Frank and Stein : from research scientist to creative writer (a screenplay and exegesis)

The screenplay, “Perfect Blood” (Frank and Stein), is the first two-hour episode of a two-part television miniseries Frank and Stein. This creative work is a science fiction story that speculates on the future of Western nations in a world where petroleum is scarce. A major theme that has been explored in the miniseries is the tension between the advantages and dangers of scientific progress without regard to human consequences. “Perfect Blood” (Frank and Stein) was written as part of my personal creative journey, which has been the transformation from research scientist to creative writer. In the exegetical component of this thesis, I propose that a key challenge for any scientist writing science fiction is the shift from conducting empirical research in a laboratory-based situation to engaging in creative practice research. During my personal creative journey, I found that a predominant difficulty in conducting research within a creative practice-led paradigm was unleashing my creativity and personal viewpoint, practices that are frowned upon in scientific research. The aim of the exegesis is to demonstrate that the transformative process from science to art is not neat and well-structured. My personal creative journey was fraught with many ‘wrong’ turns. However, after reflecting on the experience, I realise that every varied piece of research that I undertook allowed me to progress to the next stage, the next draft of Frank and Stein. And via the disorder of the creative process, a screenplay finally emerged that was both structured and creative, which are equally essential elements in screenwriting.

Terraforming: Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in Science Fiction /

Terraforming is the process of making other worlds habitable for human life. This book asks how science fiction has imagined how we shape both our world and other planets and how stories of terraforming reflect on science, society and environmentalism.

Science fiction

Few science fiction films have been made in Australia by Australians for Australian audiences, with most of the handful of locally-produced films made since the mid-1990s. Yet there has always been a solid Australian audience for non-Australian science fiction films and a strong international niche audience for the genre. While Australia has provided below-the-line crews and heads of departments (cinematographers, production designers, and so on) for many non-Australian science fiction films produced domestically, few Australian film directors have specialised in the genre. This is somewhat surprising considering that Alex Proyas achieved a degree of international success for his gothic science fiction film Dark City (1998), and George Miller achieved international fame following the worldwide success of Mad Max II (1981). Although the science fiction element of Mad Max II is tenuous – and even more so in the case of the original Mad Max (George Miller, 1979) – Miller is credited with creating a new (sub)genre which incorporates science fiction elements and has been widely imitated internationally: the dystopian, post-apocalyptic movie. Nevertheless, Australia has only produced a small number of science fiction movies. In addition to the above films, key titles include: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (George Miller, 1985), Shirley Thompson versus the Aliens (Jim Sharman, 1972), The Time Guardian (Brian Hannant, 1987), The Chain Reaction (Ian Barry, 1980) and, more recently, Knowing (Alex Proyas, 2009), Daybreakers (Michael and Peter Spierig, 2009), and Iron Sky (Timo Vuorensola, 2012).

Deletions and other pleasures : Episode 1: The pleasures of science fiction

"Christy Dena’s online-remix-narrative takes iconic images of popular culture and builds with them a strange world where the human fallibility is programmatically deleted. Both dystopic and playful, Dena’s work is an ironic reimagining of pleasure as a state of robotic flatlining, using tropes of science fiction to critique processes of social normalisation and increasing alienation from emotionality." This creative response began as a completely different story and form. What excited me in the end was the concept of deletion and how it could be an interesting mechanic: where the only thing you can do in the world is delete. I thought about deleting parts of robots to make them better. Healing comes from taking away, from removing things. Memories of Joseph Weizenbaum’s chatbot ELIZA came flooding back: where the (human) player is a patient talking to a Rogerian psychotherapist. But in this work I’m switching the roles and making the player the doctor, a doctor to robots…a doctor that can only prescribe deletions. I conceived of the work as a branching narrative, and started writing it in Twine. With every robot patient, the player chose one of many deletions. But when I realised I wouldn’t be able to arrange an artist and sound designer I looked for another option. I played with Zeega and felt that I could get the mood I was after with that platform. So the piece transformed into a work where the player/viewer is imprisoned in the decisions of the deleting protagonist…which has its own effect on the experience and meaning.

Mixed reality stories: How creative writers integrate virtual and physical realities

Mixed reality stories (MRS) unfold simultaneously in the physical and the virtual world. Advancements in digital technologies, which are now able to capture more contextual information about our physical environments, are enabling novel ways of blending the two worlds. To explore the process of creating stories from this perspective, we conducted a study with creative writers, in which we asked them to write a MRS script for outdoor running. While we saw instances of intentional connections between physical and virtual worlds in their work, we also observed the use of ambiguity or even deliberate contradiction with available contextual information. In this paper we discuss how these approaches can be beneficial for MRS and propose directions for future work.

Prometheus on Mars: Nineteenth-Century Science Fiction and the Language of Romanticism

The development of astrophysics in the nineteenth century drew mankind closer to the planets. For the first time, it was possible to give serious scientific consideration to the possibilities for life on other planets. The greatest leap, however, was in recognizing what was not known, and acknowledging the limits of human intuition. ‘Ideas,’ wrote Agnes M. Clerke, ‘have all at once become plastic’. As the scientific community tested the limits of scientific understanding, it became the role of science-fiction writers to imagine the universe beyond these limits. This paper will examine the ways in which nineteenth-century science fiction used the inheritance of the poetic language of Romanticism to reinstate the centrality of human being in the universe. I will explore the ways in which writers such as Edward Bulwer-Lytton (The Coming Race, 1871) and W. S. Lach-Szyrma (Aleriel, 1883) extended the Byronic hero to envisage extra-terrestrial utopias. The Hegelian systematic mythology described by Byron and Shelley had reimagined paradise and redemption on earth. Through science fiction, this mythology extended out towards the stars. A discourse on the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life became a Romantic discourse on the possibilities of being. The Byronic hero could now find a home not by escaping the shackles of religion, but as an angelic citizen of Venus or Mars. In this way, the paper will explore how science-fiction writers appropriated the language of Romantic poetry to build a bridge between the framework of scientific knowledge and the extent of human imagination.

Unleashing creative writers : situated engagement with mobile narratives

The emergence of sophisticated multimedia phones in combination with improvements to the mobile Internet provides the possibility to read texts and stories on mobile handsets. However, the question is, how to adapt stories in order to take advantage of the user’s mobility and create an engaging and appealing experience. To address these new conditions, a Mobile Narrative was created and access to individual chapters of the story was restricted. Authors can specify constraints, such as a location or time, which need to be met by the reader if they want to read the story. This concept allows creative writers of the story to exploit the fact that the reader’s context is known, by intensifying the user experience and integrating this knowledge into the writing process. Interviews with authors and creative writers and two user studies explored the effects of this way of writing on both parties. The paper presents our preliminary research findings discussing this new experience that was found to be exciting and interesting by both sides.

Point of no return : exploring katabatic narrative and deterritorialisation in the Australian outback novel

This thesis consists of the novel Brolga and an exegesis examining in what ways the ideas of katabasis and deterritorialisation inform an understanding of descent narratives in contemporary Australian outback fiction. When writing the creative piece, it was observed that Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey was an imprecise model for my manuscript and indeed for many of the contemporary novels I had read written in similar outback settings. On analysis a better fit lies in the idea of a heroic journey from which there is no clear return from the underworld. This narrative form is defined in this thesis as a katabatic narrative. To unpack this narrative trope, the inverse of territoriality, deterritorialisation, is used as a lens to examine the complex thematic and symbolic resonances of the outback in both Brolga and analogous works of contemporary outback fiction.

The importance of science fiction and other STEM-related mass media in young people’s decisions to enrol in university STEM courses

This paper presents Australian results from the Interests and Recruitment in Science (IRIS) study with respect to the influence of STEM-related mass media, including science fiction, on students’ decisions to enrol in university STEM courses. The study found that across the full cohort (N=2999), students tended to attribute far greater influence to science-related documentaries/channels such as Life on Earth and the Discovery Channel, etc. than to science-fiction movies or STEM-related TV dramas. Males were more inclined than females to consider science fiction/fantasy books and films and popular science books/magazines as having been important in their decisions. Students taking physics/astronomy tended to rate the importance of science fiction/fantasy books and films higher than students in other courses. The implications of these results for our understanding of influences on STEM enrolments are discussed.