions. As organizer Dr. Grady Hancock wrote in her introduction to the conference programme,</p>
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<em style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline">Science Fiction exists in a state of tension between the pleasurable and the perverse — of the pleasure gained from its fictive forms, and the perversions
of facts and flesh within its speculative futures, imagined worlds and creative appropriations of technological innovation.</em></p>
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<em style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline">There is an immutable thread that runs throughout science fiction, that which “distinguishes its fictional worlds to one degree or another from the world
in which we live” (Roberts, 2000), worlds perhaps characterised by Darko Suvin’s ‘estrangement’ or Samuel Delaney’s ‘reading/writing effects.’ The ways in which this distinction is maintained traces the nebulous line between the pleasurable and perverse in
science fiction. How does the pleasure of its fiction collide with the perversions of the ‘world in which we live’?</em></p>
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At least one surprising and pleasurable collision revealed by the symposium was the number of papers (three) devoted to the actress Scarlett Johansson or to recent films in which she has appeared (three, if one counts her voicing of the character of Samantha
in Spike Jonze’s Her), encouraging participants to propose that Johansson is the new “Queen of Sci Fi Film.” Be that as it may, included here is Alicia Byrnes’ paper, <em style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline">Alienating
the Gaze: The Hybrid Femme Fatale of Under the Skin</em>, where Byrnes analyses Jonathan Glazer’s 2014 film Under the Skin in terms of the figure of the femme fatale, noting that the “paucity of scholarly work focusing on the representation of the femme fatale
within science fiction is surprising given her aptness to the genre.”</p>
<p style="border:0px; font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size:16px; margin-right:0px; margin-bottom:1.5em; margin-left:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px 20px 0px 0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(64,64,64); line-height:20px">
Our keynote speaker, <a title="Perversely Pleasurable and Pleasurably Perverse: What Makes Science Fiction Great" href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/perversely-pleasurable-and-pleasurably-perverse-what-makes-science-fiction-great-2/" style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; font-style:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(17,123,184)">Anne
Cranny-Francis</a>, introduced the overall theme of the symposium in her paper, <a title="Perversely Pleasurable and Pleasurably Perverse: What Makes Science Fiction Great" href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/perversely-pleasurable-and-pleasurably-perverse-what-makes-science-fiction-great-2/" style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; font-style:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(17,123,184)"><em style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline">Perversely
Pleasurable and Pleasurably Perverse: What Makes Science Fiction Great</em>.</a> Her paper is at once a personal consideration of growing up with science fiction (“coming of age in outer space” as she calls it), and a mapping of the genre which explores how
society produces “social norms of gender, sexuality, class and race” looking in particular at writings of Alice B. Sheldon, known, of course, to science fiction fans for most of her life as James Tiptree Jnr. And Cranny-Francis’ “story ends with the richness
of contemporary science fiction and its interrogation of what constitutes embodied human being in the early 21st century.”</p>
<p style="border:0px; font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size:16px; margin-right:0px; margin-bottom:1.5em; margin-left:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px 20px 0px 0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(64,64,64); line-height:20px">
<a title="Deviance Under the Dome: Horror/Science-Fiction Hybridity as Uncanny in feature film The Perimeter" href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/deviance-under-the-dome-horrorscience-fiction-hybridity-as-uncanny-in-feature-film-the-perimeter/" style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; font-style:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(17,123,184)">Ian
Dixon’</a>s <a title="Deviance Under the Dome: Horror/Science-Fiction Hybridity as Uncanny in feature film The Perimeter" href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/deviance-under-the-dome-horrorscience-fiction-hybridity-as-uncanny-in-feature-film-the-perimeter/" style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; font-style:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(17,123,184)"><em style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline">Deviance
Under the Dome: Horror/Science-Fiction Hybridity as Uncanny</em></a> in the feature film The Perimeter draws on a number of intertwined theoretical positions to explore the science fiction/horror film project, The Perimeter. Inspired by Stephen Cleary’s masterclass
in ‘lo-bo’ (low budget) cinema, Dixon’s film and his paper explore the narratological, theoretical and practical questions provoked by the ideas explored within the screenplay. Dixon’s paper is an exemplary response to the problem of “practice-led research”
in screen studies, particularly in regards to science fiction and horror hybrids.</p>
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In the paper, <a title="Three Deviations for AI in Spike Jonze’s Her" href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/three-deviations-for-ai-in-spike-jonzes-her/" style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; font-style:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(17,123,184)"><em style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline">Three
Deviations for AI in Spike Jonze’s Her</em></a>, <a title="Three Deviations for AI in Spike Jonze’s Her" href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/three-deviations-for-ai-in-spike-jonzes-her/" style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; font-style:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(17,123,184)">Thao
Phan</a> provides a close reading of scenes from Jonze’s most recent film, concentrating for the most part on an analysis of the depiction of AI’s in science fiction cinema, and in the film Her in particular. Fictional AIs most often display the characteristics
we associate with the Western rationalist, instrumentalist tradition: rule-based logic, algorithmic processing and pattern recognition, all “foregrounded as qualifiers for ‘intelligence’ in popular culture” as Phan says. All of these qualities are “cold… unalloyed
by emotions but also unalloyed by fleshy exteriors that can remind us of any connection they might have to the natural world”. Yet (Scarlett Johansson’s voice character of) Samantha is “is inquisitive, curious, sensitive, and perceptive.”</p>
<p style="border:0px; font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size:16px; margin-right:0px; margin-bottom:1.5em; margin-left:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px 20px 0px 0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(64,64,64); line-height:20px">
<a title="Post-human humanity in Alien: Resurrection" href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/post-human-humanity-in-alien-resurrection/" style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; font-style:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(17,123,184)">Patricia
Di Risio</a>‘s paper, <em style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline"><a title="Post-human humanity in Alien: Resurrection" href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/post-human-humanity-in-alien-resurrection/" style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; font-style:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(17,123,184)">Post-human
humanity in Alien: Resurrection</a>, </em>argues that an ideological agenda is promoted in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s <em style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline">Alien: Resurrection </em>by casting a
queer couple as the responsible and hopeful custodians of the future of the planet and the human race. Further contending that the narrative structure and closing of <em style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline">Alien:
Resurrection</em> suggests that genuine humanity is, in fact, more likely to be found in a future populated by the post-human.</p>
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<a title="Tactile Memories of an Alternate Past in Never Let Me Go" href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/tactile-memories-of-an-alternate-past-in-never-let-me-go/" style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; font-style:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(17,123,184)">Djoymi
Baker</a>’s paper, <em style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline"><a title="Tactile Memories of an Alternate Past in Never Let Me Go" href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/tactile-memories-of-an-alternate-past-in-never-let-me-go/" style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; font-style:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(17,123,184)">Tactile
Memories of an Alternative Past in Never Let Me Go</a>,</em> looks at Mark Romanek’s 2010 film adaptation of Ishiguro’s novel through a meditation on certain evocative objects within the films mise en scene, suggesting that the “sensory array of the object”
produces its own narrative, a “narrative arising out of an object [that] clashes with the alternate timeline of <em style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline">Never Let Me Go</em> that is both similar
and different to our own.</p>
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In his paper <a title="Operating at Culture’s Margins Notes Towards An Aesthetics of the Impact Zone: Beyond Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition" href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/operating-at-cultures-margins-notes-towards-an-aesthetics-of-the-impact-zone-beyond-crash-and-the-atrocity-exhibition/" style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; font-style:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(17,123,184)"><em style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline">Operating
at Culture’s Margins Notes Towards An Aesthetics of the Impact Zone: Beyond Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition</em></a>, <a title="Operating at Culture’s Margins Notes Towards An Aesthetics of the Impact Zone: Beyond Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition" href="http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/operating-at-cultures-margins-notes-towards-an-aesthetics-of-the-impact-zone-beyond-crash-and-the-atrocity-exhibition/" style="border:0px; font-family:inherit; font-style:inherit; margin:0px; outline:0px; padding:0px; vertical-align:baseline; color:rgb(17,123,184)">Jack
Sargeant</a> explores his published works on J.G Ballard and the original film version of ‘Crash!’. His paper looks at Ballard in relation to the extent aesthetic ‘perversions’ that emerged around these two ground breaking books. Looking at Ballard’s work
in relation to the short film Crash! live performance / readings, exhibitions, and adverts, this experimental paper explores the radical and experimental work of Ballard, tracing its influences into wider 1970s subcultures.<br>
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