Comparing Zolines Heat Death of the Universe and Calvinos Cosmicomics

Comparing Zolines rage Death of the existence and Calvinos Cosmicomics There is a fundamental dilemma that, presumably, each person faces as they begin to develop an understanding of their existence and identity which is something like, What am I? Who am I? Where am I? These questions atomic number 18 almost indistinguishable because they each address the same essential metaphysical issue of identity, How and why Am I why do I exist what am I? What is the origin of I? Where am I going? The answers to these unenviable questions, whether intellectually satisfying or not, come in the form of cosmologies. Cosmologies induce systems with which we understand the existence of the phenomenal world, and our own existence within it. They brook us a map, a concept, of our existence, tell us why we atomic number 18 here, where we are, and most often, where we are going. Of course, the most pervasive cosmologies are directly connect with particular religions, for religions are based upo n the same issues identity, origin, purpose, structure. However, this is not the domain of head that I wish to pursue here, rather, I am interested in how the genre of knowledge Fiction creates, or recreates, cosmologies with which we might understand the earth and our individual meaning within it. How does SF create linguistic models of the cosmos, and what are the underpinnings of those cosmologies? If cosmogenic representations are created so that we can understand reality, in some sense, how is it done, and what questions do these cosmologies pose for the disciples thereof? I will look at dickens works in particular for this inquiry, Italo Calvinos short story cycle, Cosmicomics, and Pamela Zolines short story, The Heat Death of the Universe. I have chosen to focus my in... ...osmos may be infinitely vast and awesome, it is also as familiar as you are to yourself. Sources CitedAldridge, Alexandra. The Scientific World View in Dystopia. Ann Arbor, MI UMI Research Press, 198 4.Calvino, Italo. Cosmicomics. Trans. William Weaver. sore York Harcourt Brace, 1968. Hume, Kathryn. Science and Imagination in Calvinos Cosmicomics Mosaic a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature. Winnipeg Univ. of Manitoba, (341) 2001.Lefanu, Sarah. In the Chinks of the World Machine. Feminism and Science Fiction. London The Womens Press, 1988.Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre . unfermented Haven Yale University Press, 1979.Zoline, Pamela. The Heat Death of the Universe. 1967. The Heat Death of the Universe and former(a) Stories. Kingston, NY McPherson & Co., 1988.