What this project is about:
“They're semiotic phantoms, bits of deep cultural imagery that have split off and taken on a life of their own..." -Gibson, "The Gernsback Continuum" (31)
For quite a long time, I've been fascinated by the interplay between science fiction, aesthetics, and erotic culture, the very "semiotic phantoms" William Gibson referred to in the quote above. Aesthetics, being the study of beauty and appeal, are identifiable but hard to pin down and discuss academically due to their relationship with subjective elements like taste and trends. However, we all know "the look" or "the feel" of different literary genres - scifi has long had its own aesthetic language of shape, color, texture, and so on that we're all familar with. Think of that one shade of cool blue, or clean, minimalistic lines, or near-fetishistic body suits that abound in the genre, no matter what medium we're talking about.
Think now about eroticism. What is sexy? We all know when we see/hear/feel what we consider sexy as individuals but I'm not talking about personal preference here. I am talking about how erotic imagery and tropes are used as tools in scifi literature. Eroticism is so hard to objectively study but we all "know it when we see it". Eroticism works in a very similar sense to aesthetics - they may even be considered one but I'll pull them apart to keep organized.
Years ago, I tried to make all three of these ideas sit nicely in a single academic paper, but that still eludes me! However, I can't let this molder away in an old Google doc, so here we are. Sex Bomb is where I will be exploring these concepts and sharing resources for further study.
I've used short stories in creating Sex Bomb because 1) the genre more or less started in shorter forms (except Frankenstein, so don't complain, ok?) and 2) they're faster for me to read than whole novels. When you read enough short scifi work, you start to notice that different historical eras had unique visual/stylistic vocabulary that insinuated how the authors and the reading public felt about aesthetic and erotic signifiers.
In the box below, you'll find a roughly organized outline of questions I'll be exploring, links to resources, and even revised and updated bits of the original paper.