The challenge of the spaceship: Arthur C. Clarke and the history of the future, 1930–1970

Arthur C. Clarke’s 1946 essay on ‘The Challenge of the Spaceship’ was one of the founding manifestoes of the Space Age, and helped to establish him as the West’s leading techno-prophet. Restating his ideas in subsequent factual and fictional works, Clarke successfully propagated the belief that man’s destiny lay in space and that the process was already underway. On the surface Clarke’s oeuvre offers a classic astrofuturist model of progress as technology-driven, but on closer examination it also incorporates a more pessimistic, historically based strand of philosophy, British rather than American. This essay traces the genesis of Clarke’s early work and the influence upon him of the historian Arnold J. Toynbee and the moral philosophers Olaf Stapledon and C.S. Lewis. Toynbee was essentially a Christian pessimist who believed that western civilization was on the way out; his long historical perspectives were an important source of inspiration for Clarke, leading him to a cyclical rather than a simply progressive model of history which contemplated both the beginning and the end of civilizations. The concerns of Stapledon and Lewis with grand narratives of decline and redemption were also influences on Clarke. All this needs to be understood in relation to both the European experience of World War I and to the coming of the atomic bomb, the latter a profound influence on Clarke’s generation. Such perspectives gave European astroculture a more modulated vision of the human future in space than the technologically based astrofuturism which dominated in the USA.     

Aerial screens

This article traces a history of inflight entertainment in order to examine the relationship between globalization, the urban imaginary and contemporary modes of travel. I rely on the many meanings of the word ‘screen’ to launch my analysis of the role of inflight entertainment in post-World War II air travel. Rather than examine the material displayed via inflight entertainment technologies, I take the installation of these technologies on aircraft as signifying particular attitudes airlines had toward their passengers, as well as larger struggles and negotiations over the meaning of travel. These coalesce in a cosmopolitan identity that takes the world to be easily accessible and readily visible, the desire of airlines to keep their passengers mollified and calm, and an emergent conception of travel as effortless activity.     

Prime Suspect: William Cowper Prime in the Holy Land and the Identity of “An American” In Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1858

One of the most popular writers for travellers to Egypt, the Holy Land and Syria in the later nineteenth century was William Cowper Prime. His journey of 1855–1856 resulted in two books which went through multiple editions over a period of twenty years, a stimulus to follow in his footsteps and a standard text in the hands of many pious Christians. A series of five long articles published anonymously in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in the mid- to late 1850s can be shown as by Prime. All have been accepted as factual reports of actual events, places, and people but closer examination leaves little doubt they are fictitious. In the light of these conclusions, it is clear Prime had a taste not just for the wild exaggeration parodied by Mark Twain, but also outright invention and we must be cautious in using his writings as sources.     

“Strangers are Flocking Here”: Identity and Anonymity in New Orleans, 1810–1860

When the population of New Orleans increased dramatically during the nineteenth century, it became a place of strangers. While historians have documented the experiences of different groups in the city, the nineteenth‐century urban world was defined largely by those unknown, by the strangers one passed in the streets. The present study explores how residents of the city coped with this change by analyzing the meanings they ascribed to strangers. It also illustrates why the ability of a stranger to legitimize his/her identity became a crucial means of escaping scrutiny and obtaining acceptance by society. The essay examines the reception of two groups of strangers: elite travelers who sought to read and interpret the city and its subjects and new residents who sought opportunity and adventure, but instead became alienated from society and castigated as vagrants and suspicious people. Although city residents largely came to terms with the anonymity of city life by the 1850s, this essay explores the preceding decades when strangers invoked both fear and excitement.     

个体行为视角下中小城市居民就医空间及社会分异研究——兼议与特大城市比较

基于日常医疗消费出行调查数据,剖析了中小城市居民日常就医出行空间社会特征,并与特大城市比较,结果表明：中小城市居民日常就医选择以市域最高等级综合医院为中心,形成"一超多强"多中心结构,出行空间呈"三带四圈层"的核心-外围形态。低收入群体近距离就医特征突出,出行空间小;高收入群体消费选择较为多元,出行时空范围广。中小城市居民日常就医首选私人诊所,出行距离是首要考虑因素,出行空间与收入水平呈正相关;特大城市居民日常就医首选区级医院,更重视医疗机构社会声誉,与中小城市存在显著差异。     

明遗民周岐事迹探微

关于明遗民周岐清初时的活动轨迹,文献记载颇多矛盾、含混之处。本文通过考察相关史料。认为他实际上经历了一段国变归里,后外出旅食、游幕。最终重又还乡隐居的曲折过程。其同,他与多名清廷大僚过从交往,甚至一度为清军效力,因而绝非部分典籍所描述的典型明遗民。     

Introduction: The gendered geographies of ‘bodies across borders’

This paper introduces the articles that comprise the themed section ‘bodies across borders’ which investigates how the social and spatial dynamics of healthcare provision are being transformed by both neo-liberalization and globalization. The articles demonstrate how the central tenets of neoliberalism: the promotion of individual autonomy as realized through the instrument of consumer choice, the privatization, outsourcing and off-shoring of core competencies and service provision, the production of highly ‘flexible’ labour are at work in re-shaping access to, and delivery of, services in the domains of reproductive health, organ donation and globalized healthcare. In paying special attention to the ways in which these practices are cut across by class, gender and ethnicity, these accounts will hopefully encourage us to reject totalizing and homogeneous narratives of medical travel in favour of those that offer more nuanced understandings of the positionality of the individuals at the heart of them.     

Using the Public Open Space Attributable Index tool to assess children’s public open space use and access by independent mobility

This study examined associations between public open space (POS) attributes and children’s use, and independent mobility to, POS in Auckland, New Zealand. Overall 240 children aged 9–12 years and their parents/caregivers participated. Data were sourced from child travel diaries and parent telephone interviews. The Public Open Spaces Attributable Index (POSAI) assessed POS quality and quantity. Associations were examined between age, sex, ethnicity, parental licence of freedom score, and POSAI with: (1) child trips to POS and (2) independently mobile trips to POS. Children made a total of 68 trips to POS over a seven-day period; 35 of these were independently mobile. Child ethnicity was related to child trips to POS. Independent trips to POS differed by ethnicity and parental licence of freedom. This research utilised a new tool, the POSAI, to examine associations of POS use and independent mobility in children living in urban neighbourhoods.     

基于加权平均旅行时间的浙江省交通可达性时空格局研究

以浙江省69个县(市)为研究对象,利用1996、2004、2012年路网数据,借助ArcGIS网络分析功能,采用基于城镇综合发展水平的加权平均旅行时间指标,探讨浙江省综合交通网络中节点城镇可达性及其时空演变特征。研究结果表明:①1996-2012年,各城镇可达性均出现不同程度提高,彼此间联系趋于紧密;②城镇可达性存在空间分异,且提升幅度各异,均衡化趋势明显;③城镇可达性空间格局变化大,逐渐向以"四大都市区"为中心向四周递增的"∏型"多级空间结构转变。总体上来看,城镇可达性变化及空间格局演变体现了区域统筹发展的战略要求。     

后SARS旅行社产品与营销调整问题

为防范与减少今后SARS这类突发危机对旅行社带来的负面影响,本文针对2003年SARS之后消费者心理与行为方式的变化,提出了后SARS旅行社产品与营销调整的方向以及应加强的工作,本研究对于旅行社加强危机管理具有现实意义。