Transrealism: In Pursuit of Social Change and Collective Justice in Huxley's Brave New World

Vafa Nadernia

Abstract


Science fiction stories extend the limits of human realities. In that imagined world where things appear different, mysterious, and normless, human measures such as sexism, prejudice, viciousness and other judicial realms are negotiated through atypical lenses. Therefore, what remains noticeable here would be the question if science fiction is an agent for social change and collective justice and decent mortalities. The main purpose of this article is to argue how Rudy Rucker's Transrealism -works as an interplay between dream and reality in which the writer shapes his/her own immediate perceptions in a fantastic way- can carry out this commitment. The selected text of analysis here will be Aldous Leonard Huxley' Brave New World (1932), which will be theoretically analyzed based on the doctrine of UN Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations (2006) published under the auspices of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. The main elements of UN document will be the Six important areas of inequality in the distribution of goods, opportunities and rights. The implication of the present inquiry would depict the role of science fiction novels, such as Huxley's Brave New World, to challenge today's human position in the world, to call for social values for a better community to exist and to restore social justice as a milestone for a fair new world to live in.

 

Keywords: Transrealism; Science Fiction; UN Social Justice; Rudy Rucker; Brave New World


Full Text:

PDF

References


Aspley, K. (2010). Historical Dictionary of Surrealism. Lanham: Scarecrow Press.

Atwood, M. (1986). The Handmaid’s Tale. London: Everyman’s Library Classics.

Blamires, H. (1984). A Short History of English Literature. London: Routledge.

Bonn, J. D. (2010). A Comprehensive Dictionary of Literature. India: Abhishek Publication.

Borchardt, E. (2007). Genetic Memory and Hermaphroditism: Trans-Realism in Eugenides’s Middlesex.Morris: University of Minnesota Press.

Broderick, D. (2000). Transrealist Fiction: Writing in the Slipstream of Science (Vol. 90). London: Greenwood Publishing Group.

Chettle, C. E. (2013). Transrealism as a discourse of social change in victorian fiction. Leeds: University of Leeds.

Cuddon, J. A. (1998). The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin.

DESA, U. (2006). Social Justice in an Open World. United Nations New York.

Dick, P. K. (2014). Transrealism: the First Major Literary Movement of the 21st Century? The Guardian. Retrieved from thegurdian

Dreyfus, H. (2003). Existential Phenomenology and the Brave New World of The Matrix. The Harvard Review of Philosophy. Vol. 11(1), 18-31.

Evans, A. B. (1999). Vehicular Utopias of Jules Verne. New York: AMS Press.

Fukuyama, F. (2002). Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 101.

Gutiérrez-Jones, C. (2015). Suicide and Contemporary Science Fiction. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hamdan, S. I. & Omar, N. (2010). Sense and intention: Reading science fiction worlds and characters. 3L : Language, Linguistics, Literature. Vol.

(2), 1-18.

Holloway, H. (2004). Evolution of Cyberspace as a Landscape in Cyberpunk Novels. Statesboro: Georgia Southern University Press.

Huxley, A. L. (1932). Brave New World . New York: Harper Perennial.

James, E. & Mendlesohn, F. (2003). The Cambridge Companion to

Science Fiction. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Kashi, S. & Ladani, Z. J. (2017). The Representation of Fukuyama’s Pathways to a Posthuman Future in Brave New World and Never Let Me Go. Journal of Literary Studies. Vol. 33(2), 18-34.

Loewenstein, E. A. (2017). Dystopian Narratives: Encounters with the Perverse Sadomasochistic Universe. Psychoanalytic Inquiry. Vol. 37(1), 3-15.

Mason, S. (2008). The Rough Guide to Classic Novels. London: Rough Guides Limited.

Quinn, E. (2006). A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms. New York: Facts On File, Inc.

Quinn, E. (2014). Critical Companion to George Orwell. New York: Facts On File, Inc.

Robbins, K. (1998). The World Since 1945: A Concise History. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rucker, R. (1983). A Transrealist Manifesto. Enfield, Connecticut : The Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, 82.

Sliwa, M. (2007). Globalization, inequalities and the “Polanyi problem.” Critical Perspectives on International Business. Vol. 3(2), 111-135.

Sosi, A. Z. (2010). Transrealizem-nova Literarna Smer Sodobnega Slovenskega Romana? Ljubljana, Slovenia: University of Ljubljana.

Steble, J. (2015). The role of science fiction within the fluidity of slipstream literature. Acta Neophilologica. Vol. 48(1-2), 67. University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts.

Steensma, D. P. (2017). The origin and evolution of the term “clone.” Leukemia Research, 57, 97–101. Elsevier.

Stock, A. (2016). The Future-as-Past in Dystopian Fiction. Poetics Today. Vol. 37(3), 415-442.

Tomberg, J. (2013). On the “Double Vision” of Realism and SF Estrangement in William Gibson’s Bigend Trilogy. Science Fiction Studies. Vol. 40(2), 263-285.

Zhogar, A. (2013). Slovene Short Prose During the Last Decade. Ljubljana, Slovenia: University of Ljubljana.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/3L-2018-2402-06

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

 

 

eISSN : 2550-2247

ISSN : 0128-5157