In Drone Visions, Naief Yehya -- one of the sharpest analysts of technoculture -- raises a poignant question: did 1980s cyberpunk lore spawn today's killing drones.
In other words, does art imitate life (or should I say death)? A shockingly lucid brilliant book!
Bernardo Fernández, known as "Bef," is a writer, comic book creator, and graphic designer. One of the best known authors of detective novels, science fiction, and graphic novels in Mexico, his detective novel Tiempo de alacranes [Time of scorpions] was awarded the "Una vuelta de tuerca" Prize in Mexico and the Memorial Silverio Cañadas at the Semana Negra of Gijón. His graphic novels include Perros Muertos [Dead dogs] (Editorial Caligrama, 2008), Uncle Bill, (Sexto Piso, 2014), and El instante amarillo [The yellow instant] (Océano, 2017).
A lively and very smart synthesis of film criticism, political analysis, technology science and gender studies, these close readings zoom out to give us the big picture of the way we live now. The writing is sharp, sardonically
humorous and ironic; the underlying perspective, philosophical.”
Born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 16, 1943, Philip Lopate received a bachelor's degree at Columbia University and a PhD at Union Graduate School--he is a Professor at Columbia University. His most recent book of poetry, At the End of the Day (Marsh Hawk Press, 2010) brings together the majority of his poems, most of which were written during the early years of his career as a writer. His other books of poetry include The Daily Round (Sun, 1976) and The Eyes Don't Always Want to Stay Open (Sun, 1972). He is also the author of numerous essay collections, including: Portrait Inside My Head (Free Press, 2013); and The Art of the Personal Essay more: https://poets.org/poet/phillip-lopate
Drone Visions: A Brief Cyberpunk History of Killing Machines
Naief Yehya
Series: CODE[X] Books
Paperback: 152 pages
Publisher: Hyperbole Books, an Imprint
of San Diego State University Press (2020)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1938537785
ISBN-13: 978-1938537783
Purchase for $20.95 via Amazon!
Special offer for friends of Naief Yehya and clever fans of SDSU Press that find this page! Buy now direct from SDSU Press for $20.00 and free shipping! The link takes you to a Paypal portal, but you don't have to be a member of Paypal to complete your purchase--any major credit card will work!
Advance Word on Hyperbole Books's DRONE VISIONS...
"'Is our future a thing of the past?' asks a character in Sleep Dealer, Alex Rivera’s sci-fi premonition of neuro-jacked Mexicans who toil in maquiladoras of the mind. In Drone Visions, the Mexican film critic Naief Yehya excavates the nightmare logic of our times in the trash-heaps of Hollywood’s tomorrows. Reading between the frames of canonical cyberpunk texts like Blade Runner, Alien, and The Terminator; “video-game” footage of smart-bomb strikes in the Gulf War; and documentary interviews with cubicle warriors who call their long-distance kills 'bugsplats,' Yehya tracks the predatory technologies that have stalked us in our dreams ever since Frankenstein."
Mark Dery, cultural critic, author of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts
“Drone Visions demands that we jack-in and mainline an everyday present that has morphed into those terrifying sci-fi dystopias of yesteryear. A cultural studies coyotex /hacker whose work moves from Fritz Lang’s cybertronic Maria and Terminator’s Skynet to George Miller’s Valhalla War Boys, Naief Yehya punctures psyches to plug us into dystopic sci-fi reels that powerfully anticipate today’s planetary fight-to-death struggle to hold fist-tight our last vestiges of humanity.”
Frederick Luis Aldama, author of Talking #browntv: Latinas and Latinos on the Screen, & Distinguished Professor, The Ohio State University
Hyperbole Books | SDSU Press | ISBN-13: 978-1-938537-78-3 | $22 USA | Cover design by Antonio Sacristan Fanjul | Book Design by Guillermo Nericcio García | Also available via Amazon.com
