Topological urban novel (Completely Normal and Perfectly Regular)

Abstract

The DCA thesis is constructed by a novel titled Completely Normal and PerfectlyRegular and its corresponding exegesis. The novel is an experiment in science fiction:a narrative built of short, thematic chapters which explore topological concepts(connectedness, closeness, continuousness) as situated in a fictional nation-state(“Nation-Space”). The fiction works to literalise topology, a discipline utilised as aunique mode for thinking about possible structures of space and the relations betweenthem. As mathematic abstractions are made material through the narrative, they affectthe space, infrastructure, and inhabitants which occupy it. Political, social, andeconomic concerns of the present are thus explored as manifestations of theconditions that structure the narrative space. While the fictional world is physicallyunlike our own, it is necessarily in relation to it, in turns as reflection, refraction,examination, and extrapolation. The exegesis contextualises the novel as it relates toscience fiction as a genre, and topology more broadly. It explores various figurationsof science fiction, what it means to read a text as science fiction – via Renee Gladman’sRavickian series – and how science fiction might be enacted otherwise throughtopology.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University
Supervisor	Chris Fleming (Supervisor)