1
Historical Future as Semiotic Ghosts

• William Gibsons The Gernsback Continuum
• As a Meta-fictional Sci-fi

2
Outline

• Gibson on history and sci-fi
• Questions
• Re-Visiting the Futuristic Past as Exotic and
  Simulated
• Meanings of the 30s 40s
• Interpretation of the Photographers Vision
• The way out.
• Metafictional Messages
• Gibson on the Post-Human

3
William Gibson on History

• . . .history, . . .is the ultimate in
  speculative narrative, subject to ongoing
  revision.
• Science fiction tends to behave like a species of
  history pointing in the opposite direction, up
  the timeline rather than back.
• Gernsback Continuum turns backward to a future
  that didnt exist physically, but exists as
  semiotic ghost.

4
Starting Questions

• How has history been discussed by postmodern
  texts?
• What makes the appearance of the future of the
  past in this story possible?
• What does the past (and its future) as semiotic
  ghost mean? What does it reflect on sci-fi
  itself?
• How does the narrator get out of his vision of
  the past?

5
The Past Exoticized Simulated

• Architecture layers of history around us,
  re-interpreted in daily lives, but fetishized in
  photos.
• Dialta Downes a pop-art historian p. 25 This
  way lies madness.
• British mania for a uniquely American form of
  architecture (American Streamlined Moderne
  Barris-Watford project) p. 25
• The past recycled first in the 50sas time
  fillers.
• Photographer They decide, I shoot 24 p. 27
  photograph what isnt there.

6
The 30s 40smeanings?

• P, 26 beginning of industrial design
• Traces left in the present? Segments of a dream
  world ignored in the present time p. 26
• Populist 27 Totalitarian 27 tacky --carries
  with it "a kind of totalitarian dignity, like the
  stadiums Albert Speer built for Hitler.

7
Traces of Futurism
Dime store ???????? Fluted aluminum p. 25
Movie marquee
this Coca Cola Bottling Plant p. 28
8
Johnson Wax Building FRANK R. PAUL's

Image source 1 2
9
Futurist Vision (2) Jules Vernes airship

• Futurist -- Jules Verne a French 19th-c sci-fi
  writer

Slip-stream chrome p. 28
10
Traces in the presentGas Stations

• Ming the Merciless is a fictional character
  appearing in the Flash Gordon comic strip.
• The capital of his empire is named Mongo in his
  honour. p. 28

11
From Traces to Vision

• The way he shoots architecture p. 27 ? p. 29
  penetrated a fine membrane of probability
• A journalists interpretation people see things
  
• (1) drug and hallucination p. 29
• (2) contactee stories framed in sci-fi imagery
  (e.g. a woman who gets assaulted by a bear head)
  
• (3) semiotic ghost 31 fragments of the Mass Dream

12
Vision of a City p. 33

• Spire on spire
• ziggurat (pyramidal structure) ? Blade Runner
• Wing-liner ??
• Gyrocopter
• a perfect, blond, blue-eyed young couple
  materialize in the Arizona desert 34 -- "all the
  sinister fruitiness of Hitler Youth propaganda."

13
His Way out of it

• Exorcising with bad media 35
• Watches a movie with eyes shut
• Leaves Los Angeles
• News about nuclear energy crisis p. 36
• TV helps a lot p. 24 beginning as ending vision
  dismissed to the corner of the eye
• What does all this mean?

14
Sci-fi presents

• A possible future world
• As signs, it becomes part of peoples collective
  unconscious
• Some people may live in this world.
• Whatever happens, the present worldpresented
  thru media--is still better.
• Gernsback Continuumnot temporal continuum, but
  spatial or semiotic continuum (a conceptual
  space, an alternative universe that exists
  alongside our own - and occasionally intersects
  with our 'real' world (source).

15
Gibson on the Post-Human

• From No Maps for These Territories
• Humans so mixed with and influenced by
  technologies that we are not aware of it.
• They change our concept of time and geography.
• No humans nowadays are not mediated.