Science Fiction

When the future is not an option: On “U Are The Universe”

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Jonathan Kopievker watched the film U Are the Universe, which uses motifs from genre cinema to ask existential questions about humanity, man, and the future.

Sweeping Under the Rug

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“Linoleum” is a film that succeeds in conveying in a heartfelt manner what goes on in the mind of a person who is slowly losing his sanity. The film leaves us wondering what really happens to all the things we have repressed throughout our lives.

The Mars Express

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Robots, artificial intelligence, virtual, augmented and digital reality, colonizing and living on Mars, all present and accounted for in Mars Express, representing our longing for a wondrous, uncharted future. Yet this imagined tomorrow is haunted by the same troubles of our past and present, forcing us to confront political and historical dilemmas that technology alone cannot resolve. Analysis and recommendation for one of the masterful, beautiful and thought-provoking science fiction films of recent years.

Human, All Too Human

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At the heart of speculative creativity and science fiction beats the unanswerable question “What is human?”, playing on the edge, examining the boundaries, exploring the frontiers. What is the demarcation line between man and machine, beast and monster; between natural and artificial, cultured and wild; between the living and the dead, the dead-yet-alive, the undead; what differentiates human from trans-, post- and superhuman, non-human, foreign, alien, demonic, and divine.

What would Ursula say?

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In The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin writes about contrasting worldviews and polar ideologies fighting each another. Can Le Guin's novel teach us something about the reality of our lives, in this moment?

Beyond Hope and Despair: Thoughts on Imagination

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Amos Noy draws on Ursula K. Le Guin and Tove Jansson to battle despair through describing the close connection between hope and imagination as a remedy for it.

Bearing Hope

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In a cultural field that at times seems capable only of vast, improbable inhuman scales, galactic, cataclysmic, absurd and immeasurably distant, Le Guin has the remarkable ability to contain the intimate within the infinite, the personal human journey upon the strange map of the future she vividly imagined.

Adaptation to Otherness

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The alienation in the science fiction animation series Scavengers Reign is exceptionally alien—a weird otherness that reminds us of how everything around us, all that is normal, usual, trivial, if we give it a moment’s thought, is extremely strange, complex, and highly convoluted.

Future Screenshots

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I developed a political imagination workshop methodology. In this first article in a series, I will focus on the context and motivation for the workshop and will share step by step guidelines and facilitation notes as well as possibilities for further development and adaptation.

Utopia Interviews the Aniara film-makers

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"Aniara" (2018, Sweden) is a cinematic masterpiece, an insightful and philosophical science fiction film, an adaptation of the epic poetry cantos of the same name (from 1956) by Swedish poet and Nobel laureate Harry Martinsson. Eden Kupermintz and Uri Aviv from Utopia interview creators Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja

It’s All a Matter of Perspective

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Perspective is the starting point, the conclusion and the very essence of Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, one of the most complex, moving, and intelligent science fiction works of the 21st century.

The Extinction of Utopia

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The last one hundred years have been a bloody battlefield of utopias. Is it still possible to imagine a utopian future, and if so, how? Exactly 50 years ago, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a short story that marks the beginning of the answer to this question.

The Robot that Changed my Life > A Malfunction in Humanity

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Alongside metallic saviors and robotic monsters, in the '80s films there were also other possibilities, sensitive, delicate robotic creatures, who tried to tell us in every way – we are not the tools of destruction you imagine us to be.

Introduction to Otherness

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When he was twelve years old, Shadrach went on a summer vacation to his uncles’ house in “New Sderot”. While he was there, a disaster occurred. Nano-gas was spread on the inhabitants by the Zen-Americans, the powers that ruled the world at the time. The inhabitants become predators and prey, zombie-like. “In Exile-Tel Aviv (“Ha-Gola […]

Robots! Will Not! Replace Us!

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Robophobia or ‘fear of robots’ is a modern incarnation of the ancient fear of the next generation, fear of our own descendants. It can teach us much about our relationship with technology, the means of production, and the act of creation.

The Robot that Changed My Life > TikTok and The Tin Man > The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

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Cyborg in search of a heart appeared in the famous masterpiece from the early 20th century - a flashing red light that we have all missed in the last hundred and twenty years

The Neural Link – an Absurdist Reality

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The Neural Link - an Absurdist Reality - Text from the August 2020 PR event for Elon Musk's BCI venture, Neuralink

Strange Days

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Video art (2018) by Shirley Shor, sound by Dror Rada, part of Shor’s solo exhibit, CryptoMania.

Home Is Not The Same Home

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דווקא כשמרחב ההתרחשות רחב יריעה, עצום, לעיתים כמעט אינסופי מבחינת חלל וזמן – סיפורי המדע הבדיוני עוסקים במושגים הבסיסיים ביותר בחייו של האדם: בית, זהות, אנושיות.

The Eternaut

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An Argentinian graphic novel from the 1950s accurately conveys the horror and fragility of the collapse of the existing social order, following a mysterious snowfall that leads to the death of masses.

eRace

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A short science fiction story about the present.

Uncanny horror

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The episode "A Taste of Armageddon" from the original Star Trek television series is one of those brilliant parables that only appear in excellent science fiction. Beneath the familiar campy exterior of the series lies a poignant statement about the importance of terror, suffering, and horror in times of war.

A Story About Faith, Love, and Stubbornness

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יש סדרות שלא יוכלו להוכיח שאין להן אחות, ומיום לידתה נאלצה "הנותרים" להתמודד עם החשש שתלך בדרכה המבולבלת של אחותה הבוגרת "אבודים", אך מהצעד הראשון התברר שלמרות שהן חולקות את אותו אב-יוצר, דיימון לינדלוף, ואת אותו ז'אנר מיסטי/אניגמטי, "הנותרים" לא הולכת בעקבות אף סדרה שקדמה לה. "הנותרים" מספרת סיפור על אמונה, אהבה ועקשנות – במובן הטוב של המילה, תוך התמודדות עם עולם מפוזר, אדיש וחסר הגיון. תסתכלו עליהם, ותראו אותנו.

What is Hidden Under the Skin?

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Following Jonathan Glazer 2013 film “Under the Skin” // Thoughts about otherness, sexuality, the Uncanny and the essence of humanity

Home Away From Home

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אנו חושבים על הבית שלנו כמובן מאליו. למעשה, אנו לא חושבים עליו בכלל, לרוב. חוסר תשומת הלב הזה, העיוורון הזה, הוא פוליטי. לאורך השנה האחרונה נדרשנו להיות ספונים בבתינו – הוספנו להם משמעות, בעוד משמעותם נשחקה, אבל בעיקר – פתאום שמנו לב, לבית. ולכוחות שפועלים עלינו מחוץ ובתוך הבית, בנוגע לבית. מהו בית, כשיש כל כך הרבה יותר ממנו? ומה הם הכוחות הפוליטיים שמנסים לשנות את מערכת היחסים שלנו עם הבית?

The Enemy Within

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The homey, uncanny year. We’ve all experienced in the flesh the unsettling feeling of the strangely familiar, the unheimlich. The Uncanny is all around us - in our haunted homes, beaming from our screens, in the streets - emptied out, now strangely revitalized, our cities, muted and mutated. It’s in the fabric of everyday life, in the sudden strangeness of daily routines. A fear not triggered by alienation... A fear coming from inside the house! Thoughts on the enemy within.

The Spear and the Sack

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If literature departments in Israeli universities seek relevance, they must start teaching and exploring the work of acclaimed science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin

Mars: Conquest, Colonization and Universal Rights

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הגשושית "התמדה" (Perseverance) נחתה על המאדים בהצלחה, במקום בו זרמו מים בעבר. מים זורמים מרמזים על חיים ומעוררים את הדמיון. כשדמיינו לראשונה מים זורמים על פני הכוכב האדום, בא לעולם ז'אנר ספרותי חדש. מה צופן העתיד כעת?

Hindsight is Always

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A short science fiction story about the present.

The Power of Speculation in a World of Prediction

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Whilst we are teaching our machines to be creative, let us retain that creativity ourselves and explore what we can achieve in combining the two.

Mattie Do- The Spirituality of Horror

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עולם הקולנוע למד להכיר את מאטי דו (Mattie Do) בשנים האחרונות כבמאית הקולנוע הראשונה מלאוס, אך היא גם חלוצה כבמאית הז'אנר הראשונה מלאוס. כל שלושת סרטיה עד כה נופלים תחת הקטגוריה של סרטי אימה, אך לגדר אותם תחת ז'אנר כזה או אחר חוטא לייחודיותם המובהקת. סרטיה הם אכן כולם סיפורי רפאים, בכולם יש אלמנטים של אימה (ופיזור של אלמנטים ז'אנריסטיים נוספים – ממסע בזמן ועד רטרו-פוטוריזם טכנולוגי-דיסטופי), אבל הם פורצים הגדרות ומסגרות ז'אנריסטיות כלל ונחווים בסופו של דבר כדרמות משפחתיות אפלות, אינטימיות ורוחניות. נצלו את סופ"ש אוטופיה האחרון כדי להכיר את סרטיה של מאטי דו, בתכנית הזרקור.

A Brave New App

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“Choice Architecture” and the gig Economy gamified are not easy ideas to portray in a movie, let alone in one which manages to effectively criticize this new form of labor “Apploitation”. It requires not a heavy-handed dystopia but rather a light yet disturbing touch, a nuanced narrative and attention to detail that manages to explain why people are attracted to these jobs and apps yet how they ultimately come to be dominated by them. A difficult mission that Noah Hutton’s Lapsis manages to pull off. A creepy yet all-to-real sci-fi parable.

The biggest artwork in the universe (that no one has ever seen)

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After approximately 18 years, the energy of the sculpture 'Man Obelisk' by Israeli sculptor Ezra Orion is sailing at a distance of about 266 trillion kilometers from Earth, the greatest distance known to us that a product of human consciousness has ever reached. Ezri Keydar elaborates on Orion's galactic creation.

In Space No One Can Hear You Cry

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שלוש יצירות מופת חלליות שלוש דמויות שהמסע שלהן אל הלא נודע נעשה יחד עם מסע אישי של התמודדות עם אובדן ומציעות גישות שונות הן להתמודדות עם המוות והן למדע הבדיוני כמנוע הז'אנריסטי של הסרטים - סולאריס (2002, סודרברג), כח משיכה (2013, קוארון), המפגש (2016, וילנב).

God of the Format

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As all systems are creaking, the time has come to return to E.M. Forster's cunning and hidden masterpiece from 1909, The Machine Stops.

Aniara

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Brilliant science fiction from Sweden. A space cruise-ship carrying thousands from an Earth ravaged by war and climate catastrophe embarks on its short 3-week voyage, promising its passengers new life on Mars. An accident has the ship veer off-course and the film follows the crew and passengers as they slowly come to terms with their new reality, as they are carried into the endless void of space. A powerful, melancholic, wise parable on how our society handles (or not) our existence in an empty, cold, sometimes cruel, universe.

Universal Perspective Machines

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Grand phenomena have the power to shake our consciousness, trigger anxiety and even paralysis as we face their sheer size and depth. From the dawn of history, we linked them with imagery that made them easier for us to grasp - through religion, art and philosophy. The climate crisis discourse of the past decade and the current public debate on the coronavirus crisis, summoned huge and threatening numbers and introduced a variety of inhuman scales into our lives, and we require new images that would mediate them for us. Surprisingly, one such set of images can be found in one of the most infamous entertainment genres of out times: digital clicker games. Through comparisons to sci-fi works in literature and philosophy, we will examine how these simple computer games offer some remedy to the special anxiety that fills us when we hear news of the exponential growth of infection or the rise in global median temperatures.

Inhuman Scales

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2 meters (6 feet) of distance. 14 days of isolation. “A good outcome would be 250,000 deaths”. A two billion dollars aid package. How do we talk about the new uncanny numbers and foreign scales that became our reality in the past few months? In what way does the plague, which we’re now in the midst of, exposes the failures of our human perception of the world and our limitations of imagination? Would we learn to look at nature, industry, economy, urbanism, and our place within all of these processes from a new perspective? Or rather, will the limitations of our perception survive this crisis as well?

Science Fiction – Now!

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Science fiction on all its forms and facets is important always, and doubly so now. Now is the time to speculate, to imagine, to dream. The time for science fiction. Here is why and where to start your journey.

Science Fiction as a Tool

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"At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence" ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction