Bringing together the works of the cult science fiction writer Philip K. Dick and the major French philosopher Henri Bergson, James Burton presents an original reading of both thinkers, a new critical theory of the socio–cultural, political and ethical function of fictionalizing and a contemplation of contemporary materialism.
Acknowledgments Note on References Introduction Philosophy and Science Fiction The Edge of the Known The Ethics of Balking Philip K. Dick Studies Note on Terminology: Fabulation Chapter One: Fabulation: Counteracting Reality Mechanization and the War-instinct The Biological Origins of Society Countering the Intellect The Morality of Violence Open Morality and the Misdirection of Mechanism True Mysticism: Immanent Salvation An Incomplete Soteriology Fabulation for the Open Conclusion Chapter Two: Fabulating Salvation in Four Early Novels Solar Lottery The World Jones Made Vulcan’s Hammer Time Out of Joint Conclusion: Super–everyman to Solar Shoe Salesman Chapter Three: The Empire That Never Ended The Open and the Universal The Life-Death Chiasmus The Fictitious Event The Messianic Tension The Remnant and Messianic Time The Magic of Language Sci-fi: the genre of ‘as not’ Conclusion: Gnostic Politics Chapter Four: Objects of Salvation: The Man in the High Castle The Fabulation of History Mechanization and Paralysis Worldly Remains Openings Between Worlds The Tyranny of the Concrete Objects of Salvation Conclusion: Reality Fields Chapter Five: How We Became Post-Android The Mechanization of Pot-healing The Alien God The Saviour in Need Robot Theology Humans: the Cosmic Bourgeoisie Android and Theoid Creative Destruction Conclusion Chapter Six: The Reality of Valis Salvator Salvandus The Believer and the Sceptic The Pharmakonic God Reduplicative Paramnesia (Time Becomes Space) The Fabulative Cure Recursion: Valis as Limitlessly Iterative Soteriology Befriending God Conclusion Epilogue: Soter-ecologies Notes Bibliography Index
James Burton is a research fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin, Germany. A former Alexander von Humboldt fellow, he has been a lecturer at the universities of Goldsmiths, Kent and Klagenfurt. His interdisciplinary research across philosophy, literature, cultural and media studies, concerns the myriad critical, cultural and ethical relationships between fiction, technology and the posthuman.
Burton’s monograph masterfully recuperates the forgotten or
maligned aspects of both Dick’s and Bergson’s works and raises
genuinely interesting questions about sf’s capacity to affect,
influence, and foster positive change in the world.
*Science Fiction Studies*
Through a lucid exposition of Bergson and a careful analysis of
Dick’s novels, [Burton] convincingly argues for their compatible
views of salvation ... [His] study is innovative, elegantly
written, and not only will it be of interest for scholars of
cultural studies and philosophy, but also for science studies
scholars.
*Pulse: A History, Sociology and Philosophy of Science Journal*
In investigating both the prolific and controversial science
fiction novelist Philip K. Dick (1928–82) and Henri Bergson
(1851–1941), whom William James deemed an intellectual genius,
Burton (Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin) takes a bifurcated
path. Examining the strange affinity between these two seemingly
different thinkers, the author navigates ideas of mechanism and
mysticism, immanence and transcendence, and the possibility and
meaning of soteriology. Both Dick and Bergson balked at the push
toward mechanization, in which destruction of the planet seemed so
immanent (as it still does today). Only collaboration between a
science fiction writer and a philosopher could lead, Burton argues,
to a realistic outlook that sutures contradictory imperatives.
Their respective approaches may be said to fuse in
fictionalizing/fabulation, which is a powerful tool of
mechanization, yet is also capable of implementing a device for its
undoing. This reviewer's favorite chapter deals with Dick’s Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), adapted for the screen as
Blade Runner in 1982 under the direction of Ridley Scott. Here the
author covers provocative themes like robot theology, creative
destruction, and salvation. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division
undergraduates through faculty.
*CHOICE*
Thinking through the work of Philip K. Dick alongside the
philosophy of Henri Bergson is no mere contrivance. By showing how
each was writing at the edge of knowledge, both theirs and ours,
Burton has fabulated a new thought with truly evental consequences
for metafiction, ecology, and theology.
*John Ó Maoilearca, Professor of Film and Television Studies,
Kingston University, UK*
In a brilliant act of superimposition, James Burton brings Henri
Bergson’s evolutionary mysticism to bear on the divine invasions—in
fiction and in life—of S-F writer Philip K. Dick. The vision of
“immanent soteriology” that emerges, in which transcendent fictions
jam the engines of necessity, not only illuminates the method
behind Dick’s madness but reveals the crucial emancipatory role
that fabulation can and does play within posthuman thought and
religion. With clear thinking and graceful writing, Burton boldly
indicates a “perturbation in the reality field” of contemporary
materialism.
*Erik Davis, author of TechGnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the
Age of Information*
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
