In Transpluto ( 1982), which is typical of his later work, a mysterious planet hornswoggles a team of Earthmen, keeping them from leaving the Solar System.

Ypsilon Minus ( 1976) is set in a City under totalitarian control through Computer surveillance deviants are punished severely. Zone Null ( 1970 trans Chris Herriman 1974) sets up between a future Free World and an apparently defeated and deserted Zone Null a metaphysical questioning of the true aims of society and of the intermingled values of both opposed sides. Der Orchideenkäfig ( 1961 trans Christine Priest as The Orchid Cage 19) complexly depicts, in Franke's typically speculative and somewhat dry manner, the profound transformative effects of a mysterious planet on its human explorers. After publishing considerable nonfiction in the 1950s, mostly on either speleology or computer graphics (of which he was a pioneer), he also began publishing sf: at first speculative short stories such as those assembled in Der grüne Komet: Utopische-technische Kurzgeschichten (coll 1960) – at least five tales from which appeared in English translation – Fahrt zum Licht: Utopische Kurzgeschichten (coll 1964), Einsteins Erben (coll 1972) and Zarathustra kehrt zurück: Science-fiction Erzählungen (coll 1977).įranke also published several novels beginning with Das Gedankennetz ( 1961 trans Christine Priest as The Mind Net 19). Architect Eyal Weizman identifies the role of the roundabout as a site of eruption in recent uprisings and revolutions in The Roundabout Revolutions from the Critical Spatial Practice series.(1927-2022) Austrian-born author and scientist who, after receiving a doctorate in Vienna in 1950, moved to Munich, where he taught cybernetic aesthetics at the University of Munich he has also written as by Sergius Both. We turn to artist Amar Kanwar’s video installation The Torn First Pages-referring to the Burmese bookshop owner who was imprisoned for tearing out pages with government propaganda in the books and journals he sold-and scholar and critic Erika Balsom’s essay on this work in Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary: The Commissions Book. Artist and researcher Sonia Boyce reconciles the aesthetic strategies of collage and montage with the political address to racism and nationalism in artworks by Rasheed Araeen and Eddie Chamber, included in The Place Is Here: The Work of Black Artists in 1980s Britain. From Conflictual Aesthetics: Artistic Activism and the Public Sphere, philosopher Oliver Marchart proposes an aesthetics of agitating, propagating, and organizing. Our series of shared excerpts continues with a fifth installment focusing on issues of democracy and protest.

Ypsilon minus by Herbert W. Franke