In this exciting seminar on the cognitive semiotics of science fiction, our long term collaborator Carlos Guzman, cguzman@bellasartes.edu.co, will present his recent research on a link from Colombia. All are warmly welcome to H402, or to the usual zoom link, see below (or to the right).

Science fiction as a narrative genre has been an object of study for linguists (Cheyne 2008), narratologists (Malmgren 1991) and sometimes it has been the topic of semiotic analysis (Angenot 1979). At the same time, signs and semiosis have become a recurring topic in science fiction stories, Sometimes revealing the difficulties of communication (Lem 1987,  MIeville 2011) and the effects of new technologies not only in society but on the nature of human beings (Sterling 1982).

My recent research focuses on the way that science fiction authors have incorporated ideas from the field of semiotics into their stories, particularly those related to embodied, enacted or extended cognitión. In this presentation, I refer to three specific cases: Neal Stephenson´s novel Snow Crash (1992) where the author links ancient Sumerian incantations - Nam-shubs - with computer neurolinguistic viruses that could damage, tweak or control the brains of the people inhabiting the Metaverse, a kind of virtual space. The second case is about the idea that signs and languages not only emerge from our embodied experience of the world but could also reshape the way our minds experience reality, as happens to the protagonist of Story of Your Life (Chiang 2002) when she learns to read the semagrams used by alien visitors. In the last case, I analyze a novel with the fascinating title of Semiosis (2018) where Sue Burke, writer and translator, steps on the shoes /roots/ of The Bamboo, an intelligent alien vegetal being as it studies and interacts with a small group of human colonizers that have crashed on its planet. Burke´s novel works as an excellent exercise of seeing the world from a non-human point of view and exploring how the body we inhabit defines how we generate meaning. 

The presentation is a summary of my recent work on science fiction narratives and how they can provide semioticians with some perspective about the role of semiotics in the analysis not only of current social and cultural phenomena but also to foresee the impacts that new technologies and discoveries might have in our cognitive processes on the near and far future.   

Angenot, M. (1979). The absent paradigm: An introduction to the semiotics of science fiction. Science Fiction Criticism 6.1. 9-19.

Burke, S. (2018). Semiosis (First edition). Tor.

Cheyne, R. (2008). Created Languages in Science Fiction. Science Fiction Studies, 35(3), 386–403. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25475175

Chiang, T. (2002). Stories of your life and others (First edition). Small Beer Press.

Lem, S. (1987). Fiasco (; M. Kandel, Trans.; First Harvest edition). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Miéville, C. (2011). Embassytown (1st U.S. ed). Ballantine Books.

Malmgren, C. D. (1991). Worlds apart: Narratology of science fiction. Indiana University Press.

Stephenson, N. (1992). Snow crash (Bantam pbk. ed). Bantam Books.

Sterling, B. (1982). Schismatrix plus. Ace Books.