McKenzie Wark: Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (2015)
Filed under book | Tags: · agriculture, anthropocene, climate, climate crisis, communism, cyborg, environment, knowledge, labour, literary criticism, marxism, nature, philosophy, production, proletariat, proletkult, revolution, science, science fiction, technoscience, tektology, theory, utopia
“In Molecular Red, McKenzie Wark creates philosophical tools for the Anthropocene, our new planetary epoch, in which human and natural forces are so entwined that the future of one determines that of the other.
Wark explores the implications of Anthropocene through the story of two empires, the Soviet and then the American. The fall of the former prefigures that of the latter. From the ruins of these mighty histories, Wark salvages ideas to help us picture what kind of worlds collective labor might yet build. From the Russian revolution, Wark unearths the work of Alexander Bogdanov—Lenin’s rival—as well as the great Proletkult writer and engineer Andrey Platonov.
The Soviet experiment emerges from the past as an allegory for the new organizational challenges of our time. From deep within the Californian military-entertainment complex, Wark retrieves Donna Haraway‘s cyborg critique and science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s Martian utopia as powerful resources for rethinking and remaking the world that climate change has wrought. Molecular Red proposes an alternative realism, where hope is found in what remains and endures.”
Publisher Verso, London and New York, March 2015
ISBN 1781688273, 9781781688274
xxiv+280 pages
Reviews: Slavoj Žižek (Verso 2015, Wark’s response), John Beck (Radical Philosophy 2015), Mark Rappolt (ArtReview 2015), Maria Chehonadskih (Mute 2015, Wark’s response), Two Grenadiers (2015), Pieter Vermeulen & Tom Chadwick (nY 2016), Jim Harper (LSE Review of Books 2016).
Commentary: Joe Guinan (Renewal 2015), Jernej Kaluža (Radio Student 2019, SL).
Video lecture (Concordia U, Apr 2015)
Publisher
WorldCat
See also Molecular Red Reader compiled by Wark (PDF).
Comment (0)Charles Stross: Accelerando (2005)
Filed under fiction | Tags: · artificial intelligence, biotechnology, posthuman, science fiction, technological singularity, technology
“The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.
Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber’s son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity.
For something is systematically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form…”
Publisher Ace Books, New York, July 2005 / Orbit Books, London, August 2005
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License
ISBN 0441012841 / 1841493902
390 pages
Anonymous: Hypersphere (2015)
Filed under fiction | Tags: · anonymous, memes, science fiction
“Hypersphere, written by Anonymous with the help of the 4chan board /lit/ (of The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra fame) is an epic tale spanning over 700 pages.
A postmodern collaborative writing effort containing royalty, Žižek erotica, poetry, repair instructions for future cars, a history of bottles in the Ottoman empire; actually, it contains everything since it takes place in the Hypersphere, and the Hypersphere is a big place; really big in fact.”
Published 23 December 2015
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
ISBN 9781329781
734 pages
via pht