As I read Morton’s account of his childhood engagement with space flight, I thought of my own, when my personal imaginary met world history, though I certainly didn’t think in those terms at the time. In pursuing Morton’s childhood, I’m not attempting to shoehorn <i>Spacecraft</i> into old-fashioned biographical criticism whereby one seeks to explain a text by finding its secrets in the author’s autobiography. It’s part of the story he’s telling, one common to many children whose imagination has been fired with visions of space travel. It’s a story born of a specific cultural imaginary common among children of the last decades of the previous century … <i>Spacecraft</i>, then, is a vehicle in which Morton meditates on futurality. The <i>Millennium Falcon</i>, along with hyperspace, is at the center of this meditation.

3 Quarks Daily

Morton is the punk rock sci-fi geek artist philosopher of Now. In prose as precise and freewheeling as one of their flights-of-fancy spacecraft, this book takes us on a journey of the mind through the hyperspace of pop-culture and high thought, because It Is All Connected Can’t You See? I started reading this and lost a day but gained a light year.

Max Borenstein, screenwriter of Godzilla vs. Kong

This is a brilliantly provoking book about why spacecraft are not at all the same as spaceships, and how imaginary objects can transform our thinking. Morton offers an exuberant, acute, compact, and luminously uplifting guide to the ways in which human society might become a whole lot more progressive in the coming centuries.

Nicholas Royle, author of Veering: A Theory of Literature

Science fiction is filled with spacecraft. On Earth, actual rockets explode over Texas while others make their way to Mars. But what are spacecraft, and just what can they teach us about imagination, ecology, democracy, and the nature of objects? Why do certain spacecraft stand out in popular culture?

If ever there were a spacecraft that could be detached from its context, sold as toys, turned into Disney rides, parodied, and flit around in everyone’s head—the Millennium Falcon would be it. Springing from this infamous Star Wars vehicle, Spacecraft takes readers on an intergalactic journey through science fiction and speculative philosophy, revealing real-world political and ecological lessons along the way. In this book Timothy Morton shows how spacecraft are never mere flights of fancy.

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Introduction: Ships and Craft
1. Garbage
2. Winnings
3. Luck
4. Lounge
5. Hyperspace
6. Anyone
Index

Explores the human fascination with spacecraft, both real and imagined.
The Object Lessons series, published in association with The Atlantic, explores the hidden lives of ordinary things and shows how everyday objects can teach us about ourselves and the modern world
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Object Lessons is a series of concise, collectable, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Each book starts from a specific inspiration: an historical event, a literary passage, a personal narrative, a technological innovation—and from that starting point explores the object of the title, gleaning a singular lesson or multiple lessons along the way. Featuring contributions from writers, artists, scholars, journalists, and others, the emphasis throughout is lucid writing, imagination, and brevity. Object Lessons paints a picture of the world around us, and tells the story of how we got here, one object at a time.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781501375804
Publisert
2021-10-14
Utgiver
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Vekt
136 gr
Høyde
164 mm
Bredde
120 mm
Dybde
14 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
144

Forfatter

Biografisk notat

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University, USA. They are the author of 16 books, including Being Ecological (2018) and Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (2017), and 200 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food. www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com @the_eco_thought