[The Montana Professor 23.1, Fall 2012 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Architecture and Science Fiction Film: Philip K. Dick and the Spectacle of Home
David T. Fortin
Montana State University-Bozeman
Springer, 2011
ISBN 978-1409407485
The home is one of our most enduring human paradoxes and is brought to light tellingly in science-fiction (SF) writing and film. However, while similarities and crossovers between architecture and SF have proliferated throughout the past century, the home is often overshadowed by the spectacle of "otherness." The study of the familiar (home) within the alien (SF) creates a unique cultural lens through which to reflect on our current architectural condition. SF has always been linked with alienation; however, the conditions of such alienation, and hence notions of home, have evidently changed. There is often a perceived comprehension of the familiar that atrohpies the inquisitive and interpretive processes commonly activated when confronting the unfamiliar. Thus, by utilizing the estranging qualities of SF to look at a concept inherently linked to its perceived opposite—the home—a unique critical analysis with particular relevance for contemporary architecture is made possible. (from the Amazon.com website)
Reasons for Writing Poetry
Eduardo Chirinos
University of Montana-Missoula
Earthworks, 2011
ISBN 978-1844715213
The present volume charts the growth of a poet whose fondness for masks is manifest in the frequently dialogic, even polyvocal discourse of his work. Chirinos's poetry is marked by a wry tone and simple lyric eloquence. Accessible, ironic, and always entertaining, the poems in Reasons for Writing Poetry treat time and again Chirinos's favourite subjects and themes: the return to childhood, the vagaries of memory, the alternative reality of dream, a fascination with animals, the utility of seeing and hearing, the writer's place in poetic tradition, and the never-ending search for originality through innovative expression. (from the publisher's website)
[The Montana Professor 23.1, Fall 2012 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]