Liquid Space: Science Fiction Film and Television in the Digital Age

(Paperback)

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In this remarkable and original book, Sean Redmond examines the issues and themes that are repeatedly found across a range of contemporary science fiction films and television programmes. He argues that they reveal the profound effects the digital age has had on our social lives. Through narratives that feature the 'post-human', genetic engineering and cloning, surveillance and data mining, space and time travel, artificial intelligence, online dating cultures and visions of catastrophe, they portray a world in which the material, and the stable, are being lost to the ever-more volatile and ephemeral idea of 'liquid space'. Redmond examines a wide selection of popular films and TV series such as Gravity, Under the Skin, The Lobster, Children of Men and Doctor Who, to locate how traditional values are being erased in favour of a new liquid modernity. Drawing on an eclectic range of approaches from phenomenology to critical race theory, and from close textual analysis to the revelations of eye-tracking technology, this book is an illuminating account of the digital age through the lens of science fiction.

Reviews

Accessible and passionately written, this is a welcome contribution to contemporary science fiction film and television theory. Especially noteworthy - for its rarity and descriptive power - is the absolutely terrific last chapter, devoted to close analysis of recent science fiction's aesthetics of sound.

--Vivian Sobchack, UCLA; author of Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film

In this ground-breaking study, Sean Redmond travels to the far reaches of screen outer space, previously undiscovered and unexplored, to reveal new ways of seeing science fiction as an immersive, interactive experience at one with our digital lives.' - Howard Hughes, author of Outer Limits: The Filmgoers' Guide to the Great Science-Fiction Films #
'Cinema is science fiction: this startling, persuasive conclusion guides Sean Redmond's enquiry into the liquid state of digital culture seen through the lenses, heard through the speakers and felt through the trackpads of science fiction film and television. From capitalism to race, surveillance to the sublime, in a brilliant constellation of close readings Redmond tracks the new heavens and hells of our compulsorily fluid condition.

--Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths, University of London

In this immersive yet critical book, Sean Redmond never forgets the structures of power behind the enticing mirrored surfaces of science fiction. A warm, generous and honest academic-poet: he gently shapes our understanding by sharing his personal experiences.

--Will Brooker, Kingston University; author of Hunting the Dark Knight: Twenty-first Century Batman

Author Bio

Sean Redmond is Associate Professor of Media and Communication at Deakin University, Australia. He is the author of numerous books including Blade Runner (2016), The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano: Flowering Blood (2013) and Liquid Metal: A Reader in Science Fiction Film (2004).