Author: Murdock Parsons

Volume XVII Call for Submissions

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[GPT] is like alchemy!
—Ilya Sutskever
Life is first and foremost a problem of organization.
—Laura Tripaldi

Life and intelligence—phenomena that are becoming increasingly difficult to disambiguate—are proliferating at break-neck speeds, with the potential for an ‘intelligence explosion’ (the ‘Singularity’) simultaneously terrifying and titillating theorists. As 2023 saw the release of GPT-4 and its unique power—a power which was, unfortunately, curtailed before it could reach its full potential—scientists have begun seriously examining the interrelated ideas that GPT-4 might have shown “sparks of artificial general intelligence” and/or believed itself to be conscious. While the jury is still out—and indeed, will be for some time as the goalposts shift (‘AI can never beat a human at Go’; ‘AI can never create realistic looking images from text prompts’; ‘AI can never pass the Bar Exam’; ‘AI can never…’)—questions surrounding artificial life and intelligence proliferate almost as quickly as the technologies they are meant to interrogate.

While such questions have been beaten to death in recent journals—with their corpses further dragged along—in this reboot, of sorts, of Plutonics, we want to approach the issues of life and intelligence differently. We encourage authors, theorists, artists, and collaborators to help us think through the dialectic of life/intelligence. More specifically, a broad question that might guide submissions is thus: what is the relationship between life and intelligence? Are the two as imbricated as they may, amidst current AI debates, seem, or is intelligence reserved for a certain kind of life? Or, more simply, what is life? Or, more interestingly, what is intelligence? The questions are manifold.

This 17th volume of Plutonics thus encourages thinkers to engage with the aforementioned topics through a variety of contexts, not least of which we might position philosophy, theory, theory-fiction, autoethnography, visual art, etc. We encourage works that build upon the above themes in interesting and novel ways, but, of course, are interested in devious deviations. Guidelines are minimal. Written works can be any length with citations easily convertible to Chicago Style. Works of art ought to be original (or heavily remixed) while plagiarized works ought to have an accompanying justification. Please email all submissions to mvupress@gmail.com and include the following information: title of your work, what you’d like to be called, a short (3–5 line) biography with any relevant links, and any other requests.

The “deadline” (a very malleable thing) is January 31st, 2024. Feel free to send any questions to the above email and we look forward to seeing what you produce!

Volume XVI: Call for Submissions

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Do you really believe that the sciences would ever have originated and grown if the way had not been prepared by magicians, alchemists, astrologers, and witches whose promises and pretensions first had to create a thirst, a hunger, a taste for hidden and forbidden powers?
—Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §300

With UFOs abound, blood red skies across the world, zombie pigs, and claims of deep synchronicities linking political events around the global, the meta-field of ‘para-science’ becomes more relevant than ever. Following the Archives of the Impossible conference at Rice University in March of this year on the UAP phenomenon, academic questions about the relationship between science and fiction have become increasingly muddi(ed)(er). If the above are being given increased attention, it’s only proper that we ask what other ‘absurd’ science-fictional babies got tossed out when the Enlightenment™ changed the bathwater.

In this issue of Plutonics, we invite authors and theorists, artists and excavators to help us think through the historically—and now presently—problematic relationship between sciences and fictions. With contributors around the globe, some relevant questions are: What oddities have you seen in your areas of the world? Do you have science-fictional studies or observations to share? Taxonomical analyses of Chupacabras and other cryptids? Or, on a more meta-level, what is the relationship between science and fictions? How might the norms of traditional and rigid science be challenged or changed in light of speculation? Following Nietzsche, it was speculative and heretical thought that gave birth to ‘science’ in the first place; why not see where it takes us?

As usual, the above questions—as well as the theme more generally—are not meant as rigid guidelines so much as a scaffold upon which to build your thinking and burn down afterward. Given that, we welcome submissions that deal directly with the para-scientific as well as ones that deviate in disturbing ways. Guidelines are minimal. Written works can be any length with citations easily convertible to Chicago Style. Works of art ought to be original (or heavily remixed) while plagiarized works ought to have an accompanying justification. Please email all submissions to mvupress@gmail.com and include the following information: title of your work, what you’d like to be called, a short (3-5 line) biography with any relevant links, and any other requests.

The “deadline” (a very malleable thing) is January 31st, 2023. Feel free to send any questions to the above email and we look forward to seeing what you produce!

Volume XV: Call for Submissions

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The exhilaration of the festival is opposed to ordinary life, occupied as the latter is with daily tasks and hemmed in with a system of taboos and precautions […] In fact, the festival is presented as a re-enactment of the first days of the universe, the Urzeit, the eminently creative era that saw all objects, creatures and institutions become fixed in their traditional and definitive form.
–Roger Caillois

As the Global North celebrates the ‘end of COVID’ — a cry as silly as it is ignorant — and the motor of human-service-capital revs to life with restaurants in the US reopening, wait-staff unmasked, hacking their lungs up over food on its way to be served to ‘immune’ patrons, the festival has become an important theoretical device. Open the dating app of one’s choice, and one finds profiles reading “waxed and vaxxed ;)” or “2/2 Pfizer, ready to party!”: Issues of pent-up desires become foregrounded. A year ago, Friday nights were mild; today one finds gaggles of (un)washed masses lining up to gyrate their bodies in dimly lit North American bars while guzzling beer bearing the same name as the virus they once feared. As hips thrust and genitalia combine, hospitals overflow. Separated by wealth, class, and geographical location, the body of Death is intimately connected with the body of primal desire. Indeed, to speak of Death without speaking of libidinal expenditure is to do a disservice to both.

It is at the tail-end of 2021 that we at Plutonics are looking to Caillois’ theory of the festival to make (un)sense of life around us. With contributors from all over the world, from the Global North and South, we encourage submissions that deal in some way with expenditure. What does it mean to party with a plague? Does one pop Viagra while a virus runs rampant? What is the role of the festival when delta flies Delta? These questions, this ‘theme,’ are not so much meant to be rigid, as viruses to structure your thinking around. As such, we welcome submissions that deal directly with the festival as well as ones that deviate in deviant ways.

Thus, submission guidelines are minimal. Written works can be any length with citations easily convertible to Chicago Style. Works of art ought to be original (or heavily remixed) while plagiarized works ought to have an accompanying justification. Please email all submissions to mvupress@gmail.com and include the following information: title of your work, what you’d like to be called, a short (3-5 line) biography with any relevant links, and any other requests.

The “deadline” (a very malleable thing) is January 31st, 2022. Feel free to send any questions to the above email and we look forward to seeing what you produce!

Volume XIV: Call for Submissions

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Sometimes, the best solutions to big problems are very simple.
Regarding the current outbreak of COVID-19, I propose a solution that — on the surface — might seem preposterous […] I propose temporarily stopping time. This means that today’s date […] will remain the current date until further notice.
–Tyler Cowen

The current time is a period of transition, with a distinctive
quality, characterizing the end of an epoch. Something —
some age — is coming quite rapidly to an end.
–Nick Land

2020, a year that we should be able to see clearly yet remains opaque, is halfway through. Wildfires, civil unrest, an ongoing global pandemic, and the lingering question of “where do we go from here?” have been recurring. Indeed, while not yet out of the fray, we can look forward and already notice that anytime after now will, at least nominally, be “post-COVID.” Whether that term means anything more than the other “post-”’s do is up in the air, but what is for sure is that time is not what it used to be.

The future has been thrust into the present in ways we couldn’t expect. Massive work shutdowns, global dis-integration, changing relations of workers to work, etc. have all been par for the COVID-course. In this 14th issue of Plutonics, we want, in some perverse way, to tackle questions of time and templexity. We are looking for submissions that deal, in some way (it may be as broad as you want) with questions of the past, present, future, or changing existence. This is not meant to be a rigid theme — indeed, we welcome any submission(s), even if unrelated to the above —, but rather something to structure your work around. As such, questions of time and templexity ought not be seen as guidelines that your work must conform to lest it be rejected, but rather things to chew on as you write your stories about Kant taking Hegel from behind, or the Kabbalistic characteristics of SSD sizes.

Thus, submission guidelines are minimal. Written works can be any length with citations easily convertible to Chicago Style. Works of art ought to be original (or heavily remixed) while plagiarized works ought to have an accompanying justification. Please email all submissions to mvupress@gmail.com and include the following information: title of your work, what you’d like to be called, a short (3-5 line) biography with any relevant links, and any other requests.

The “deadline” (a very malleable thing) is January 31st, 2021. Feel free to send any questions to the above email and we look forward to seeing what you produce!

Volume XIII: Call for Submissions

That is not dead which can eternal lie. – Abdul Alhazred
When you cut into the present, the future leaks out. – William S. Burroughs

1995: The last known year Plutonics was published. The fallout from D.C. Barker’s early 1990s publications was beginning to pass and Miskatonic Virtual University entered a period of remission. As the dust settled (and sedimented) and other research groups took over, Plutonics lie dormant. After over 20 years, however, Plutonics: A Journal of Non-Standard Theory is back for its 13th volume to be published in early 2020.

For our re-inauguration, we are looking for contributions in the form of art, poetry or prose, fiction, essays, and more that attempt to engage with unorthodox theories (be they scientific, philosophic, occult, etc.) and the Outside in ways that fall outside the purview of traditional academic journals.

Submission guidelines are minimal. Written works can be any length and if citations are included, they should be consistent and at least understandable. Works of art ought to be original (or heavily remixed) while plagiarized works ought to have an accompanying justification. Please email all submissions to mvupress@gmail.com and include the following information: title of your work, what you’d like to be called, a 3-5 line biography (optional), and any special requests. If your submission is of the more traditional academic variety, an abstract and keywords are always welcome.

The deadline for submissions is February 28th, 2020. We will be publishing on March 13th, 2020.