EVENTS
Lecture and Workshop with Professor Sherryl Vint, UC Riverside
​
Public Lecture: The Heat Death of Profitability
Liberal Logics, Fantasies of Transcendence, Financial Futures
Introduction: Professor Christine Lötscher, PD Dr. Simon Spiegel
The lecture is followed by a panel hosted by Dr. Sarah Lohmann and Dr. Cédric Weidmann
Thursday, 20 March 2025, 6.30 p.m.
University of Zürich, Rämistr. 71, KOL-G-217
Organisation: Professor Christine Lötscher, PD Dr. Simon Spiegel, Dr. Sarah Lohmann
Focusing on the economic practices linked to financialization and venture-capitalist funding, this paper explores how sf authors Ken MacLeod and Ian McDonald use the form of space opera to critique neoliberal orthodoxy as akin to sf fantasies of transcending the limits of planet-based, mortal life. The violently destructive conflicts which animate the narratives in MacLeod's The Corporation Wars and McDonald's Luna trilogies—typical of space opera as a military adventure mode—symbolize the destructiveness of capitalism as a governing ideology. In both fictional worlds, law is a central tool for managing economic conflict and instantiating a political order that favours the elite. I argue that MacLeod and McDonald use space opera tropes to critique neoliberalism in ways that simultaneously illuminate the degree to which current venture-capitalist and Silicon Valley rhetoric relies itself on science-fictional tropes. Rather than the promised future of endless profitability through AI accelerationism familiar in this discourse, however, these space operas suggest that the future such policies will produce is best embodied by their own bleak conclusions of economics without workers, markets finally freed of the friction of human vulnerability and need, the limitless production of profit in a world inhabited only by AI entities that exist to serve the self-contained project of capital producing more capital. MacLeod and McDonald thus reject the libertarian fantasy of accelerationist escape from the contradictions of capitalism and insist on the need for a labour-centered politics of degrowth.
​
​Workshop with Sherryl Vint for MA / PhD students and Postdocs
Friday, 21 March 2025, 10.15 – 11.45 a.m.
University of Zurich, Karl Schmid-Str. 4, KO2-D-54
​
To attend the workshop, please register here before 10 March 2025: christine.loetscher@uzh.ch
​
Preparatory reading:
Sherryl Vint, ‘Political Cosplay: Q-Anon, White Squall and Narrative Politics’
(will be sent to you by email)
Lesekreis für Postgrads, Postdocs und Andere: „Science Fiction Reading Group”, ETH und UZH
Starting in the near future, there will be a small science fiction reading group shared by the ETH Zurich and the UZH and run by Sarah Lohmann, postdoc at the ETH, and Jacqueline Heinzelmann, PhD student at the UZH. This group will be primarily aimed at PhD students and postdocs, but others are welcome to join. Texts and discussion will be in English. Further communication to follow.
Kontakt: Sarah Lohmann und Jacqueline Heinzelmann
PAST EVENTS:
Science Fiction Lecture 2024: Dietmar Dath, „Unwirtschaftliches Vorauswissen. Die Sorgen der Science Fiction im Jahr 2024“
Gefolgt von einem Gespräch zwischen Dietmar Dath, Christine Lötscher und Sarah Lohmann
Science Fiction wird oft als Vorwegnahme des Kommenden verstanden. Wenn das, was sie lange angekündigt hat, in vielfältiger Form und als große Überforderung gerade für die höchsttechnisierten und komplexesten arbeitsteiligen Zivilisationen plötzlich Gegenwart heisst, wird Science Fiction aber nicht überflüssig, weil ihre Aufgabe etwa erledigt wäre. Denn ihr Lebensnerv sind Denkweisen, deren Verbreitung unter möglichst vielen Menschen jeden Moment dringlicher wird.
​
Datum und Zeit: 27. November 2024, 18:15 Uhr
​
Ort: ETH Zürich, Zentrum, Rämistrasse 101, HG F 30, Audimax
​
Organisation: Andreas Kilcher, Christine Lötscher, Philipp Theisohn
​
Zurich Science Fiction Network (ZSFN)
​
https://lit.ethz.ch/news-und-veranstaltungen/events/science-fiction-lecture.html
​
Kontakt: Andreas Kilcher
Workshop: „Science reads Fiction, Fiction writes Science: Interdisciplinary Climate Fiction Workshop and annual meeting of the Network for Interdisciplinary Climate Research (UZH/ETH)”
Friday, November 29th, 14.15 – 18.30, followed by an Apéro Riche
University of Zurich, Rämistrasse 71, KOL H-317
​
Organized by the Network for Interdisciplinary Climate Research (UZH/ETH) in cooperation with the Zurich Science Fiction Network
​
Climate Sciences in conversation with Arts and Social Sciences
​
With Christian Huggel, Sarah Lohmann, Christine Lötscher, Axel Michaelowa, Sonia Seneviratne, Sandro Vattioni, Benno Wirz
​
Programme:
14.15 Introduction
14.30 Climate Fiction as Science Fiction? Dr. Sarah Lohmann (Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH)
14.45 Adaptation: Prof. Dr. Christian Huggel (Department of Geography, UZH) and Dr. Benno Wirz (Cultural Analysis, UZH)
15.45 Coffee Break
16.15 Geoengineering: Dr. Sandro Vattioni (Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH) and Dr. Axel Michaelowa (Department of Political Science, UZH)
17.15 Break
17.30 Changing the narrative: Prof. Dr. Sonia Seneviratne (Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH) and Prof. Dr. Christine Lötscher (Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, UZH)
18.30 Apéro Riche
​
Kontakt: Christine Lötscher
