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Understanding how to better engage young students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is essential. The constraints of U.S. K-12 schools (e.g. insufficient institutional supports, lack of technology access, testing pressures, etc.) often make it difficult to create truly engaging STEM curricula with which students can deeply identify. Educators currently have a unique opportunity to leverage resources that resonate with young people today, such as: science fiction, sci-fi movies, and sci-fi games; popular science media such as "National Geographic" and "Discovery Education"; and online communities and social-media platforms. This is a prime time for school library programs to link these forms of media and technology to science learning. The authors contend that school library programs are uniquely suited to lead innovative thinking about how to leverage these resources to help young people see the value of STEM in their everyday lives. For school library programs to function as bridges to these resources, many substantive questions must be addressed. How could school libraries structure educational programs, access to media resources, and curriculum to create engaging learning experiences for students? What would be the role of the school librarian in designing and implementing STEM-infused programs? To begin answering these questions, the authors report on the Sci-Dentity project launched in January 2012. Sci-Dentity is a project through which researchers at the University of Maryland are collaborating with school librarians to design ways to incorporate science storytelling, new-media literacies, and participatory culture to ignite students' interest in STEM. (Contains 3 figures.)

Creating memory during and after wartime trauma is vexed by state attempts to control public and private discourse. Science fiction author Iain Banks' novel "Look to Windward" proposes different ways of preserving memory and culture, from posthuman memory devices, to artwork, to architecture, to personal, local ways of remembering. (Contains 2 figures and 21 notes.)

Movies and news reports represent for many the first source of interaction with social robots. Congruently, as tools for the dissemination of popular representations of robots, movies can have a direct impact on public perception, acceptance, and discourse about this type of technology. In this article, a content analysis of popular movies and franchises involving (fictional) social robots was conducted (k = 34). With this analysis, we sought to understand a) the main tropes used in movies involving robotic characters, b) the type of human-robot relationships depicted in those movies, and c) how the fictional robots compared with real robots in terms of their abilities. The results suggest that robots tend to be typically depicted in a polarized way that either emphasizes their extreme social abilities or their violent and destructive motives, with the former being slightly more prevalent. As a result, the relations between humans and robots tend to be either friendship or antagonism. Fictional robots are often portrayed as having advanced technical abilities that allow them to navigate multiple complex social settings and engage in different occupations typically performed by humans, in contrast with the abilities held by the most popular commercially available robots we have today. Movies and news reports represent for many the first source of interaction with social robots. Social robots tend to be portrayed in a very polarized way. Recommendations for future research and robot development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firefly is a TV series that aired in 2002 and 2003 in the United States. The series belongs to the space western subgenre, which allies science fiction and western tropes by layering, in this case, a dystopian society, space travel, standoffs in desolate landscapes, and saloon brawls. This juxtaposition of genres is reflected in the language of Firefly's characters in three ways: world-specific slang, Chinese code-switching, and features evoking Southern American English. This study explores the latter, employing quantitative methods used in variationist sociolinguistics. Using a corpus of all episodes of the series and the film Serenity (2005), we show that features reminiscent of Southern varieties of English, specifically nasal fronting and the use of ain't, are stratified according to the social realities of the world of Firefly. Nonstandard linguistic variants are used to represent rebel smugglers as opposed to characters representing valued professions. This pattern contributes to world-building in Firefly by indexing divisions between the superpower-controlled territories and the recently settled edge of the universe. The use of realistically constrained Southern linguistic features draws upon present-day notions of linguistic (non)standardness to indicate marginality. Firefly therefore relies on its audience's linguistic knowledge of the real world to create its fictional one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay, "Language, Water, and Dance," offers a meditation on pandemic time by engaging with Native American histories in relation to Indigenous epistemologies and theories as well as recent events. Looking to Winter Counts and science fiction by Indigenous authors, this meditation suggests that how we think of time and reality are intimately linked to settler colonialism in the United States. The creative form of the essay mirrors the ways in which Indigenous writers and theorists describe time as a spiral rather than a linear progression of lived experience. Relationality and Dakotaness are at the center of the essay's stories of activism, performance, and survival. A discussion of the "Native slipstream" connects science fiction to the work of water protectors and the NoDAPL movement. The recordings of events through Winter Counts demonstrate how memory and history are collectively shared processes that were also linked to colonial pressures to assimilate Indigenous peoples living in the Plains during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, further suggesting that the first pandemic to impact Indian Country was a colonial one. Concluding with a brief reading from Cherie Dimaline's young-adult novel, The Marrow Thieves , suggests that as long as we can dream there is still hope for the world where being a good relative is at the center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview, Walidah Imarisha discusses the potential of visionary fiction for social transformation. She highlights the importance of science fiction as a space for imagination and mentions her collaboration with adrienne maree brown in the anthology "Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements". The author argues that visionary fiction should be anticapitalist and without hierarchy, and that action is necessary to create emancipated futures. The anthology has had a significant impact on the social justice movement in the United States. Imarisha also emphasizes the importance of listening to and valuing the leadership of the most vulnerable people during the pandemic, and emphasizes the need to imagine and work towards creating fairer futures. She discusses the importance of visionary fiction as a tool for reimagining the past and shaping the present and future, and highlights the need to recognize and connect with the experiences of non-white people, especially black people. Imarisha also emphasizes the importance of creating independent spaces of information and knowledge, where communities can write their own stories. [Extracted from the article]

Transcultural psychiatry has increased awareness of alternative approaches to mental health and wellbeing, influencing developments in Western psychotherapeutic treatments. In this article, I look at the recent interest in alternative therapies by the U.S. military, which has explored the possibilities of lucid dreaming in order to help soldiers cope with the adverse mental and emotional effects of combat—commonly referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In this context of concerns about effective rehabilitation and the cost of veteran care, I examine the popular science fiction films Avatar and Inception, which have been discussed in the media as illustrations of the potential use of lucid dreaming and digitally created virtual worlds to "heal" the minds of soldiers affected by modern warfare. In these media portrayals, psychology and science fiction come together to envision and promote human-machine fantasies of the endlessly salvageable and, therefore ultimately, invincible American soldier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since September 11, 2001, most expert commentary on radiological weapons has focused on nonstate actors, to the neglect of state-level programs. In fact, numerous countries in the past have expressed interest in radiological weapons; a number have actively pursued them; and three tested them on multiple occasions before ultimately deciding not to deploy the weapons. Why is so little known about these false starts, especially outside the United States? Are such weapons more difficult to manufacture than depicted by science-fiction authors and military pundits? Are radiological weapons a thing of the past, or do they remain an attractive option for some countries? A comparative analysis of the previously underexplored cases of radiological weapons programs in the United States and the Soviet Union illuminates the drivers and limitations of weapons innovation in one specific nuclear sector. An examination of the rise and demise of radiological weapons programs in both countries also points to circumstances in the future that might prompt renewed interest on the part of some states in radiological weapons and proposes steps that might be undertaken to reduce the possibility of their production, deployment, and use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues the early science fiction television programme, Captain Video and His Video Rangers (DuMont, 1949–1955), addressed its young target audience directly as Cold War citizens, while encouraging them to undertake imaginative play in a form of early television fandom. The moral panic about the programme's perceived high levels of violence led to the negative portrayal of its young viewers in popular culture. Yet Captain Video 's modes of direct address reveal a concerted effort to constitute the early children's television audience around a playful intertextuality, bringing together consumerism, Cold War ideology and imaginative multi-genre engagement through child's play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peruvian-American filmmaker Alex Rivera uses film and webbased media to document immigrant life in the U.S. and the network of transnational connections that result from displacement. Rivera's web-based documentaries, themselves subversive uses of technology, critique neoliberalism and the hyper-vigilance and violence under which we live while also pointing to the creativity, ingenuity, and technological savvy of the 21st century clandestine migrant to invent ever new forms of resistance. This study situates Rivera's 2008 feature-length film, Sleep Dealer, in the context of U.S.-Mexico border films and the current trend in antiglobalization, digitally mediated activism. Radical action happens in Sleep Dealer as a result of technological advances that create solidarity between people of vastly different, but interconnected, social, political and geographical positions. Rivera's work disrupts the image of the undocumented immigrant, bringing it more in line with the 21st century realities that inspire us all to get connected and fight, take part in the global coalitions working for justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the relationship between participants' childhood science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related experiences, their STEM identity (i.e., seeing oneself as a STEM person), and their college career intentions. Whereas some evidence supports the importance of childhood (i.e., K‐4) informal STEM education experiences, like participating in science camps, existing research does not adequately address their relationship to STEM career intention later in life. Grounding our work in identity research, we tested the predictive power of STEM identity on career intention (N = 15,847). We found that for every one‐point higher on our STEM identity scale, participants' odds of choosing a STEM career in college increased by 85%. We then tested whether a variety of childhood informal experiences predicted participants' STEM identity. While controlling for home environment, gender, and other relevant factors, only talking with friends and family about science, and consuming science and science‐fiction media (i.e., books and television) were predictive of STEM identity in college. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, I discovered Saga, a graphic novel series that chronicles a science fiction story of war, family, and forbidden love. This series resonated with me because it is the first piece of pop culture that I invested in with a leading character whose racial identity is similar to my own. I discovered three multiracial characters in different forms of media set within the United States: Lincoln Clay from the videogame Mafia III, Lara Jean Covey from the movie To All the Boys I've Loved Before, and Miles Morales from Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man. As both a student affairs professional and a multiracial individual, I use current literature on the multiracial experience in the United States and multiracial identity development theories from my field as a lens to analyze these characters and how I see aspects of my identity in their stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radio listeners recognize a monster when they hear one, basing their imaginings on information they receive aurally. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, aliens, and various creatures are adapted for radio from the pages of classic horror and science fiction tales written by Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Sheridan Le Fanu, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant, H.G. Wells, H.P. Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury. Radio, an aural medium, relies on sound and description and, therefore, is ideal for horror. For the audience, listening to the radio is a subjective experience. The listener fills in the details and is free to conjure the monster in the imagination. This article explores the monster in a selection of American radio horror and science fiction programs that aired between the 1930s and 1950s and poses two questions: how does radio aurally render the monster for listeners and how does radio aurally convey horror? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyses how this discourse of science fiction quality was created in the early 1990s through newspaper critics’ writings about Quantum Leap, Star Trek: The Next Generation and The X-Files. Nine categories of quality – positive or negative evaluations of the science fiction programmes – arise in the discourse, often using categories independent of or in opposition to genre as quality markers. These strategies make transparent the active process of legitimation within this particular historical moment, pushing the genre construction in relation to quality beyond The Twilight Zone and Star Trek as lone exemplars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholars have long considered the relationship between genre and Black film production, less is known about African American directors’ participation in contemporary Hollywood film genres, especially the spaces where they are least included. An examination of post-2000 Hollywood films reveals that Black directors are routinely underrepresented in the most financially lucrative film genre, science fiction, and are therefore denied the success that comes with it. The underrepresentation of Black directors in the science fiction genre operates in dialogue with racialized ideological discourses about the place of African Americans in U.S. society—stereotyping them out of intellectual cultures. Race-bound practices of marginalization in science fiction films, and thereby top franchises, also impedes Black directors’ ability to attain the highest levels of economic success in the Hollywood film industry. Both outcomes present material and symbolic barriers for the complete inclusion of African Americans in contemporary media institutions and in U.S. society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through this article, we examine the history and conventions of copaganda in the United States, and critically consider how HBO's Watchmen has responded to and represented the historical relationship between policing and white supremacy. We argue that while Watchmen works to explicitly critique the history of white supremacist violence in US policing, the show reproduces several copaganda conventions. Watchmen depicts central law enforcement characters who commit violence as heroes, uplifts the main police character as an eventually almighty arbiter of justice, portrays white supremacist law enforcement characters as anomalous individual infiltrators (a.k.a. "bad apples"), and was created in collaboration with various members of law enforcement. After presenting this case study in contemporary copaganda, we consider how science fiction series can more meaningfully respond to the movement for police and prison abolition through representing abolitionist futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science fiction authors have long projected the future of technology, including communication devices and the way in which future societies may use them. These visions of future technology, and their implications on the future of media law and policy, are explored in three areas in particular – copyright, privacy and the First Amendment. Themes examined include moving toward massively open copyright systems, problems of perpetual surveillance by the state, rights of obscurity in public places threatened by wearable and implantable computing devices, and free speech rights of autonomous machines created by humans. The essay concludes with a rebuttal to recent critics of legal scholarship by suggesting the value in exploratory, forward-looking research that examines the problems judges and policymakers may be addressing in the near and distant future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An interview with science fiction author Laurence Van Cott Niven in the U.S. is presented. He discusses how long it takes for him to finish writing the short story "Draco Tavern" and the time he spent on research and preparation, as well as editing. Niven describes his research process in writing the short story and reveals that he read several resources such as anthropological studies, cultural guides, and nature research. He also shares that he has not done any scientific studies.

Samuel R. Delany is among a group of authors who revivified the utopian imagination in science fiction during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This article discusses Delany's novella "We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line" (1968). It revisits scholarship on Delany and on utopia to offer theoretical and historical perspectives concerning how this text, which has been lauded by reviewers but over- looked by scholars, represents an early contribution to the then-nascent genre of the "critical utopia," one that bears many of the genre's hallmarks and prefigures later works. "We, in Some Strange Power's Employ" narrates a mid-twenty-first-century clash between two fully articulated utopian visions. This article details how the tension between these diametrically opposed "worlds" foments critical scrutiny of both in order to gesture toward a utopian horizon beyond them. It also demonstrates how Delany's novella performs a critical utopian intervention in the cultural politics of its present. Through the "play of worlds" in the narrative's "possible future" Delany advances evenhanded critiques of both sides of the 1960s "culture war" while retaining the decade's utopian zeitgeist, a desire for an impossible "something else" beyond the culture/counterculture dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the humor of American writer Kurt Vonnegut. The author argues that Vonnegut should not be classified as a black humorist because he had a sense of compassion in his comedy. He discusses Vonnegut's background in writing science fiction, explores his work writing for magazines, and analyzes several his book "The Sirens of Titan." He examines how Vonnegut was able to incorporate elements of sadness into his humor and describes the impact his comic parables had on American culture.

The article discusses different publishing scenarios for the future in the U.S. It he quotes science fiction writer William Gibson which says that the future is already here but is not evenly distributed. It looks at what is happening in the world of publishing. It explores what innovations and trends might look like in the future It also provides examples from innovators and trendsetters in the publishing world and describes overarching trends to watch.

This article traces the critical reception of Kurt Vonnegut's novels from the earliest reviews that detected the thematic inventiveness and narrative innovations of a wrongly neglected science-fiction hack to the recent monographs that analyze Vonnegut's œuvre as a major contribution to 20th-century U.S. fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented which discusses various reports within the issue on topics including women's roles in the 1950s U.S., science fiction, and women in the hospitality industry.

The article offers the author's insights on the reconstruction of the foreign relations between Europe and America in post September 2011 terrorist attack via political and literary discourses. The author discusses the spatial and temporal constructions of the two continents in six French texts. She also talks on anti-Americanism, the symbolic part played by the Statue of Liberty on the so-called American neo-fundamentalism, and science fiction.

Within the "Risk Communication Research", this article explores risk messages of the TV series Heroes (NBC, 2006-), paradigm of the science fiction television post 11-S. With a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodology, threats and dangers of the first season are analyzed and a characterization of the post-modern archetype of the "traumatized hero" is given. Together with a big apocalyptic danger, this TV series has risks which come from the circle of trust of the protagonists. This article will underline how the main protagonists show heroic attitudes to face these dangers, but it essential struggle is against their own fears and traumas in a context of total distrust towards the society as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes the case for the importance of Philip K. Dick's mainstream or realist works of the late 1950s in understanding Dick's orientation as a writer and as an interpreter of American life. Analyzing four of Dick's mainstream works, I suggest that the dread that pervades and characterizes Dick's writing is rooted in the anxieties of the white, mid-twentieth-century, American lower-middle class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented offering a literary critique of the works and philosophy of the 20th-century American author Ward Moore. Focus is given to Moore's alternative history novel "Bring the Jubilee," which re-depicts the world history after the U.S. Civil War as if the Confederate States had won their independence. Commentary is also given noting Moore's political philosophy seen within his work.

This article uses the U.S. reception of Japanese animation, or anime, to explore the impact of cultural globalization within the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. It introduces historians to the medium of anime, describing the transpacific appeal of several representative texts from the period. Anime exhibited characteristics that made it both Japanese and global, yet it also reproduced Western racial and gender hierarchies, allowing it to cross borders easily. The second half of the article discusses the creation of local anime fan communities throughout the United States beginning in 1977. These communities socialized locally in fan clubs, connected nationally at conventions and through networks of science-fiction fans, and participated in the construction of transnational cultural identities. Examples of underground anime literature illustrate how fan's envisioned their local, national, and transnational communities. The article concludes with suggestions for rethinking U.S. cultural relations in the postwar era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2005, three U.S. television networks launched science fiction shows about alien invasion that commented critically on conditions in the United States after 9/11. Although their close alignment with films from the 1950s limited the efficiency of their critique, their conservative context re-situated them as moderately oppositional texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented discussing the works of U.S. women science fiction writer C.L. Moore with particular reference to her short story "No Woman Born". It analyzes Moore's work and states that her writings depicts the social problems of gender inequality and disability prevalent in the American society during the World War II. The author states that the short story revolves around the rehabilitation of men soldiers wounded during the war.

The article offers information on the assigned project titled Design Your Own Disease in a second-semester biochemistry course in the U.S. requiring students to design a disease based on the discussed information in the course. It mentions the application of concepts regarding metabolic regulation, biochemical pathways, and disease processes in using the assignment to teach biochemistry. It talks about approaches used in teaching metabolism including the use of biochemical pathways against the intelligent design theory, the use of science fiction to stimulate imagination when taking up thermodynamics, and the use of xenobiotics detoxification to link biochemistry and physiology.

Two different perspectives on the immigrant struggles are found in a documentary about the radio and television program The Goldbergs and a science fiction thriller about the treatment of an immigrant alien community. Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg is optimistic and celebrates the achievements of an established ethnic community in America and the woman who conceived and implemented the idea for the show. District 9, excites and terrifies with an imaginary future ethnic catastrophe. A third movie, Amreeka, deals with an ethnic immigrant drama of the present, neither sentimental about past ethnic struggles nor frightening about future disasters. It is, therefore, the most unsettling and least amusing of the three, in spite of its conventional upbeat ending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Science Board and others are concerned that movies often miscommunicate science to the public with negative effects on science literacy and attitudes toward science. However, very little is known about the specific impact of movie science on audiences. This experiment examines the influence of narrative transportation, role of science within the movie, and gender of the viewer on evaluation of incorrect scientific information in fiction. Results show that incorrect science facts accepted as true after seeing identical segments from movies depend on the gender of the participant and a manipulation of the perceived centrality of science to the plot. Men tended to detect more inaccurate science facts when they thought science was central to the plot. Women detected more inaccurate science facts when they thought science was peripheral to the plot, which was presented as a relational story. The results may have implications for research on media effects, public understanding of science, and gender differences in learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]