\n
<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span>After reading The Lathe of Heaven<\/em>, I felt more confused about what postmodernism is because I would have easily classified this as science-fiction. Let me point out a few things first: I understand that a lot of different texts from a variety of genres can be postmodern (fiction, nonfiction, etc.) just like you can draw upon different schools of analysis (like postmodernism) in relation to one text. And I also understand, since we\u2019ve been talking about it nearly every class, how technology is a huge part of postmodernism\u2014it interfering with or transforming our lives, it being seen as an extension of our bodies, etc.\u00a0 <\/span>So, I\u2019m not saying that I don\u2019t understand how this book can be called postmodern. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n What I\u2019m confused by is this: A great deal of science-fiction deals with technology in some way, some in very similar ways to The Lathe of Heaven<\/em>, so where does science fiction stop and postmodernism begin? Like, take The Time Machine<\/em> by H.G. Wells. This book is very similar to The Lathe of Heaven<\/em>. In The Lathe of Heaven<\/em>, a man\u2019s mind can change reality, and with the aid of a machine (the Augmenter), this reality can be changed more often. In The Time Machine<\/em>, a man invents a machine to change reality and subsequently does just that in the world he eventually finds himself in. So, is The Time Machine<\/em> postmodern? Surely, one can argue that The Time Machine<\/em> contains the same technological interference and perhaps even technological extensions of the body as does The Lathe of Heaven<\/em>, not to mention a similar notion of rethinking\/retelling history. But this book is widely considered classic science fiction. I mean, science fiction really is, by definition, a genre that has to do with envisioned futures and envisioned sciences and envisioned technology. So, wouldn\u2019t most science fiction be postmodern? <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n David Harvey\u2019s The Condition of Postmodernity<\/em> cleared up some of my confusion. He writes: \u201cThe postmodern novel\u2026 [is] a shift from the kind of perspectivism that allowed the modernist to get a better bearing on the meaning of a complex but nevertheless singular reality, to the foregrounding of questions as to how radically different realities may coexist, collide, and interpenetrate. The boundary between fiction and science fiction has, as a consequence, effectively dissolved, while postmodernist characters often seem confused as to which world they are in, and how they should act with respect to it.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So, it\u2019s been a while since I read The Time Machine<\/em>, but if I\u2019m remembering it correctly, the main character doesn\u2019t grapple with the same questions and complexity that George Orr struggles with. I don\u2019t remember enough of the exposition in The Time Machine<\/em> to really comment on the main character\u2019s mindset, but I do remember it being a straight travel through time to a future that he eventually saved. This is, of course, not the same in The Lathe of Heaven<\/em>, where all of these potential realities, to use Harvey\u2019s words, coexisted, collided, and interpenetrated. Later, Harvey reinforces this thought by saying that postmodernists can\u2019t \u201caspire to any unified representation of the world\u201d but rather, that the world is, for a postmodernist, full of \u201cperpetually shifting fragments.\u201d This, combined with his earlier notes on science fiction, seems to line up well when distinguishing between modernism and postmodernism and thus The Time Machine<\/em> and The Lathe of Heaven<\/em>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Harvey<\/span> also cleared up the genre aspect, insofar as modernists seeing works \u201cas examples of genre\u201d and postmodernists seeing \u201ca work as a text.\u201d In other words, then, echoing my thoughts in the first paragraph, lots of texts, despite affiliated \u201cgenre,\u201d can be postmodern. Oh! And that list on the schematic differences between modernism and postmodernism was awesome. I think that was exactly what I needed\u2014something visual or straight-up about the differences between the two. By contrasting the differences, I\u2019m able to understand both what postmodernism is and is not much better than I had understood it previously.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0After reading The Lathe of Heaven, I felt more confused about what postmodernism is because I would have easily classified this as science-fiction. Let me point out a few things first: I understand that a lot of different texts from a variety of genres can be postmodern (fiction, nonfiction, etc.) just like you can draw … Continue reading Science Fiction\/Postmodernism and Harvey<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16,28,35,21,34,13],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-4-le-guin","tag-harvey","tag-lathe-of-heaven","tag-reality","tag-science-fiction","tag-space","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":392,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}