Artículos de revistas sobre el tema "Foresight literacy"

Public interests in coming futures of Korea continue to be increasing. Fears on uncertainties and pending challenges as well as demands on a new but Korea-own development model trigger a quantitative increase of futures research and relevant organizations in both public and private. The objective of this paper is to review history of futures studies and national development plan and strategy linked with foresight along with its challenges and recommendations. This paper identifies drawbacks and limits of Korea foresight such as misapplication of foresight as a strategic planning tool for modernization and economic development and its heavy reliance on government-led mid- and long-term planning. As a recommendation, an implementation of participatory and community-based foresight is introduced as a foundation for futures studies in Korea. A newly established research institute, the National Assembly Futures Institute, has to be an institutional passage to deliver opinions of the public, a capacity-building platform to increase the citizen’s futures literacy, and a cooperative venue for facilitating a participation and dialogue between politicians, government officials, and researchers.

Despite the accelerated dynamics of the environment, higher education institutions slowly update their curricula in entrepreneurship education according to global challenges and market needs. Moreover, knowledge and good practice exchanges between educators of futures studies, business representatives, and academics is limited. This article aims to present a methodology for prototyping an online course for individuals to become more future-oriented in their professional and personal settings. The main research problems tackled by the authors relate to: 1) the identification of competences that would help academics, entrepreneurs, and students to deal with uncertainty and to 2) convey the competences to the target groups through learning topics selected from futures studies and the entrepreneurship repertoire. The authors of the article undertook and coordinated theoretical and empirical research on foresight and Futures Literacy and its correspondence with entrepreneurship within the beFORE project funded under the Erasmus+ program’s Knowledge Alliance scheme. The research process resulted in the identification of 12 key competence items and the development of a free, approximately 34-hour-long online course consisting of seven self-standing modules, 25 lessons, and 79 learning topics corresponding to these competences. The originality of the paper is in its contribution to the discussion on the competences and online course content that efficiently increase the capacities of using the future(s) in professional, academic, and personal settings.

This article reviews the research approaches, the object of which is future as an element of relevant social reality. The author familiarizes the Russian audience with such trends in studying future as “realization of future”, “orientation towards future”, “foresight”, “projectivity”, “futures literacy”, “anticipation”, and “image of future”. An original interpretation is given to the concept “image of future” as a reflective of collective representations of future that imply a complete or almost complete picture, but yet non-existent social reality.  The author examines the existing methodologies for studying the images of future and proposes the original one – comprehensive humanity analysis, which allows finding common denominator of social expectations in various types of sources. Unlike other angles of viewing the representations on future, the image of future enables reconstructing the pictures of future that functioned in the past, ant correlate them with realistic future. Examination of the image of future allows assessing the inclusion of society into time perspective, its attitude towards the present, level of content with reality, as well as particularize the perceptions of the purpose of social development and social values, within which it exists. Studying the images of future functioning in the past can also help to understand the connection between representations on future and future itself; and in case of establishing such connection it can be extrapolated upon the images of the future of our present and our future.

The author of the article assesses the special editorial vision of Nikolay Nekrasov, from the first works of the future great writer who saw his sight in Leo Tolstoy, and in Nikolay Strakhov – a person close to literature, but who initially had the makings of a critic, not an artist of the word. The article notes the special merit of Nikolay Nekrasov in the discovery of new talents and support of novice writers, we analyse the manner and specificity of the first works of Leo Tolstoy and Nikolay Strakhov, sent to Nikolay Nekrasov's journal Sovremennik (The Contemporary). The author of the work turns to the origins of the literary path of the writer and critic, denotes their peculiar convergence in themes: both novice authors were strongly influenced by the sentimental tradition and were attentive to spiritual quests, but that at the same time explains the difference in the talent of Leo Tolstoy and Nikolay Strakhov, which manifested itself even in relation to their own first works of fiction, as can be judged by their letters to Nikolay Nekrasov.

It is common knowledge that history repeats itself! Maybe not literally, but patterns of behaviour likely dependent of the human nature, are probably prone to repeat themselves. So, one may wonder if looking back could help us prepare for a better future. Moreover, by looking back at the history of people and societies, we should all be able to have a better understanding of why things happen the way they do. This seldom happens, and when it does, it is happening within very limited circle of the society such as scholars and some politician circles, rarely overflowing to the whole society.The point is that, what we see today is not very different from what has happened in the past. Let us go back to November 13, 1460, the day Prince Henry the Navigator, passed away in Sagres, leaving Portugal with an enormous debt. Despite that fact, Prince Henry was the “guiding force behind Portugal’s assimilation of nautical knowledge and its vast extension of maritime exploration for nearly four decades” (Kock, 2003, p.59). It is interesting that by that time intellectual property was already being managed. (...)

Wisdom is foresight. Philosophical thought of Seneca the Younger about the virtue of prudentiaOne of the most important themes in the literary legacy of Seneca, a Roman stoic philosopher and tutor of young Nero, is the science on virtues. Withing its aretology there is the virtue of prudence, prudentia, whose definition is: facienda providere. By way of example, we may understand it as predicting the effects of, for instance, enacting a specific law. The virtue of prudentia refers also to proper counseling, actually in different situations: prudentia suaserit; it recommends to make good use of present times, to care for the future, think and deliberate. To live prudently means to live for the moment, to take advantage of our life time of in a good way.

В данной статье рассматривается экзегеза текстов книги пророка Иеремии (1, 5 и 7, 18) в сочинениях Оригена разных периодов его богословско-философской и эгзегетической деятельности. Эти тексты Ориген использует в качестве библейских свидетельств для обоснования трёх положений своего учения, взятых из платоновской философии: одушевлённости небесных светил, предсуществовании душ их телам, предвидении Божием. В более ранний александрийский период своей литературной активности Ориген в произведении «О началах» даёт им христианское понимание и даже пытается сделать церковным учением. В кесарийский период, напротив, он отходит от положений платонизма и рассматривает данные тесты Иеремии, в особенности Иер. 1, 5, с позиции церковного учения в традиционном библейском контексте, понимая их как свидетельства учения о божественном предвидении. В статье рассматриваются сочинения двух вышеуказанных периодов деятельности Оригена, в которые александриец, истолковывая Иремию, приходит к разным богословским выводам. При помощи данной методологии исследования автор статьи стремится показать эволюцию доктринальных взглядов Оригена и его экзегезы. This article discusses the exegesis of the texts of the book of the prophet Jeremiah (1, 5, 7, 18) in the writings of Origen from different periods of his theological-philosophical and exegetic activities. These texts Origen uses as biblical evidence to justify the three provisions of his teachings, taken from Plato’s philosophy: the animate of stars, the pre-existence of souls to their bodies, the foresight of God. In the earlier аlexandrian period of his literary activity Origen in the work «On the principles» gives them a Christian understanding and even tries to make the Church teaching. In the caesarean period, on the contrary, he departs from the provisions of Platonism and considers these tests of Jeremiah, in particular Jer. 1, 5, from the standpoint of Church doctrine in the traditional biblical context, understanding them as evidence of the doctrine of divine foresight. The article deals with the works of the above two periods of Origen, in which the Alexandrian begins to interpret these texts of Jeremiah, coming to different theological conclusions. With the help of this research methodology, the author seeks to show the evolution of the doctrinal views of Origen and his exegesis.

В данной статье рассматривается экзегеза текстов книги пророка Иеремии (1, 5 и 7, 18) в сочинениях Оригена разных периодов его богословско-философской и эгзегетической деятельности. Эти тексты Ориген использует в качестве библейских свидетельств для обоснования трёх положений своего учения, взятых из платоновской философии: одушевлённости небесных светил, предсуществовании душ их телам, предвидении Божием. В более ранний александрийский период своей литературной активности Ориген в произведении «О началах» даёт им христианское понимание и даже пытается сделать церковным учением. В кесарийский период, напротив, он отходит от положений платонизма и рассматривает данные тесты Иеремии, в особенности Иер. 1, 5, с позиции церковного учения в традиционном библейском контексте, понимая их как свидетельства учения о божественном предвидении. В статье рассматриваются сочинения двух вышеуказанных периодов деятельности Оригена, в которые александриец, истолковывая Иремию, приходит к разным богословским выводам. При помощи данной методологии исследования автор статьи стремится показать эволюцию доктринальных взглядов Оригена и его экзегезы. This article discusses the exegesis of the texts of the book of the prophet Jeremiah (1, 5, 7, 18) in the writings of Origen from different periods of his theological-philosophical and exegetic activities. These texts Origen uses as biblical evidence to justify the three provisions of his teachings, taken from Plato’s philosophy: the animate of stars, the pre-existence of souls to their bodies, the foresight of God. In the earlier аlexandrian period of his literary activity Origen in the work «On the principles» gives them a Christian understanding and even tries to make the Church teaching. In the caesarean period, on the contrary, he departs from the provisions of Platonism and considers these tests of Jeremiah, in particular Jer. 1, 5, from the standpoint of Church doctrine in the traditional biblical context, understanding them as evidence of the doctrine of divine foresight. The article deals with the works of the above two periods of Origen, in which the Alexandrian begins to interpret these texts of Jeremiah, coming to different theological conclusions. With the help of this research methodology, the author seeks to show the evolution of the doctrinal views of Origen and his exegesis.

L’article explore les usages du terme latin prudentia dans l’Utopie (1516) de Thomas More. Cet article explique les apparentes contradictions du traitement de More du mot prudentia, à travers l’étude des utilisations du terme dans un éventail de sources, incluant les dialogues de Cicéron, les écrits éthique de l’humaniste italien du XVe siècle Lorenzo Valla, les écrits d’étude biblique du contemporain de More, Érasme de Rotterdam, et le History of King Richard III de More. Cet article cherche également à évaluer les différentes interprétations de la prudentia dans les versions anglaises de l’Utopie, offre plusieurs options pour les futurs traducteurs.

The aim of the study is to identify the main characteristics of P. Kulish by the representatives of Ukrainian emigration in the twentieth century, focusing on aspects of the extraordinary personality in Ukrainian culture and literature. The object of the research is literary-critical and non-fiction (publicist) articles, as well as correspondence of some representatives of Ukrainian intellectual emigration (in particular Ye. Malaniuk, I. Kachurovsky, A. Zhyvotko, Yu. Коsach, Yu. Shevelov), which addressed their works to the figure and creativity of P. Kulish. Methods. According to the indexes and content of literary-critical and non-fiction works of certain critics, journalists, and scientists in the diaspora, the appeal to the name of P. Kulish is traced, as well as characterization of his personality in the Ukrainian press of the postwar period in the territory of Germany (in particular in the years of his 50th anniversary and 60th anniversary of death – 1947, 1957). Methods of analysis, induction and deduction, comparison, synthesis, and generalization made it possible to distinguish the main features of P. Kulish – the creator of the Ukrainian nation, a state-maker, a true European, a unique personality. Results and conclusions. The «integrity», «universality», «synthetics», «versatility» of P. Kulish still remains to be explored in some aspects. Many biographies, essays, articles were published in order to descry his creative, rebellious, and not always consistent nature, to reveal historical intuition, political foresight, ideas about independence and statehood of Ukraine, to understand innovative steps in literature, translation, language, historiosophy, to emphasize persistent publishing and editorial activities, etc. Both domestic and emigration researchers tried to convey the greatness of P. Kulish in the translations of his works, at the same time the Ukrainian public recognized the «living person», a prominent figure «in the gallery of the creators of our post-Shevchenko cultural and historical process». Therefore, they still have not lost their symbolic and critical coloration of the estimation and characteristics of P. Kulish, although not all of these works are known today in Ukraine. Key words: Panteleimon Kulish, Ukrainian emigration, literary-critical and non-fiction (publicistic) articles, creator of nation, European orientations.

AbstractThe research fieldwork dedicated to trend analysis and foresight/forecast scenarios building, represents an unusual raid in an area where economic and social sciences have invested many efforts. Nevertheless, the semiotic dimension of this subject is not sufficiently thorough; many issues are at stake:–the definition criteria of the corpus;–the selection of trend signals, the selection criteria;–the narrative framework of scenarios;–the deep logic permitting to describe the relationships between the trends and to trace their evolution;–the prevision as mutation logic, anticipation exercise, simulation activity;–the different application contexts of the anticipation science.We are going to investigate this area of analysis, for its relevance in post-Greimassian studies, for its interface with social sciences, as well as for its relevance for the legitimacy of semiotics in contemporary discussions of innovation and evolution.

On August 3, 1860 Dickens wrote to his friend Bulwer Lytton asking whether he might be prepared to contribute “a tale” to All the Year Round. The inquiry was speculative, but prompted by characteristic editorial foresight. The magazine's current serial, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, was nearing completion, Charles Lever's A Day's Ride was waiting to take over from it, and Dickens himself was beginning to contemplate a new novel which, as Great Expectations, was subsequently issued between December 1860 and August 1861. Evidently he was already thinking of their successor, and clearly he recognized that Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, ex-cabinet minister and pillar of the literary establishment, would be a real catch. Bulwer did not reply immediately, though he was in fact already making preliminary sketches for the novel that would become A Strange Story. The idea for the book had come to him in a dream (as, twenty years earlier, had that for his other great tale of the supernatural, Zanoni), and as it developed during the summer of 1860 it gradually supplanted his other work in progress — the historical novel of ancient Greece Pausanias the Spartan (eventually published posthumously in 1876, still incomplete). In October 1860, while vacationing in Corfu, he noted ruefully that his “mystic story” was at a standstill, but on his return to England the following month he was sufficiently encouraged to respond, at least tentatively, to Dickens's inquiry.

This paper focuses on the equivalence between Greek phronesis, a very hard word to translate, and Latin prudentia. Based on the word phren, phronesis means ‘thought’, ‘intellectual perception’, ‘sense’, ‘prudence’, ‘practical wisdom’, while prudentia is derived from prouidentia, meaning ‘ability to look ahead’, ‘forecast’, ‘foresight’ and also ‘Providence’. Why, although their etymological roots were apparently different, did the Romans choose the word prudentia in order to translate Greek phronesis? And how did such a translation alter the evolution of the philosophical concept of prudence in Latin culture? It seems that Cicero offers a new analysis of prudentia by dividing the term prouidentia, from which it was formed, into two parts. The prefix pro- alludes not only to Aristotelian phronesis (a virtue especially related to the future and most important in political field), but also to Stoic pro-noia (or Pro-vidence) on a cosmological level, while the Latin verb videre (‘to see’) leads Ciceronian prudence, in ethics, towards a theoretical, i.e. contemplative, wisdom (sophia), inspired by Plato.

Myths are regarded as the metaphysical engines of the national progress, a specific code-program for the state development, as a vector of the individual mission of an individual nation. In general, the ideological and political myths of national states are metaphorically derived primarily from their national anthems. The anthem is a kind of vaccine against assimilation and is effectively delivered to educate the younger generation in the spirit of civic consciousness. Decadent (frustration) myths destroy the national idea, vitaistic and consolidating myths inspire, compact and unite any nation. The National Anthem, as the primary literary formulation of the national idea, gives impetus to the constant creation by the writers of the myth of the state and the nation as a specific phenomenon at the artistic level. The literary myths of stateless peoples are always preceded by the emergence of their own ideological and political myths as well. Among the most talented passionaries of every «incomplete» nation, there must be a talented philosopher or politician who will be able to verbally formulate the idea of a new ideological-political myth, which will be based on a national idea. Similarly, in the nineteenth century the ideological-political myth for Ukrainians was «Law of God (Book of Being of the Ukrainian People)» by M. Kostomarov. It is natural that this philosophical and propaganda work had a great influence on Kobzar and led to the creation of the literary myth of Ukraine by our national poet-genius, T. Shevchenko. The beginning of the twentieth century for the Ukrainians was marked by the tragic fall of the young state of the UNR. The nation had to start all over again in order to endure. There was a need for a new ideological and political myth of Ukraine of the twentieth century. It was created by Ye. Malaniuk with his own essays about the most talented Ukrainian politicians, including B. Khmelnitskyi and I. Mazepa, as well as M. Hrushevskyi and S. Petliura. In his essays on the past of Ukraine Ye. Malaniuk not only wrote about biographies of bright historical figures, but above all analyzed Ukrainian national victories and tragedies, logically argued mistakes and losses of our nation’s leaders, considered the issues of «his» and «alien», determined a peculiar «doctrine», submitted in a wide typre of «enemy face» of the Ukrainian statehood. Ye. Malaniuk also analyzed the positive and negative features of the Ukrainian mentality, aptly raised the question of passion, foresighted the stages of becoming the future of Ukraine as a sovereign nation-state at the end of the twentieth century. On the basis of his own ideological and political myth, the poet started to create the literary consolidating myth of Ukraine. His initiative was taken by contemporaries of the artist – the most talented writers-modernists of the Ukrainian diaspora of the twentieth century. The concept of the literary myth of Ukraine has been considered by the researcher Olha Slon’ovska; the significant role played by Ye. Malaniuk as a poet and essay writer in creating the literary myth has been revealed.

Some of the kings in the narrative actually follow Kantian orientation in their judgment and allow the right of necessity to enter into their thinking: they listen to others or (the good sense of) the truthful heart because of their limited or deficient knowledge. Others, delighted with their self-belief and mania for power, throw scorn on the law, on mercy, pardon, and forgiveness, and let themselves be led by anger, stupidity, complacency, stigma and desire for exclusion. In the tale narratives, they are further represented as scholars/wisemen, fortune-tellers, the ‘foresighted’, ancient old men, old women, wizards, taltoses (in the words of folklorist Ilona Nagy “mysterious people of fate”), doubles/doppelgangers, or animals with extraordinary abilities (the ability to speak human languages, or to transfigure themselves), prestigious kings from another country, ministers, advisors, witches who deceive the king (not uncommonly Gypsy women), depending on whether the intention is to link the giver of advice and the meaning of what he says to the sacred (biblical) or the profane (sometimes mythical), as it illuminates his/her existential character.

The aim of the work was to demonstrate the possibility of using artificial intelligence technologies and instrumental psychodiagnostics tools to ensure the effective operation of cognitive learning mechanisms. The presented literary review shows the main directions of modern scientific thought in relation to the use of artificial intelligence in education. These are adaptive learning systems, whose main task is to adapt educational content within the framework of personalization of learning, and educational chatbots (virtual assistants, tutors), which assess the student’s progress, monitor what and when the student studied, collect students’ opinions about the teacher, predict educational problems and help to overcome them, predict academic results. The presented analysis of the scientific elaboration of the problem of using artificial intelligence for the tasks of ensuring the cognitive effectiveness of training showed the lack of such elaboration. The possibilities of integrating instrumental psychodiagnostics methods, such as laser Doppler vibrometry, bioradiolocation, eytracking, thermography, recognition and analysis of audio and video recordings, into intelligent educational systems have not been studied at all. The idea that the educational place of the student of the future should be provided with at least several instrumental psychodiagnostic channels has been expressed. At the same time, the artificial intelligence system must coordinate the information received for these various channels. The article presents the results of an analytical foresight study that demonstrates the possibilities of building a class of the future, intensively using the idea of cognitive-effective education, artificial intelligence technology, and modern technical means. This study analyzes the cognitive factors that negatively affect the effectiveness of learning and the possibilities of overcoming them by means of artificial intelligence and instrumental psychodiagnostics, as well as the possible impact of digitalization on cognitive learning processes. The factors are analyzed: of nonpreservation of learning knowledge in long-term memory, of non-homogenity of academic knowledge, of non-formation of the necessary information and cognitive basis of knowledge for a discipline or for further training in general, of insufficient academic attention, of lack of cognitive training, of the formation of recognition in the absence of the possibility of free actualization of knowledge, of the inefficiency of certain methods of digital education, of non-formation of knowledge explication and actualization in a dialogue, of different cognitive readiness of students in the class, of gadget-stress, of misunderstanding of reading (functional illiteracy), and others. The conclusion is made about the possibility and reality of an integrated implementation of artificial intelligence systems and of modern technical means in the educational process to reduce the negative cognitive effects of modern learning.

AbstractAnticipatory governance (AG) is defined as a “system of systems” that employs foresight to create future plans and execute relevant actions. Recently, various frameworks of AG have been introduced, but there is little practical information available for newcomers on how to do this. This research conducted a framework-based comparative country analysis to provide lessons learned for newcomers in the sphere of foresight-linked AG. By evaluating the AG levels of Finland, the UK, the Netherlands, and Korea, we found that the consequences of foresight-linked AGs were different in each country. At the same time, we also identified a common denominator, namely, future receptivity, a “human or people” capacity to accept and understand the value of foresight. Instead of temporary system changes or organizational modifications, future receptivity is an underlying element for newcomers to overcome lingering short-termism and facilitate the coordination of stakeholders concerning foresight. In conclusion, we suggest ways to promote future receptivity for newcomers. First, the government should educate and train the public and government officials to promote future literacy and future proficiency. Second, the government should provide a process for public participation such as nationwide networking that enables the public to influence their diverse future images over foresight outcomes.

It is evident since ages that gender discrimination is a common feature in all societies. Even in developed countries, the prejudices and obstacles that women have had to encounter and surmount seem almost identical. The peculiar stigma attached to women all over the world is based on religious bias. “Woman” is depicted as a temptress and is warned against in almost all religions of the world. Woman’s basic stigma therefore originates in religion. The Rig Veda says, “The wife and husband, being the equal halves of one substance, are equal in every respect; therefore, both should join and take equal parts in all works, religious and secular.” The Upanishads clearly declare that we individual souls are neither male nor female. Rig Veda clearly proclaims that women should be given the lead in ruling the nation and in society, and that they should have the same right as sons over the father’s property. “The entire world of noble people bows to the glory of the glorious woman so that she enlightens us with knowledge and foresight. She is the leader of society and provides knowledge to everyone. She is symbol of prosperity and daughter of brilliance. May we respect her so that she destroys the tendencies of evil and hatred from the society. In ancient India, women occupied a very important position, in fact a superior position to, men. It is a culture whose only words for strength and power are feminine -“Shakti” means “power” and “strength.” All male power comes from the feminine. Literary evidence suggests that kings and towns were destroyed because a single woman was wronged by the state. For example, Valmiki’s Ramayana teaches us that Ravana and his entire clan were wiped out because he abducted Sita. Veda Vyasa’s Mahabharatha teaches us that all the Kauravas were killed because they humiliated Draupadi in public. Elango Adigal’s Sillapathigaram teaches us Madurai, the capital of the Pandyas was burnt because Pandyan Nedunchezhiyan mistakenly killed her husband on theft charges.

A comprehensive analysis of the word тайна (“mystery”) and its image in Anna Akhmatova’s art demonstrates how insistently Akhmatova created an aura of mystery around her life. The intentional duality of her birth date; the modelling of the image of her childhood as a period when she became aware of her otherness; the legend of a precocious gift of vision and foresight, which is relevant to the image of Akhmatova’s persona (Cassandra – Moon Maiden – enchantress –Chingisidess) and is also associated with the main spheres of her poetry: antiquity, the magical power of poetry, and history. The article identifies the actualisation of “Akhmatova’s mystery” in different aspects: biographical, personally identificatory, and poetical proper. Rigorous linguistic analysis involving corpus-based data makes it possible to establish the special position the word тайна plays in Anna Akhmatova’s vocabulary and provide a justification of its status as an idioglossia. The word тайна in Akhmatova’s poems organizes a wide thematical and associative field around itself, whose units are frequently used and assume an individual significance. The poems contain all meanings of the lexeme тайна that are used in the language system, and all the lexical-semantic variants are consolidated by the seme “unknown information”. The invariant meaning of the word тайна is attributed to the opposition “knowledge – ignorance”. The semantic complex of the lexeme in poetry is also strengthened by the meaning “arcane knowledge, involvement in mystery, and reaching the truth”. It is established that the lexically invariable image of тайна, which can also be seen as a leitmotif, is found in all the themes conceptually significant for Akhmatova: destiny, art, and love. Only on one occasion is the image of mystery not marked by a word but instead grows out of the atmosphere of the poem, which is conterminous to secret fear and mystical terror. Secret as something irrational, inexplicably horrifying is almost certainly commonly found in poems about time and space, where the poet’s daily life takes place. The fear of enclosed space and swift-flowing time is empowered by life circumstances, in which the poet’s creative expression of will is materialised. This fear is born out of the primary knowledge of limits, beyond which a human being is not allowed to go. The analysis of the word тайна and its image in the poet’s art leads the authors to conclude that the externally austere, but internally counterintuitive harmony of Anna Akhmatova’s poetry is created along the fine line between the impermissible and the unrestricted, the secret and the explicit, the mystical and the rational.

“What is the point of stories in such a moment”, asks author and critic James Bradley, writing about climate extinction: Bradley emphasises that “climatologist James Hansen once said being a climate scientist was like screaming at people from behind a soundproof glass wall; being a writer concerned with these questions often feels frighteningly similar” (“Writing”). If the impact of climate change asks humans to think differently, to imagine differently, then surely writing—and reading—must change too? According to writer and geographer Samuel Miller-McDonald, “if you’re a writer, then you have to write about this”. But how are we to do that? Where might it be done already? Perhaps not in traditional (or even post-) Modernist modes. In the era of the Anthropocene I find myself turning to non-traditional, un-real models to write the slow violence and read the deep time that is where we can see our current climate catastrophe.At a “Writing in the Age of Extinction” workshop earlier this year Bradley and Jane Rawson advocated changing the language of “climate change”—rejecting such neutral terms—in the same way that I see the stories discussed here pushing against Modernity’s great narrative of progress.My research—as a reader and writer, is in the fantastic realm of speculative fiction; I have written in The Conversation about how this genre seems to be gaining literary popularity. There is no doubt that our current climate crisis has a part to play. As Margaret Atwood writes: “it’s not climate change, it’s everything change” (“Climate”). This “everything” must include literature. Kim Stanley Robinson is not the only one who sees “the models modern literary fiction has are so depleted, what they’re turning to now is our guys in disguise”. I am interested in two recent examples, which both use the strongly genre-associated time-travel trope, to consider how science-fiction concepts might work to re-imagine our “deranged” world (Ghosh), whether applied by genre writers or “our guys in disguise”. Can stories such as The Heavens by Sandra Newman and “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” by Ted Chiang—which apply time travel, whether as an expression of fatalism or free will—help us conceive the current collapse: understand how it has come to pass, and imagine ways we might move through it?The Popularity of Time TravelIt seems to me that time as a notion and the narrative device, is key to any idea of writing through climate change. “Through” as in via, if the highly contested “cli-fi” category is considered a theme; and “through” as entering into and coming out the other side of this ecological end-game. Might time travel offer readers more than the realist perspective of sweeping multi-generational sagas? Time-travel books pose puzzles; they are well suited to “wicked” problems. Time-travel tales are designed to analyse the world in a way that it is not usually analysed—in accordance with Tim Parks’s criterion for great novels (Walton), and in keeping with Darko Suvin’s conception of science fiction as a literature of “cognitive estrangement”. To read, and write, a character who travels in “spacetime” asks something more of us than the emotional engagement of many Modernist tales of interiority—whether they belong to the new “literary middlebrow’” (Driscoll), or China Miéville’s Booker Prize–winning realist “litfic” (Crown).Sometimes, it is true, they ask too much, and do not answer enough. But what resolution is possible is realistic, in the context of this literally existential threat?There are many recent and recommended time-travel novels: Kate Atkinson’s 2013 Life after Life and Jenny Erpenbeck’s 2014 End of Days have main characters who are continually “reset”, exploring the idea of righting history—the more literary experiment concluding less optimistically. For Erpenbeck “only the inevitable is possible”. In her New York Times review Francine Prose likens Life after Life to writing itself: “Atkinson sharpens our awareness of the apparently limitless choices and decisions that a novelist must make on every page, and of what is gained and lost when the consequences of these choices are, like life, singular and final”. Andrew Sean Greer’s 2013 The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells also centres on the WorldWar(s), a natural-enough site to imagine divergent timelines, though he draws a different parallel. In Elan Mastai’s 2017 debut All Our Wrong Todays the reality that is remembered—though ultimately not missed, is more dystopic than our own time, as is also the way with Joyce Carol Oates’s 2018 The Hazards of Time Travel. Oates’s rather slight contribution to the subgenre still makes a clear point: “America is founded upon amnesia” (Oates, Hazards). So, too, is our current environment. We are living in a time created by a previous generation; the environmental consequence of our own actions will not be felt until after we are gone. What better way to write such a riddle than through the loop of time travel?The Purpose of Thought ExperimentsThis list is not meant to be comprehensive. It is an indication of the increasing literary application of the “elaborate thought experiment” of time travel (Oates, “Science Fiction”). These fictional explorations, their political and philosophical considerations, are currently popular and potentially productive in a context where action is essential, and yet practically impossible. What can I do? What could possibly be the point? As well as characters that travel backwards, or forwards in time, these titles introduce visionaries who tell of other worlds. They re-present “not-exactly places, which are anywhere but nowhere, and which are both mappable locations and states of mind”: Margaret Atwood’s “Ustopias” (Atwood, “Road”). Incorporating both utopian and dystopian aspects, they (re)present our own time, in all its contradictory (un)reality.The once-novel, now-generic “novum” of time travel has become a metaphor—the best possible metaphor, I believe, for the climatic consequence of our in/action—in line with Joanna Russ’s wonderful conception of “The Wearing out of Genre Materials”. The new marvel first introduced by popular writers has been assimilated, adopted or “stolen” by the dominant mode. In this case, literary fiction. Angela Carter is not the only one to hope “the pressure of the new wine makes the old bottles explode”. This must be what Robinson expects: that Ken Gelder’s “big L” literature will be unable to contain the wine of “our guys”—even if it isn’t new. In the act of re-use, the time-travel cliché is remade anew.Two Cases to ConsiderTwo texts today seem to me to realise—in both senses of that word—the possibilities of the currently popular, but actually ancient, time-travel conceit. At the Melbourne Writers Festival last year Ted Chiang identified the oracle in The Odyssey as the first time traveller: they—the blind prophet Tiresias was transformed into a woman for seven years—have seen the future and report back in the form of prophecy. Chiang’s most recent short story, “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom”, and Newman’s novel The Heavens, both of which came out this year, are original variations on this re-newed theme. Rather than a coherent, consistent, central character who travels and returns to their own time, these stories’ protagonists appear diversified in/between alternate worlds. These texts provide readers not with only one possible alternative but—via their creative application of the idea of temporal divergence—myriad alternatives within the same story. These works use the “characteristic gesture” of science fiction (Le Guin, “Le Guin Talks”), to inspire different, subversive, ways of thinking and seeing our own one-world experiment. The existential speculation of time-travel tropes is, today, more relevant than ever: how should we act when our actions may have no—or no positive, only negative—effect?Time and space travel are classic science fiction concerns. Chiang’s lecture unpacked how the philosophy of time travel speaks uniquely to questions of free will. A number of his stories explore this theme, including “The Alchemist’s Gate” (which the lecture was named after), where he makes his thinking clear: “past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully” (Chiang, Exhalation). In “Story of Your Life”, the novella that the film Arrival is based on, Chiang’s main character-narrator embraces a future that could be seen as dystopic while her partner walks away from it—and her, and his daughter—despite the happiness they will offer. Gary cannot accept the inevitable unhappiness that must accompany them. The suggestion is that if he had had Louise’s foreknowledge he might, like the free-willing protagonist in Looper, have taken steps to ensure that that life—that his daughter’s life itself—never eventuated. Whether he would have been successful is suspect: according to Chiang free will cannot foil fate.If the future cannot be changed, what is the role of free will? Louise wonders: “what if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?” In his “story notes” Chiang says inspiration came from variational principles in physics (Chiang, Stories); I see the influence of climate calamity. Knowing the future must change us—how can it not evoke “a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation”? Even if events play out precisely as we know they will. In his talk Chiang differentiated between time-travel films which favour free will, like Looper, and those that conclude fatalistically, such as Twelve Monkeys. “Story of Your Life” explores the idea that these categories are not mutually exclusive: exercising free will might not change fate; fatalism may not preclude acts of free will.Utopic Free Will vs. Dystopic Fate?Newman’s latest novel is more obviously dystopic: the world in The Heavens is worse each time Kate wakes from her dreams of the past. In the end it has become positively post-apocalyptic. The overwhelming sadness of this book is one of its most unusual aspects, going far beyond that of The Time Traveler’s Wife—2003’s popular tale of love and loss. The Heavens feels fatalistic, even though its future is—unfortunately, in this instance—not set but continually altered by the main character’s attempts to “fix” it (in each sense of the word). Where Twelve Monkeys, Looper, and The Odyssey present every action as a foregone conclusion, The Heavens navigates the nightmare that—against our will—everything we do might have an adverse consequence. As in A Christmas Carol, where the vision of a possible future prompts the protagonist to change his ways and so prevent its coming to pass, it is Kate’s foresight—of our future—which inspires her to act. History doesn’t respond well to Kate’s interventions; she is unable to “correct” events and left more and more isolated by her own unique version of a tortuous Cassandra complex.These largely inexplicable consequences provide a direct connection between Newman’s latest work and James Tiptree Jr.’s 1972 “Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket”. That tale’s conclusion makes no “real” sense either—when Dovy dies Loolie’s father’s advisers can only say that (time) paradoxes are proliferating—but The Heavens is not the intellectual play of Tiptree’s classic science fiction: the wine of time-travel has been poured into the “depleted” vessel of “big L” literature. The sorrow that seeps through this novel is profound; Newman apologises for it in her acknowledgements, linking it to the death of an ex-partner. I read it as a potent expression of “solastalgia”: nostalgia for a place that once provided solace, but doesn’t any more—a term coined by Australian philosopher Glen Albrecht to express the “psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change” (Albrecht et al.). It is Kate’s grief, for a world (she has) destroyed that drives her mad: “deranged”.The Serious Side of SpeculationIn The Great Derangement Ghosh laments the “smaller shadow” cast by climate change in the landscape of literary fiction. He echoes Miéville: “fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not the kind that is taken seriously by serious literary journals; the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or short story to the genre of science fiction” (Ghosh). Time-travel tales that pose the kind of questions handled by theologians before the Enlightenment and “big L” literature after—what does it mean to exist in time? How should we live? Who deserves to be happy?—may be a way for literary fiction to take climate change “seriously”: to write through it. Out-of-time narratives such as Chiang and Newman’s pose existential speculations that, rather than locating us in time, may help us imagine time itself differently. How are we to act if the future has already come to pass?“When we are faced with a world whose problems all seem ‘wicked’ and intractable, what is it that fiction can do?” (Uhlmann). At the very least, should writers not be working with “sombre realism”? Science fiction has a long and established tradition of exposing the background narratives of the political—and ecological—landscapes in which we work: the master narratives of Modernism. What Anthony Uhlmann describes here, as the “distancing technique” of fiction becomes outright “estrangement” in speculative hands. Stories such as Newman and Chiang’s reflect (on) what readers might be avoiding: that even though our future is fixed, we must act. We must behave as though our decisions matter, despite knowing the ways in which they do not.These works challenge Modernist concerns despite—or perhaps via—satisfying genre conventions, in direct contradiction to Roy Scranton’s conviction that “Narrative in the Anthropocene Is the Enemy”. In doing so they fit Miéville’s description of a “literature of estrangement” while also exemplifying a new, Anthropocene “literature of recognition” (Crown). These, then, are the stories of our life.What Is Not ExpectedChiang’s 2018 lecture was actually a PowerPoint presentation on how time travel could or would “really” work. His medium, as much as his message, clearly showed the author’s cross-disciplinary affiliations, which are relevant to this discussion of literary fiction’s “depleted” models. In August this year Xu Xi concluded a lecture on speculative fiction for the Vermont College of Fine Arts by encouraging attendees to read—and write—“other” languages, whether foreign forms or alien disciplines. She cited Chiang as someone who successfully raids the riches of non-literary traditions, to produce a new kind of literature. Writing that deals in physics, as much as characters, in philosophy, as much as narrative, presents new, “post-natural” (Bradley, “End”) retro-speculations that (in un- and super-natural generic traditions) offer a real alternative to Modernism’s narrative of inevitable—and inevitably positive—progress.In “What’s Expected of Us” Chiang imagines the possible consequence of comprehending that our actions, and not just their consequence, are predetermined. In what Oates describes as his distinctive, pared-back, “unironic” style (Oates, “Science Fiction”), Chiang concludes: “reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilisation now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has”. The self-deception we need is not America’s amnesia, but the belief that what we do matters.ConclusionThe visions of her “paraself” that Nat sees in “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom” encourage her to change her behaviour. The “prism” that enables this perception—a kind of time-tripped iPad that “skypes” alternate temporal realities, activated by people acting in different ways at a crucial moment in their lives—does not always reflect the butterfly effect the protagonist, or reader, might expect. Some actions have dramatic consequences while others have minimal impact. While Nat does not see her future, what she spies inspires her to take the first steps towards becoming a different—read “better”—person. We expect this will lead to more positive outcomes for her self in the story’s “first” world. The device, and Chiang’s tale, illustrates both that our paths are predetermined and that they are not: “our inability to predict the consequences of our own predetermined actions offers a kind of freedom”. The freedom to act, freedom from the coma of inaction.“What’s the use of art on a dying planet? What’s the point, when humanity itself is facing an existential threat?” Alison Croggon asks, and answers herself: “it searches for the complex truth … . It can help us to see the world we have more clearly, and help us to imagine a better one”. In literary thought experiments like Newman and Chiang’s artful time-travel fictions we read complex, metaphoric truths that cannot be put into real(ist) words. In the time-honoured tradition of (speculative) fiction, Chiang and Newman deal in, and with, “what cannot be said in words … in words” (Le Guin, “Introduction”). These most recent time-slip speculations tell unpredictable stories about what is predicted, what is predictable, but what we must (still) believe may not necessarily be—if we are to be free.ReferencesArrival. Dir. Dennis Villeneuve. Paramount Pictures, 2016.Albrecht, Glenn, et al. “Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change.” Australasian Psychiatry (Feb. 2007): 41–55. Atwood, Margaret. “The Road to Ustopia.” The Guardian 15 Oct. 2011 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/14/margaret-atwood-road-to-ustopia>.———. “It’s Not Climate Change, It’s Everything Change.” Medium 27 July 2015. <https://medium.com/matter/it-s-not-climate-change-it-s-everything-change-8fd9aa671804>.Bradley, James. “Writing on the Precipice: On Literature and Change.” City of Tongues. 16 Mar. 2017 <https://cityoftongues.com/2017/03/16/writing-on-the-precipice-on-literature-and-climate-change/>.———. “The End of Nature and Post-Naturalism: Fiction and the Anthropocene.” City of Tongues 30 Dec. 2015 <https://cityoftongues.com/2015/12/30/the-end-of-nature-and-post-naturalism-fiction-and-the-anthropocene/>.Bradley, James, and Jane Rawson. “Writing in the Age of Extinction.” Detached Performance and Project Space, The Old Mercury Building, Hobart. 27 July 2019.Chiang, Ted. Stories of Your Life and Others. New York: Tor, 2002.———. Exhalation: Stories. New York: Knopf, 2019.Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber. London: Gollancz, 1983. 69.Croggon, Alison. “On Art.” Overland 235 (2019). 30 Sep. 2019 <https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-235/column-on-art/>.Crown, Sarah. “What the Booker Prize Really Excludes.” The Guardian 17 Oct. 2011 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/oct/17/science-fiction-china-mieville>.Driscoll, Beth. The New Literary Middlebrow: Tastemakers and Reading in the Twenty-First Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.Erpenbeck, Jenny. Trans. Susan Bernofsky. The End of Days. New York: New Directions, 2016.Gelder, Ken. Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field. London: Routledge, 2014.Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. India: Penguin Random House, 2018.Le Guin, Ursula K. “Introduction.” The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace Books, 1979. 5.———. “Ursula K. Le Guin Talks to Michael Cunningham about Genres, Gender, and Broadening Fiction.” Electric Literature 1 Apr. 2016. <https://electricliterature.com/ursula-k-le-guin-talks-to-michael- cunningham-about-genres-gender-and-broadening-fiction-57d9c967b9c>.Miller-McDonald, Samuel. “What Must We Do to Live?” The Trouble 14 Oct. 2018. <https://www.the-trouble.com/content/2018/10/14/what-must-we-do-to-live>.Oates, Joyce Carol. Hazards of Time Travel. New York: Ecco Press, 2018.———. "Science Fiction Doesn't Have to be Dystopian." The New Yorker 13 May 2019. <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/13/science-fiction-doesnt-have-to-be-dystopian>.Prose, Francine. “Subject to Revision.” New York Times 26 Apr. 2003. <https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/books/review/life-after-life-by-kate-atkinson.html>.Robinson, Kim Stanley. “Kim Stanley Robinson and the Drowning of New York.” The Coode Street Podcast 305 (2017). <http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/the-coode-street-podcast/>.Russ, Joanna. “The Wearing Out of Genre Materials.” College English 33.1 (1971): 46–54.Scranton, Roy. “Narrative in the Anthropocene Is the Enemy.” Lithub.com 18 Sep. 2019. <https://lithub.com/roy-scranton-narrative-in-the-anthropocene-is-the-enemy/>.Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Walton, James. “Fascinating, Fearless, and Distinctly Odd.” The New York Review of Books 9 Jan. 2014: 63–64.Uhlmann, Anthony. “The Other Way, the Other Truth, the Other Life: Simpson Returns.” Sydney Review of Books. 2 Sep. 2019 <https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/macauley-simpson-returns/>. Xu, Xi. “Speculative Fiction.” Presented at the International MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Vermont, 15 Aug. 2019.