{"id":8,"date":"2026-09-04T13:59:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T17:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/samkordamaproject\/?p=8"},"modified":"2026-09-04T13:59:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T17:59:12","slug":"blog-post-2-what-if-they-gave-an-apocalypse-and-nobody-noticed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/samkordamaproject\/2026\/09\/04\/blog-post-2-what-if-they-gave-an-apocalypse-and-nobody-noticed\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog Post #2: “What if they gave an apocalypse and nobody noticed?”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week I came across the article \u201cOn the Apocalypse that No One Noticed\u201d (Krevel, 2018), an introduction to an issue of the journal ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries<\/em>. This issue featured articles concerning speculative fiction and science fiction in particular, and this introduction examines the specific subgenre of cyberpunk and its interaction with the concept of hyperreality. The apocalypse referred to in the title is in this case the erosion of both genre boundaries and of different mediums of communication thanks to the rise of digital communications. The author argues that the digitization of all media means people are effectively receiving all communications through just a single channel which is capable of endlessly reproducing signs and symbols which become substitutes for objective, lived experience. The result is that what people think of as \u201creality\u201d or \u201ctruth\u201d becomes dependent on these media-transmitted signs and how they align with other configurations of signs, and because of the many possible configurations of signs \u201cin the paradigm of the hyperreal all realities exist simultaneously as a potentiality\u201d (Krevel, 2018). They extend this reasoning to both the then-recent emergence of \u201cfake news\u201d and \u201calternative facts\u201d as symptoms of this hyperreal environment, and to literature\u2019s existence as a medium in this environment imbuing it with \u201ca reality building potential\u201d (Krevel, 2018). Essentially, because we live in a present moment which is so volatile due to the rapid and constant flow of information and signs, it becomes impossible to imagine a collective future which is both distant and significantly different from the times we live in now, and we thus end up hovering in a state of constant potentiality. Cyberpunk speaks to this by positing a future which is inevitable because of the grip the present has on it, so it\u2019s less about what the future might<\/em> be and more what it can\u2019t fail to become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though it was just a short intro to present the work of other authors, this article offered a new and really interesting theoretical take on how science fiction interacts with the idea of hyperreality and the role speculative fiction plays in contemporary culture. It feels like it\u2019s articulating some of the ideas I\u2019ve been floating around in a helpful way. In particular, the notion of all communication coming through one digital channel resulting in the blurring of lines between different media and genres feels central to what I want to explore. For instance, it feels weird and kinda gross that more and more people are using the video game term NPC (non-player character) to refer to other people as basically non-entities or not full individuals, and it\u2019s an open question how many of these people who use the term have actually played a video game. This author would probably argue that distinction ultimately doesn\u2019t matter, since the NPC meme has been so thoroughly propagated through social media that its initial relation to video games is now beside the point, and what matters is just that the concept itself (and the sense of alienation from others it implies) has become so widespread. Overall, this article provides a strong theoretical basis and vocabulary for relating hyperreality to science fiction and our digital culture, and honestly it also feels heartening to see people in 2018 were already thinking of how these things connected to our current lives in real and tangible ways. Not to mention the latter half of the intro outlined the work of other authors in the space which could also be helpful for my project, so I have a bunch of possible avenues for further research already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for what I\u2019ve done this past week to work on my project, unfortunately I wasn\u2019t able to make any progress beyond finding and reading this article. But next week, on top of picking prospective committee members, I hope to further refine what exactly my idea is going to be. At the very least I want to zero in on a topic, either by combining the two I have or deeply considering which of them is stronger and going with that one. I want to also have more discussions with more people about these ideas to figure this out because I find that more helpful than just thinking about this stuff (and potentially just endlessly ruminating on it) on my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026that said, a couple weeks ago on the Philly Book Crawl I picked up We Are Legion (We Are Bob)<\/em> by Dennis E. Taylor, and then in the article I shared on our workshop slack for the first week of class I learned that Sam Altman actually mentioned being a fan of the book. That big time colored my reading of it, and I just finished it yesterday. It\u2019s a fun book, very in the mold of The Martian<\/em> and Project Hail Mary<\/em> (to the point the author of those contributed a quote to the cover), and it\u2019s really interesting to see how the book\u2019s vision of life after death via cryogenic freezing could appeal to someone like Altman and the mental gymnastics he probably undertook to rationalize away all of the many elements the author includes that undercut the notion that cryogenic life after death would be a good idea that would work as intended. It\u2019s sort of like how I played through Cyberpunk 2077<\/em> and came away convinced that the only thing Elon Musk probably took away from the game – aside from a love for angular, militarized looking designs – was that it would probably be really cool to run one of the setting\u2019s giant megacorporations which are unequivocally unethical and actively making life worse for basically everybody. They both point to the unfortunately continuing prevalence of Herbert Marcuse\u2019s \u201ctechnological rationality\u201d as the mindset driving so much of society today. The technology in these works might seem amazing and look really cool, but even within the works themselves they speak to systems built on exploitation and efficiency at the expense of individual freedoms and environmental responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I digress. Happy Labor Day!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Referenced: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cyberpunk 2077 (PlayStation 5 version) [Video game]. (2020). CD Projekt Red. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krevel, M. (2018). On the Apocalypse that No One Noticed. ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries<\/em>, 15<\/em>(1), 9\u201316.https:\/\/doi.org\/10.4312\/elope.15.1.9-16<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lepore, J. (2026, Aug. 11). Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and the Misreading of Science Fiction. Wired<\/em>. https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/book-excerpt-rise-and-fall-of-the-artificial-state-jill-lepore-silicon-valley-sci-fi\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taylor, D.E. (2016). We Are Legion (We Are Bob).<\/em> Saga Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I came across the article \u201cOn the Apocalypse that No One Noticed\u201d (Krevel, 2018), an introduction to an issue of the journal ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries. This issue featured articles concerning speculative fiction and science fiction in particular, and this introduction examines the specific subgenre of cyberpunk and its interaction … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Blog Post #2: “What if they gave an apocalypse and nobody noticed?””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38056,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/samkordamaproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/samkordamaproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/samkordamaproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/samkordamaproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38056"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/samkordamaproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/samkordamaproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/samkordamaproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/samkordamaproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/samkordamaproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/samkordamaproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}