The ninth volume of The Funambulist Pamphlets that gathers and edits past articles of the blog about Science Fiction is now officially published by Punctum Books in collaboration with the Center for Transformative Media at Parsons The New School. You can either download the book as a PDF for free or order it online for the price of $7.00 or €6.00. Next volume to be published will be dedicated to literature. Click here to see the other volumes of The Funambulist Pamphlets.

I have to say that science fiction is a domain that I have not address for a relatively long time and when looking at the index, I cannot help but notice the strong influence of a specific type of science fiction written by Western male authors. I will try to diversify this vision in my future writings and, in the meantime, offer the Archipelago conversation I had with Sophia Azeb about the power of imagination — that includes a science fiction literature — for the Palestinian struggle. (see also this list on tor.com)

Thank you to Eileen Joy, Anna Klosowska, Ed Keller, Martin Byrne, Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Raja Shehadeh, Iker Gil, and Koldo Lus Arana.

Index of the Book

Introduction: When James Graham Ballard meets Philip K. Dick, what do they talk about?
01/ Science Fiction as an Inventor of Dilemmas: From Utopia to Apocalypse by Peter Paik
02/ 2037 by Raja Shehadeh
03/ Collision, Sexuality and Resistance
04/ Ballardian Landscapes: Desacralizing Thaumaturgic Modernity
05/ The Fouled Beauty of James Graham Ballard
06/ Letter to James Graham Ballard / April 14th 2009
07/ Psychotropic Houses by James Graham Ballard
08/ The Brutal Art of Enki Bilal
09/ The work of Philip K. Dick: Between Paranoia and Schizophrenia
10/ The Funambulist Papers 03 / Transcendent Delusion or; The Dangerous Free Spaces of Phillip K. Dick by Martin Byrne
11/ Untitled Narrative #002 (Feral Garage) by Martin Byrne
12/ Labyrinths and Other Metaphysical Constructions: Interview with Marc-Antoine Mathieu
13/ Overpopulated Cities / The Concentration City, Billennium, L’Origine & Soylent Green
14/ Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
15/ Never Let Me Go by Mark Romanek
16/ The Declamatory Porcelain Architectures of Serge Brussolo

The Funambulist

Its name is inspired by a wondering/wandering on the line as architects' medium. A line on the white page splits in reality two milieus from one another and organizes politically the bodies in space. The act of walking on the line (funambulist means tight-rope walker) is an act of subversion of the traditional role of the line/wall. This name also refers to Philippe Petit crossing illegally the space between the two towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 and the funambulist in Nietzsche's Zarathustra who is said to die peacefully as he succumbs from the danger to which he dedicated his life. 

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