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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 we say death)?
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. 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.
About the Author
Advance Word
“'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.”
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… 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 — Distinguished Professor, The Ohio State University; author of Talking #browntv
“A shockingly lucid, brilliant book!”
Bernardo Fernández, “Bef” — author of Tiempo de alacranes
“A lively and very smart synthesis of film criticism, political analysis, technology science and gender studies… the underlying perspective, philosophical.”
Phillip Lopate — author of The Art of the Personal Essay
