At an ecopark in Mexico, tourists pretend to be illegal migrants, braving inhospitable terrain and the U.S. Border Patrol as they attempt to cross the border. At a living history museum in Indiana, daytime visitors return after dark to play fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad. In the Mojave Desert, the U.S. Army simulates entire provinces of Iraq and Afghanistan, complete with bustling villages, insurgents, and Arabic-speaking townspeople, to train soldiers for deployment to the Middle East. At a nursing home, trainees put on fogged glasses and earplugs, thick bands around their finger joints, and sandbag harnesses to simulate the effects of aging and to gain empathy for their patients. These immersive environments in which spectator-participants engage in simulations of various kinds—or “simming”—are the subject of Scott Magelssen’s book. His book lays out the ways in which simming can provide efficacy and promote social change through affective, embodied testimony. Using methodology from theater history and performance studies (particularly as these fields intersect with cultural studies, communication, history, popular culture, and American studies), Magelssen explores the ways these representational practices produce, reify, or contest cultural and societal perceptions of identity.

How simulated experiences—from living history to emergency preparedness drills—create meaning in performance

World Political Theatre and Performance: Theories, Histories, Practices is the second collection of essays to emerge from the Political Performances Working Group at the International Federation for Theatre Research. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from multiple locations, the book analyses a range of examples – historical and contemporary – of counter-hegemonic theatre and performance. Part 1 offers a diachronic view of the relationship between activism and performance; Part 2 focuses on the changing nature of what constitutes ‘political theatre’ today. Case studies from Finland to India and from Chile to China are framed by section introductions that underline both commonalities and tensions, while the general introduction reflects on what a radical practice can look like in the face of global neoliberalism. Contributors: Julia Boll, Paola Botham, Marco Galea, Aneta Głowacka, Pujya Ghosh, Camila González Ortiz, Bérénice Hamidi-Kim, Fatine Bahar Karlıdağ, Madli Pesti, José Ramón Prado-Pérez, Trish Reid, Mikko-Olavi Seppälä, Andy Smith, Evi Stamatiou, Wei Zheyu.

What happens when machines teach humans to dance? Dance video games transform players' experiences of popular music, invite experimentation with gendered and racialized movement styles, and present new possibilities for teaching, learning, and archiving choreography. Drawing on five years of research with players, game designers, and choreographers for the Just Dance and Dance Central games, Playable Bodies situates dance games in a media ecology that includes the larger game industry, viral music videos, reality TV competitions, marketing campaigns, and emerging surveillance technologies. Author Kiri Miller tracks the circulation of dance gameplay and related body projects across media platforms to reveal how dance games function as intimate media, configuring new relationships among humans, interfaces, music and dance repertoires, and social media practices.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

How notions of creativity have evolved to serve the goals of neoliberalism--and what we can do about it

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.

This issue we are headlining the appearance of Norman Spinrad’s masterful short novel, Riding the Torch—one of my favorites of his, and a work that surely deserved more attention than it’s received. (But in a career that has produced such classics as Bug Jack Baron, The Iron Dream, and The Void Captain’s Tale, perhaps it’s understandable that one of Spinrad’s short novels hasn’t received the attention it deserved.) We also have a trio of original mysteries, four Golden Age science fiction tales, and a solve-it-yourself puzzler…more than enough to thrill even the most jaded reader! So, read on—you’re in for a treat. Here’s the complete lineup: Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure: “The Stolen Half-life of Alicia Desilva,” by Avram Lavinsky [Michael Bracken Presents short story] “The Case of the Snitched Snacks,” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery] “An Arm and a Leg,” by M. E. Proctor [Barb Goffman Presents short story] “The Devils You Know,” by Skye Alexander [short story] “Somebody Cares,” by Talmage Powell [short story] Science Fiction & Fantasy: Riding the Torch, by Norman Spinrad [short novel] “The Overlord’s Thumb,” by Robert Silverberg [short story] “Love and Moondogs,” by Richard McKenna [short story] “The Way Out,” by Richard R. Smith [short story] The High Ones, by Poul Anderson [short novel]

A new collection of stories, including some that have never before been seen, from the New York Times best-selling author of the Silo trilogy Hugh Howey is known for crafting riveting and immersive page-turners of boundless imagination, spawning millions of fans worldwide, first with his best-selling novel Wool, and then with other enthralling works such as Sand and Beacon 23. Now comes Machine Learning, an impressive collection of Howey's science fiction and fantasy short fiction, including three stories set in the world of Wool, two never-before-published tales written exclusively for this volume, and fifteen additional stories collected here for the first time. These stories explore everything from artificial intelligence to parallel universes to video games, and each story is accompanied by an author's note exploring the background and genesis of each story. Howey's incisive mind makes Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories a compulsively readable and thought-provoking selection of short works--from a modern master at the top of his game.