Using Phoenix, Arizona, as an example of where global warming has resulted in inhuman heat and extreme weather, Jerry Adler in Smithsonian wonders if human beings will be able to keep their cool? New research suggests not.
Tag: science fiction
J. G. Ballard: Atrocity Exhibition and the Modernist Motorcar Dystopia
“The Atrocity Exhibition” is J.G. Ballard’s instruction manual in how to disrupt mass media and recontextualize technology in a dystopian landscape overrun with industrial waste and technological white noise. Watch the piece on Ballard and the Motorcar, that careens across the landscape of his controversial novel, “Crash.”
Space Exploration: Ray Bradbury and the Mission to the Red Planet
“The Martians were there—in the canal—reflected in the water…. The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water….” –Ray Bradbury, “The Martian Chronicles”
La Jetée – Chris Marker’s Post-Apocalyptic Time Travel
Chris Marker, writer, photographer, filmmaker and time-traveler created the post-nuclear-war photo-novel-film “La Jetée,” an inventive melange of image and sound, politics and philosophy.
H. G. Wells on the Futurist Dystopia of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”
“Metropolis” hallucinates a futuristic city, a paradise of glass and steel, where underground workers toil endlessly at the giant machines that run the world above. Controlled by the autocratic industrialist, his spoilt son falls for the working class prophet who envisions some mediation between workers and managers. Noted science fiction author H. G. Wells reviews the controversial 1927 masterpiece.