Anarres Project

In this episode of Conversations on Anarres, we speak with New York Times Best Selling author, Dr. Una McCormack. She has written over twenty science fiction novels, many of which are franchise novels that tie into the Star Trek, Firefly, and Dr. Who universes. We talk about how she prepares for writing her work and why she appreciates science fiction.

Dr. McCormack, however, has a deep appreciation for the Star Trek Universe. We discuss what makes this franchise so important in terms of the values it holds up as important for the future of humanity. Star Trek has always portrayed a hopeful vision of the future grounded in diversity, cooperation, and reason. We talk about why these matter and how they help us to analyze the world in which we live today.

We also discuss how the third era of Star Trek, NuTrek, continues to uphold these kinds of values through the series of Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds.

In this Conversation on Anarres, we speak with Dr. David Seitz about his new book A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of Deep Space Nine.

We talk about how Star Trek came to be part of his academic research project and why Deep Space Nine captured his imagination as a way to talk about radical politics in the world today.

Our conversation touches on how DS9 is important for the way it is infused by themes from the US Black Freedom Struggle (partly as a result of the influence of Avery Brooks) and has lessons to teach us about colonialism, politics of occupation in the world today (particularly about the developments in Palestine), and queer identity.

In this episode of Conversations on Anarres, we talk with Matilda Bickers, the co-editor of a new anthology, "Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex" (PM Press, 2023), which is a collection of reflections by sex workers on the nature of their labor. She explains how she got into this form of advocacy and what similarities sex work has to other forms of labor under capitalism. Given those overlaps, we then discuss what it means for sex workers to struggle for their rights and how others can demonstrate solidarity with sex workers as part of a labor movement focused on the rights and dignity of all workers. To find out more about Bickers' work, contact her organization StrollPDX: @strollpdx on Instagram.

In this episode of TrekWars@OSU, we consider the sci-fi, fantasy, and other speculative fiction that helped us to imagine futures free of domination, exploitation, war, and empire. Our discussion panel included: Joseph Orosco, co-director of the Anarres Project; Randall Millstein, Robyn Morris, and Kaja Gjelde. Each of them mentioned their favorite choices from 2023, their runner ups, and what they look forward to in 2024. Some themes that emerged: a lot of stories focused on collective struggle and liberation from empire, a lot of emphasis on the psychology of fascism and the distrust of institutions. How do we build solidarity when there is so much loss of faith in our governing bodies and institutions? Lots of great narratives suggested paths forward.

In this episode of Conversations on Anarres, we talk to Avery Jade, one of the organizers of the Really, Really Free Market in Corvallis, Oregon. The Really, Really Free Market movement is a global movement that creates space for mutual aid--making clothes, toiletries, literature, and other necessities available for free. We discuss the inspiration for the Market, how it has expanded, what role anarchism plays in the working of the group, and what obstacles the Market has faced in few years of organizing.

Christian Matheis presents the keynote presentation for The Word for World is Forest Symposium, honoring the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ursula Le Guin's anti-war novella.  

This talk was given in October 2022.  It is entitled "Devious as Nerves: Teaching the Fine Balance of Reason and Dream."

Image:  Eileen Dunn

In this presentation from the October 2022 symposium honoring the 50th anniversary of Ursula K. Le Guin's novella, Sean MacCracken examines the way Le Guin depicts the colonialism of her intergalactic federation in the Hainish series and what lessons we might take for our political organizing today.  He describes his talk:

In the six-part documentary , Capitalism, David Graeber reflects on the historical question of the colonial world-empire, and why Western Europe was the first to “achieve” it, contending that this is really the wrong question. Many societies, he reflects, such as China, could have done so, though it wouldn’t occur to them to, say, depopulate entire continents in search of gold and silver. Racial capitalism has a forerunner in colonial conquest, itself a form of high-stakes venture capitalism. Though within the wide framework of human possibility such colonial action is in fact the exception rather than the rule.

By what mental sickness is such colonial action permissible and even laudable by some, where it would be abhorrent to others? In the Word for World is Forest, Le Guin imparts one of her bleakest tales in the history of her richly imagined interstellar society, the League of All Worlds, as a remote colonial project brutalizes a planet’s indigenous inhabitants, with tragic results. A recurring theme in Le Guin’s rich anthropology-infused imaginings is that of an unsettling encounter between mutually incommensurate forms of social organization. What my presentation teases out from that theme is the varied channels of communication portrayed in LeGuin’s novella, and some of their explanatory potency for present day work in direction action and dual power movement-building.

Within the intimate scale of political action at a local, municipalist level, I argue that present-day reactionary extremism, toxic masculinity, and violence are as much the product of communication’s lack as they are the product of active recruitment. LeGuin’s lines of communication here serve as fictive symbols for that precarious lack—whether communication by dreams, by radio, or by ansible.

Highlights from our symposium in October 2022, honoring the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ursula K. Le Guin's anti-war novella, The Word for World is Forest.

In this episode, Ben Nadler discusses the possibility of dreaming as a radical and collective act of liberation.  He says:

"I am interested in exploring the ways in which dreaming can be understood as a collective act, rather than an individual one. In these explorations, I will draw on Robin D.G. Kelley’s concept of “freedom dreaming,” Saidiya Hartman’s concept of “critical fabulation,” and Abraham J. Heschel’s understanding of “prophecy.” Further, I will connect the practice of dreaming in The Word for World Is Forest to the practice of speculative fiction writing, as expressed by authors such as Nalo Hopkinson, Margaret Killjoy, and Le Guin herself. Ultimately, I hope to advocate for dreaming, imagining, and storytelling as forms of mutual aid."

Highlights from our symposium in October 2022, honoring the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ursula K. Le Guin's anti-war novella, The Word for World is Forest.

In this episode, Christopher Loughlin discusses Le Guin's Hainish Cycle, in conjunction with Jacques Ranciere's aesthetic and political philosophy, to discuss the meaning of solidarity and visibility.  How might art be thought of as a tool of class struggle?

The Word for World is Forest Symposium: Sheryl Medlicott

Highlights from our symposium in October 2022, honoring the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ursula K. Le Guin's anti-war novella, The Word for World is Forest.

In this episode, Sheryl Medlicott helps us to understand the book as an ecofeminist and utopian text with lessons about how to think about language in the struggle for a better future.

On this episode of Conversations on Anarres, we talk with Irish historian, Dr. Christopher J.V. Loughlin, who has been examining ancient Irish tales of sea voyages, the immrama,-- which literally means tales of "rowing about". He finds within them the seeds of a unique brand of speculative thinking he calls Celtic Futurism. 

Many of these immrama stories date back to the 7th and 8th centuries CE and detail journeys to far away spiritual lands with mystical elements and fantastic creatures.   Dr. Loughlin argues that these stories help us to talk about Irish speculative fiction and the history of Ireland, particularly about its experience with colonialism, empire, and racism. He also thinks the way these stories frame time traveling help us to learn what it means to think critically about power and global solidarity with other liberation struggles.  

Dr. Loughlin has been a contributor to the Anarres Project for many years, writing on our blog about Irish politics and solidarity with global liberation struggles.  He is a labour historian of modern Britain and Ireland. He was employed as lecturer in history at Newcastle University, 2018-21, and obtained his training at Queen’s University, Belfast. His first monograph, "Labour and the Politics of Disloyalty in Belfast, 1921-39", was published in 2018.  He has also published work on civil rights, loyalty and the foundation of Northern Ireland, gender, sexualities and industrial relations.  His work has recently appeared in the "Routledge Handbook of Literature and Class",  and the  SFRA Review.

Music:  Video excerpt is from "M'ANUM" by M'ANUM, composed by Michael McGlynn.

On this episode of Conversations on Anarres, we talked with Dr. Randall Milstein. He is the Astronomer in Residence for Oregon’s NASA space Grant consortium, housed at Oregon State University.  He is not a NASA employee, but he works regularly to further NASA’s mission.  

We sat down to talk to him about whether there are any benefits to humanity from the billionaire space race.  Dr. Milstein believes there are some pure scientific benefits that can come from this—though he acknowledges the criticisms that say if these billionaires wanted to spend more money to alleviate problems on earth they certainly have enough money to do so as well as fund space travel.  He doesn’t see it as an either or, and in fact, we talk about what benefits space science has for bettering life on earth.  We also talk about the difference between space exploration and space colonization and here Dr. Milstein thinks that the aspirations for living in space need to be tempered by some reality.  There is no planet B and the hope to escaping a dying planet are pure science fiction fantasy.  So how can we continue to think about space science while acknowledging the very real problems of a deeply inequitable and unjust world?

The last year has been particularly traumatic for humanity as a whole. Millions of people have died globally as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the United States, we have had over a year of civil unrest as a result of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We also began the year with news of a violent insurrection at the US Capitol building. As climate catastrophe looms over us, many people turn to despair, or worse, nihilism, believing that there is nothing that can be done individually or collectively to change society for the better.

This episode is the fourth annual gathering of the TrekWars@OSU collective and the topic is "Sagas of Hope". Anarres Project co-director Dr. Joseph Orosco is  joined by Dr. Randall Milstein and Mohammed Shakibnia, both of whom have been involved in putting on in our annual gathering of the TrekWars@OSU  for four years now.  Dr. Randall Milstein is a senior instructor at Oregon State in physics and astronomy.  He is the Astronomer In Residence for the Oregon-NASA Space Grant Consortium.  Mohammed Shakibnia is now an OSU alum, double majoring in philosophy and political science and was selected as one of the Outstanding Seniors for the College of Liberal Arts in 2020.  

In our discussion today, we talk about how to distinguish hope from optimism and from faith, and how the Star Wars and Star Trek universes present us with stories that not only give us hopeful visions of a different world, but help us to understand how to become hopeful in the face of despair in a way that can strengthen our efforts to resist and overcome injustice.

Before, we have only imagined utopia, the point now is to build it.  The threat of looming climate catastrophe and the extinction of humanity demands that we use our radical imagination to find a bridge from the real to what is possible.  

In this conversation, Anarres Project co-directors Dr. Joseph Orosco and Dr. Tony Vogt interview the acclaimed science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson about his new novel, "The Ministry for the Future".  Topics include a discussion about the variety of utopian visions, the utopianism of Ursula K. Le Guin, conceptions of revolutionary social change, and the use/repurposing of science, technology, and the market economy to achieve the flourishing of human beings.  For more information about the Anarres Project for Alternative Futures, please find us at @AnarresProject on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.  Please let us know what you think about this and all our discussions.