I just wrote a proposal to do a presentation at a conference called "Demanding the Impossible: 3rd Utopias Conference," which will happen in December at Monash University, in Victoria, Australia. I came across it because I was considering applying to Monash to do my PhD. I recently got a paper accepted for publication, on utopias in Melville’s early novels, so I thought I ought to put my recently acquired knowledge of utopian thought to use. Also, it would be nice to check out the university in person.<\/p>\n
My presentation aims to look into the moral questions raised by Iain M. Banks’ novel, The Player of Games<\/span>. Haven’t read it? Right, off with you, then–go find a copy and read it. I’ll wait.<\/p>\n OK, so as you now know, the first part of the novel is set in Banks’ "Culture," his anarcho-communist utopian SF society that he has written several novels about. Only in this one, the Culture has come up against an aggressively imperialistic society that might prove a threat someday. So they pull a bunch of strings to destabilize it and cause it to come crashing down. This dangerous society sounds suspiciously like a combination of the USA and Iraq, though the novel was written almost 20 years ago, near the beginning of the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n I wanted to examine the morality of a beautiful utopian culture basically destroying an ugly hierarchical culture that does not pose any threat to it, at least not for centuries to come. Sounds like a fun way to spend my free time, anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I just wrote a proposal to do a presentation at a conference called "Demanding the Impossible: 3rd Utopias Conference," which will happen in December at Monash University, in Victoria, Australia. I came across it because I was considering applying to … Continue reading