Blurb:
On a slow autumn afternoon, an atmospheric physicist working at the Malta Weather Station receives a surprising email from a colleague working in the United Kingdom: a troubling weather phenomenon has been detected during one of their research flights. This email marks the starting point for a speculative science-fiction novella titled The Clouds.
About the book:
Prof. Stefano Gualeni (Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta) just released a new book with Routledge! The book is titled The Clouds and is a work of fiction that takes place in Malta. One of its scenes is even set in the University of Malta!
The Clouds is a unique kind of publication. It is not only a work of fiction, it is also a philosophical text. Its narrative premises set the stage for the exploration of a handful of philosophical ideas such as the unnatural fictional trope of ‘unhappening’ and the articulation of a theodicy for virtual worlds.
A particularly original aspect of The Clouds has to do with its editorial structure. The novella is only the first half of a larger book titled The Clouds: An Experiment in Theory-Fiction, which contains
- eight parts of fiction (the chapters of the novella),
- three parts of non-fiction (three canonical essays), and
- a dash of meta-reflection (the afterword by the author).
Efforts of this kind are relatively common in the context of philosophy. Examples of combined uses of theory and fiction abound throughout the history of philosophy, leveraging the unique qualities of each expressive form and challenging clear distinctions between the two. Thought experiments and fictional cases are obvious examples of philosophical tools that capitalize on the imaginative and speculative potential of fiction. Plato’s Socratic dialogues are also egregious instances of this overlap. Are the texts written by Plato and Xenophon works of fiction or philosophical essays in the form of dialogues? Could they be both? And can actual philosophical knowledge be developed and communicated through fiction?
Recent works that experimented with mixing fiction and theory in the context of philosophical enquiry include the 2021 volume Philosophy through Science Fiction Stories, edited by Helen De Cruz, Johan De Smedt and Eric Schwitzgebel, but also Federico Campagna’s Prophetic Culture: Recreation for Adolescents (also published in 2021) and Jack Bowen’s The Dream Weaver: One Boy’s Journey through the Landscape of Reality (2006). Will The Clouds: An Experiment in Theory-Fiction work for you? Will it present philosophers with more convincing examples that there is more to their discipline than academic texts, lectures, or articles like this one? Pick this new book up and find out!