Starting panel 4C Fortress Cities and Flight: Walls, Barriers, Migration at #LSFRC20 chaired by @TasnimQ

Starting with @sundialgirl speaking on "Dreaming Domesticity: The Migrant Workforce in Philippine SF"

Starting with a firm challenge against the notion that Philippines fiction is limited. In particular, there is a strong narrative current about #Migration as it deals with #Colonial #History and #Capitalism. #LSFRC20

Particularly relevant given the broad migration and the global Filipino diaspora. #LSFRC20

There is an embedding of heroism into the notion of migration in the Filipino culture and #SciFi. #LSFRC20

This despite the trauma and oppression involved with being a migrant labour in reality. #LSFRC20

Three major sci-fi tropes in Filipino speculative fiction: space flight, alien non-human beings, and future tech. #LSFRC20

Texts referenced are short story "Feasting" by Joshua Lim So, play "Marte" by Eliza Victoria, and comics "Humanity" and Paolo Chikiamko. All three tap into wider sci-fi iconography but in a specific Filipino context. #LSFRC20

"Feasting" uses traditional sci-fi tropes in order to challenge the trauma of migrant labour who are literally and metaphorically fed to their alien employers. #LSFRC20

"Marte" is a one-act play in which two women workers in a futuristic work space talk about the harsh realities of factory life, including industrial accidents and labour rights, alongside personal drama. Particular look at how corporations view worker death. #LSFRC20

The comic "Humanity" focuses on enslaved human miners being overseen by aliens, sharing stories of survival, folklore and #History. #LSFRC20

All of the narratives draw from classic Anglo-sci-fi megatexts. Tropes are not challenged but instead repurposed to telling migrant Filipino stories. #LSFRC20

Space travel is framed as the hopelessness and homelessness experienced by the diaspora and migrants. #LSFRC20

Alien non-human beings stand in for dynamics of power and control, reflecting the realities of current migration power structures. #LSFRC20

Finally, the future tech serves as a barrier because its usage is not understood by human labourers and migrants. #LSFRC20

Thus, traditional sci-fi tropes are powerfully reframed to tell stories of the downtrodden, the working class servants, the oppressed. Thus, the future is very much imagined through the lens of the present. #LSFRC20

Ending with a call to reimagine this future in order to start reshaping the lived realities of the present. #LSFRC20

Speaking next is @qoutalya on "Borders, Edges, and Walls: The Urban is Dystopian in Ahmed Khaled Towfiq's Utopia". #LSFRC20

The paper is exploring the text through a sense of spatiality and borders, and how class and infrastructure are central to the #Dystopian world-building. #LSFRC20

Creation of intentional separation between the super rich in northern gated communities in Egypt - taking their resources with them - and the proletariat in Cairo. #LSFRC20

The Utopians of the text are unnamed while the Others are humanised with names. Thus, creating a conflict on whose narrative is worth telling. #LSFRC20

This is mapped further on to the tale of class differences and class consciousness in Egypt, as literalised by their physical environment. #LSFRC20

The walls of the fortress city of Utopia are both a physical barrier of entry and a semiotic marker of belonging/unbelonging. They prevent the cognitive empathy between the two classes by physically separating the two. #LSFRC20

By creating a difference, it prevents class consciousness as different characters are unable to cognitively map their experiences on to the other space. #LSFRC20

Comparison with medieval fortress cities in reality and fiction. Specific reference to Poe's Masque of the Red Death, in which the segregation by the rich eventually leads to their own downfall. (Hopeful? Revolution?) #LSFRC20