The Living Infinite

Laura Pereira [1,2], Guillermo Ortuño Crespo [2], Silvana Juri [3], Patrick Keys [4], Hannah Lübker [2], Andrew Merrie [2], Edoardo Superchi [2], Naomi Terry [2], Bwalya Chibwe [2], Juliano Palacios-Abrantes [5, 6], Maria A. Gasalla [7], Erick Ross Salazar [8], Moriaki Yasuhara [9,10], Farah Obaidullah [11], Gabrielle Carmine [12], Salomão Bandeira [13], Diva J. Amon [14, 15], Ghassen Halouani [16], David E. Johnson [17], Lynne J. Shannon [18], Jean-Baptiste Jouffray [2], Colette C.C. Wabnitz [6, 19], Beth Fulton [20]

Introduction

Ever since humans ventured into the ocean to fish for the first time 40,000 years ago, the principle of Mare Liberum, an ocean without boundaries, prevailed (Corbyn, 2011). In 1982, the third United Nations (UN) Conference on the Law of the Sea successfully opened the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the ‘constitution for the ocean’. For the first time in history, humanity had drawn a jurisdictional divide between the coastal ocean and ocean in the areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ, referred to as the High Seas) at the 200 nautical mile mark from the coastline. Over the past four decades, various sectors, including shipping, underwater cable infrastructure, and fishing, as well as mining interests have expanded from the familiar sunlit waters of the continental shelf far into the open ocean, and into the deepest, most unknown corners of our blue planet (Jouffray et al. 2020). Despite the High Seas covering 40% of the surface of the planet, comprising nearly 95% of the ocean’s volume and being highly connected to coastal ecosystems and communities (Popova et al. 2019), the High Seas remain a distant concept that is out of sight and out of mind for most people.

Cultivating a relationship to almost half of our planet is essential if we are to protect this vital ecological system – both for its own intrinsic value, and for our own culture and needs (Allison et al. 2020). However, inculcating such a connection is no simple task. One way to start to build such empathy is to envision a sustainable future for the High Seas — one that embodies both empathetic connections and hope (Blythe et al., 2021).

The COVID-19 pandemic provided a fortuitous opportunity to convene a diverse group of High Seas stakeholders virtually across multiple time zones to explore the ingredients and composition of more desirable futures. We used an adapted science fiction prototyping approach with inputs from artists to foster a space for creative reimagining. Below we share the science-fiction narratives that emerged from this process, drawing on knowledge ranging from technological innovations, like gene editing, to marine cultural connections that have been eroded by industrialisation. Governance was a central feature of all of the stories, accentuating how important upcoming negotiations are in setting out an international framework to steer humankind towards more equitable futures and away from current extractivist paradigms. Our aim is for these outputs to help inform alternative framings of what is possible in the ongoing UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, as well as negotiations for a new international legally binding treaty towards the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ negotiations), and the Mining Code being developed at the International Seabed Authority, to advance pathways toward a thriving High Seas. We will also ensure the work feeds into the upcoming Intergovernmental Science-Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Transformative Change Assessment to strengthen marine aspects of this initiative.

Method

A diverse group of 30 stakeholders, many of whom are co-authors of this article, joined an online workshop in three parts to undertake a creative process to define transformative visions for the High Seas. These participants ranged in terms of their expertise on marine issues, from fisheries experts, marine ecologists and modellers to practitioners and activists at all career stages, representing all six continents. Crucially, many of the participants play key roles in shaping the future of the High Seas, whether through participating in ongoing negotiations or undertaking scientific research that will inform these negotiations. The Nature Futures framework (NFF) from the IPBES expert group on scenarios and models (Pereira et al. 2020) was a starting point for the discussions. The NFF is a triangle space with each of the corners representing a different positive value perspective on nature and its contribution to people (Fig 1).

Nature for Nature: in which nature has value in and of itself (emphasising the intrinsic values of nature);
Nature for Society: in which nature is primarily valued for the benefits or uses people derive from it (focussing on instrumental values for nature);
Nature as Culture: in which humans are perceived as an integral part of nature (recognising relational values for nature).

**Figure 1**: The Nature Futures Framework illustrating the three main value perspectives (Source: Pereira et al 2020).

The aim of the NFF is to provide a simple way to illustrate a complex blend of values for appreciating nature, particularly in thinking about diverse desirable futures that recognise all of these values.

During the workshop, we combined the approach from “Seeds from the Good Anthropocenes” project (goodanthropocenes.net/; Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2019) in conjunction with science fiction prototyping (Merrie et al. 2018). Using the ‘Seeds approach’, we asked each participant to submit their idea of a seed – ‘a process, initiative or way of seeing the world’ that was currently marginal, but that they thought could contribute to a better future for the High Seas (Bennett et al. 2016).

Participants were then allocated into the three groups formed around each corner of the NFF triangle to discuss a future, where either instrumental values for nature (Nature for Society), intrinsic values for nature (Nature for Nature) or relational values for nature (Nature as Culture) were emphasised. Each of the seeds (see Appendix in Chibwe et al. 2021) was allocated to a corner by the participant as they introduced the seed, but for purposes of keeping groups equal in size and mixed in terms of geography and expertise, the three groups did not always have all the people who had submitted seeds to that corner. As is outlined more fully in the method described in Chibwe et al. 2021, each group had rich discussions about their seeds, what they represented and how they could grow to contribute to better futures. The result was a set of stories about the future of the High Seas focusing on each corner of the NFF triangle. To help with the development of the narrative, each group started their narrative journey on board the same ocean research vessel, the Manta. Additionally, to push for more transformative, creative thinking, a set of seven characters were defined prior to the workshop by the workshop coordinators and allocated to each story based on their corner and a throw of the dice (Figure 2). This allowed for common threads through the stories although not all original characters are in the final stories and some new ones emerged.

The stories are not chronological, they are intended as parallel futures, but it is possible to see potential links and pathways between them. Due to the level of technology and progress in each of the stories, the reader may pick up a temporal logic to the order in which each of the stories is presented here. This is more for ease of reading than to put them on any single timeline. However, it may help if the reader jumped ahead a few decades in their mind in-between reading each narrative. This is, however, not essential as each should also be able to stand alone and read in any order. These stories are not intended to be utopian, but they hopefully offer a pause to reflect on where we want to go and how we might get there…

(Please see the slides)

Figure 2: Short description and image of each of the seven characters © Care Creative

—

*Take a deep breath* As you read this, realise that some of the oxygen that is now flowing through your veins was generated from the High Seas. Embrace that connection.

–-

Continue reading →

Dimension 20’s The Unsleeping City: Fantasy and Play as Means of Claiming Agency in Modern Dystopias

By Emma French

Although the degree to which a game of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is required to contain a meaningful narrative differs amongst player groups, D&D’s facilitation of storytelling is now widely acknowledged.^[1] According to Jennifer Grouling, ‘something about the TTRPG [tabletop roleplaying game] invites a narrative response’.^[2] This is especially true of livestreamed, podcasted, or edited ‘actual play’ D&D – games that often include actors, comedians or other creative professionals, and that are consciously performed, recorded, produced, and distributed as a serialised fictional narrative for their audiences.

If ‘play’ is often associated with make-believe and the unreal, could there be something oxymoronic about the term ‘actual play’? It implies some kind of authenticity, but the nature of this claim cannot be easily summarised. Evan Torner traces the term’s origin to indie game design discussions in the 2000s on the influential forum The Forge. During this time, ‘actual play’ referred to written reports, used for ‘seeing the system in action through the lens of a game facilitator or player […] public, critical probing of a game’s text and rules through play.’^[3] More recently, the term has come to refer to TTRPG gameplay as a kind of performance: players still enjoy a game amongst friends, but the act of play is also ‘geared toward an outside audience who become invested in the characters, narrative, storyworld, and meta-play behaviours of the players.’^[4] These actual play broadcasts tell two stories at once, the story set in an imaginary world, and the story of that story being created. The blurring of these two kinds of stories can open up new creative possibilities. While any D&D game can provide an avenue for storytelling, Matthew Mercer – whose own livestream Critical Role is perhaps the most famous game of its kind – argues that games are often broadcast when ‘people […] find something that’s lacking in the space of storytelling, that they want to convey’ (10:17-10:22).^[5] The known presence of an audience and ‘reader’ means that some streams use D&D for the creation of narrative with deliberate authorial intent, for instance to address real world issues and political concerns.

Continue reading →

22 Ideas About the Future

Reviewed by James Woudhuysen

22 Ideas about the future, edited by Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Cybersalon Press: 2022)

On Sky Arts, over some months, they’ve been playing Alfred Hitchcock Presents. This was a schlocky but nevertheless highly entertaining series of spooky psychodramas, each just 25 minutes long, interrupted by its sponsors, Bristol Myers. Running from 1955 till at least 1957, the films featured stars such as Ralph Meeker, Charles Bronson, Thelma Ritter and the unimpeachable Claude Rains. Hitchcock would appear comically – from inside a space helmet, or at the centre of an enormous spider’s web – in a short spoof before the plot; also, in a splenetic, dour diatribe at the back end.

Perhaps numbered after the 22 in the year 2022, this collection of very short sci-fi stories has the same scary, translucent tone to it as those old Hitchcock shorts. While Hitch directed other directors to capture the southern, sinister and sardonic brightness he later gave us with Psycho, editors Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram have wrung something similar from their contributors here. These are forecasts of the future in fictional form. Not all are successful, but some are fun.

Continue reading →

Mosquitoes, mushrooms, magic: Africanfuturist SF for nature’s futures

Charne Lavery [1,2], Laura Pereira [3,4], Bwalya Chibwe [4], Nedine Moonsamy [1], Chinelo Onwaulu [5], Naomi Terry [4].

1 Department of English, University of Pretoria, South Africa

2 WiSER, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

3 Global Change Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

4 Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden

5 Independent author and editor of African speculative fiction

Introduction

The future is African: by 2100 one in three people are projected to be from the African continent (Council on Foreign Relations 2020). And yet the stories that the world tells itself about this future are decidedly not African — or at least not of a prosperous, plausible future Africa (Pereira et al. 2021). In a post-colonial world, Africa continues to be colonised by dominant perspectives that dictate what to aspire to and which values are important (Oelofsen 2015). This is to the detriment not only of the continent but the world. It misses the diverse possibilities that local cultures and traditions could offer in terms of preferable futures, drawing on pasts that are deeply connected to the land and ancestors. Addressing this marginalisation of knowledge systems and the people who practice them is of critical importance in the shift towards a more equal development agenda that values diversity (Tengo et al. 2014). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of objectives set up by the United Nations to improve quality of life around the world, protect the environment, and promote peace and prosperity. There are seventeen SDGs, including the eradication of poverty and hunger, the spread of health and wellbeing, quality education, gender equality, and climate action. Governments, businesses and non-profits use the SDGs as a framework for understanding their broader purpose and impact. Are the SDGs fit-for-purpose? It’s a controversial question, but one thing is for sure: as the world struggles to meet these goals, fresh ideas, and bold pathways away from current trajectories, need to be explored.

Speculative fiction has a role to play in this. How we think about and imagine the future is an important aspect of decision-making in the present (Vervoort and Gupta 2018). As Lao Tzu says, “if you don’t change direction, you may end up where you are headed.” When we are continually confronted by stories of doom and gloom, these can often be self-fulfilling (Evans 2016). We end up where we are headed. We are currently experiencing overlapping global environmental crises. The most recent is the Covid-19 pandemic (zoonotic diseases are fundamentally linked to human-environment interactions). The most existentially threatening is climate change. The most ethically compromising is, arguably, the human-induced sixth mass extinction. A business-as-usual trajectory is suicide for humanity. However, what are the futures towards which we do want to navigate? And how might we begin to imagine them?

Part of the answer lies with how we value nature. Calls are growing to reimagine transformative futures for nature using more than just positivist science (Wyborn et al. 2020). Traditional environmental policy has often treated nature as a realm whose laws we can know and master, to maximise its economic benefits to humans. In recent years, there has been more recognition that economic benefits are interconnected with social, cultural, and even spiritual benefits. The beauty and abundance of nature give inspiration and solace to humans in ways that are hard to quantify, let alone control, ways that are grounded in the diverse values that people find in nature. Yet perhaps this still doesn’t go far enough. There is now growing interest in futures that value nature in its own right, independent of the many benefits that nature provides to humans.

Continue reading →

Old and New Worlds in Octavia Butler’s Parable Novels and Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods

By Lois Eastburn

From the holding cell was it possible to see beyond the end of the world and to imagine living and breathing again?
Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route[1]

It’s after the end of the world. Don’t you know that yet?
The Last Angel of History[2]

In science fiction writing, the future is both a territory for extraction and a site of resistance. Through what cultural theorists Kodwo Eshun and Mark Fisher have called ‘sf [science fiction] capital’, capitalism extracts value from futurity.^[3] The financialisation of the economy is one way that sf capital colonises the future.^[4] The hyper-commodities of the Star Wars franchise are another.^[5] At the same time, the future of the planet — the future of the human species — is threatened by the rapacious extractivism that capital demands. Further, the futures of the peoples most subjugated and exploited under capitalism have always already been under threat. Kathryn Yusoff writes that the ‘Anthropocene might seem to offer a dystopic future that laments the end of the world, but imperialism and ongoing (settler) colonialisms have been ending worlds as long as they have been in existence’.^[6] This dual vision — both proleptic and retrospective — is present in the novels Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) by Octavia Butler and The Stone Gods (2007) by Jeanette Winterson. Both authors envision futures of the Anthopocene that are discursively (and recursively) engaged with colonial pasts, a conception of the future that finds it is, as Henriette Genkel argues in her anthology Futures and Fictions, ‘already implicated in the different dimensions of time’.^[7] Both Butler and Winterson’s texts unsettle the narratives of empire and capital by orienting themselves in the alternative temporalities of speculative fiction.^[8] They fiction futures to produce a ‘significant distortion of the present’, something that Samuel Delany considers a central technique of science fiction.^[9] Their texts wonder at the possibility of other worlds and other futures, while grappling with the neoliberal fiction that such possibility is already foreclosed, that we are at the ‘end of history’.^[10]

In science fiction writing, the future is both a territory for extraction and a site of resistance.

In John Akomfrah’s The Last Angel of History, his documentary-cum-science-fiction film about afrofuturism and the entanglements of ‘space, music, and the future’ in late-twentieth century black culture, the time-travelling narrator declares that the:

first touch with science fiction came when Africans began playing drums to cover distance. Water carried the sound of the drums, and sound covered the distance between the Old and the New World.^[11]

Butler, who features in the film, writes from a similar position of awareness that, since the violence and displacement of the Middle Passage, science fiction has been a black technology of resistance, of establishing relationships with the ‘Old and the New World’, and of sense-making beyond the end of the world.

Continue reading →

Viking Fever – Vikings in Fantastika

By Kevan Manwaring

Ink: when Viking Fever goes viral

*The Northman (2022) – Director: Robert Eggers; Writer: Sjón/Eggers.*

Vikings are very much in vogue again, with a slew of releases in recent years reaching fever pitch in 2021-2022, many of which draw laterally, rather than literally, upon Viking culture: MCU’s Loki and Thor: Love and Thunder; Vikings: Valhalla; The Last Kingdom; The Northman; The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power... Readers and viewers are perhaps more adept at perceiving the loose historicity of such retellings than scholars credit them; and are drawn to the new tales largely because of the storytelling, the characters, and the aesthetic. For some, such texts are a ‘gateway drug’ to the hit of history, the fix of the source material, the Gothic allure of the archive.

Yet for many, it is perhaps something more visceral. Martin Amis said novels come from the ‘base of the spine’, but maybe the appeal of narrative flights of fancy do also.

It is perhaps not surprising that tales of warriors and their warrior gods are in favour in such tumultuous times (it could be argued we live in a new Viking Age, where the mask of civility has been forsaken and the strong take what they wish from the weak, or at least try), but Viking culture and Norse mythology has had an especial appeal to writers of Fantasy for a long time. Mike Ashley defines ‘Nordic Fantasy’ as ‘That body of FANTASY which draws its heart from the MYTHOLOGY of the Scandinavian and Teutonic races and incorporates the stories retold in the SAGAS.’ (1999: 691)

In this article (from an author and academic who has written two Viking-inspired novels of his own), I explore this phenomenon. What is Viking Fever? When and how did it go viral? And is this latest ‘wave’ just a variant of a long-running cultural mutation that originates in the birth of Scandinavian and English literature, and perhaps even in the very foundations of storytelling?

Continue reading →