Preliminary Notes towards a Simulated Weird: Ecological, Colonial, and Cosmic Horror in The Voice in the Night, The Genocides, and Pathologic 2

Weird fiction is all around us, in popular works such as True Detective (2014), Annihilation (2018), and Disco Elysium (2019).

For this talk, I focus specifically on weird fiction texts with ecological and colonial themes, tracing their development across the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as in the distinct medium of video games.

I explore the human-fungal assemblages of The Voice in the Night (1907) that question the boundaries of human agency in an ecological world, the alien monocrops of The Genocides (1965) that cause global environmental devastation, and the viral outbreak of Pathologic 2 (2019) driven by the exploitation of racialised workers in slaughterhouses and slums.

Chris Lam completed an Honours degree in Communication Studies on the topic of posthumanism, and has published fictional works OLYMPUS and Acid and Lost Time in A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa NZ and Hainamana: Asian New Zealand Art and Culture, respectively.

Streaming details:

Zoom link: https://otago.zoom.us/j/91773373247
Password: 441544

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