KJC Korea
Journal Central

Science fiction has long been concerned with the evolution of humanity, and has offered a variety of imaginings of the ways in which science and technology intervene in or control the evolution of life. This paper focuses on Kim Bo-young's early short stories, covering a range of evolutionary imaginaries from biological to mechanical to mythological. It attempts to identify the unique speculative fiction features that explore life and evolution, human, machine, and animal identity, and the nature of 'life'. In chapter 2, I analyzed how the evolution and degeneration of individual beings are reproduced based on Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation, and in chapter 3, I analyzed how the dismissal of robotics deals with the competition between robot and human species. In Chapter 4, I analyze the ontology and meaning of life as we move toward transcendent evolution by examining the fantastic situation of species evolution within individual life.

This paper examines the diversity of global Science Fiction and the emergence of alternative futurisms in different parts of the world in the context of SF world literature. The Anglo-American-centered science fiction genre has now erupted into “alternative futurisms” in various countries and regions, such as Afrofuturism, Gulf Futurism, and Hawaiian Futurism. In Asia, Asian futurism emerged as a resistance to and subversion of techno-orientalism. Chinese futurism(Sinofuturism), on the other hand, is a criticism of Western imperialism and is related to the hegemonic competition of China, which has grown into a technological economic power. Finally, by examining various alternative futurisms around the world, this paper proposes the concept of “Korean futurism” by analyzing the characteristics of Korean SF, the specificity of Korean society, and its relationship with global SF. Korean Futurism is a critique of imperialism and anthropocentric imagination, and more delicate glocalization such as “Jeju Futurism” is called for. Alternative futurism in Korean SF can also emerge in the form of new speculative fiction subgenres/ movements, such as ecological SF and solarpunk, as a response to the Anthropocene and climate crisis. SF futurisms are creating a future of solidarity while respecting differences and diversity.

Alain Badiou’s Being and Event develops an ontology based on the axiomatic set theory. Polish mathematician Maciej Malicki criticized the book for its mathematical flaws. However, most of Malicki’s critiques stem from a misunderstanding of Badiou's philosophical project, and some critiques can be sufficiently answered in the set theory. Malicki’s critique can be divided into three points. The first one is a critique on Badiou's concept of discernible. According to him, Badiou defines this concept in three ways in Being and Event, of which the second and third definitions are unacceptable, and the first is too narrow. We think the first definition is quite acceptable. The second is a critique on the concept of undecidable and of evental site; he argues that accepting evental site mathematically requires abandoning either the occurrence of an event in a situation or the creation of a truth(a generic extension). However, this concept is not a mathematical concept, but rather a concept on the border between mathematics and philosophy, and the generic extension in historical circumstances can be explained by the Mostowski Collapsing Theorem. The last critique is about the unnameable: Malicki argues that there should only be one unnameable in a situation, whereas Badiou has two, but the two concepts Malitzki pointed out are in fact different names for the same object.