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This article explores the nexus between narrative and metaphor by examining a specific and widespread metaphor in the discourse on cancer, namely "the war against cancer", and paying attention to the function it has in the narratives we tell about cancer – personally as well as culturally and politically. Of special interest is how this dominant metaphor has a negative consequence in relation to the seriously and incurably ill, who are necessarily positioned as 'losers'. The concepts of master and counter-narrative are applied to describe this and show how the war metaphor can be generatively turned against itself and function as the basis for counter-narratives of being ill. In the final part of the article, attention is paid to Danish author Maria Gerhardt's autofictional novel Transfervindue. Fortællinger om de raskes fejl (2017) [Transfer Window: Narratives about the flaws of the healthy] as an example of a productive extension of the war metaphor. The general aim is to argue that the 'war against cancer' metaphor is complex and simultaneously plays a positive and negative role in health discourse. On the one hand, it structures the general effort for treatment of and research on cancer. On the other hand, it positions the incurable as losers. It is, however, argued that we cannot eradicate this metaphor from language, and that we should instead find examples of extensions of the metaphor where e. g. 'protection', 'peace-keeping' and 'exile' are active.

This collection of essays demonstrates how new media and genres as well as unnatural narratives challenge classical forms of narration in ways that call for the development of analytical tools and modelling systems that move beyond classical structuralist narratology. The articles thus contribute to the further development of both transmedial and unnatural narrative theory, two of the most important manifestations of postclassical narratology

We compared two gain measures: One, defined as angle/angle (A/A) gain, is the ratio between the angle subtended by displacement of the cursor and the corresponding angle of head extension/flexion or rotation. The alternative measure, defined as displacement/angle (D/A) gain, is the ratio between the linear displacement of the cursor on the screen and the corresponding angle of head extension/ flexion or rotation. A discrete target acquisition task using circular targets was used to compare control-display gain measures. Operator performance was evaluated for three viewing distances and three gain settings of each measure. Average movement time and root mean squared (RMS) cursor deviation from a straight line path increased as viewing distance increased for AlA gain settings 0.75 and 1.0. That no significant distance effect was observed for any of the D/A gain settings indicated that it might be more suitable to fix D/A gain rather than AlA gain for head-controlled computer input devices. Minimum movement time occurred for D/A gain settings of 0.5 cm/° and 0.67 cm/° One explanation for the observed insensitivity of performance to changes in viewing distance with a fixed D/A gain may be that both angular head movement and the accompanying kinesthetic feedback do not change for a specified cursor displacement as viewing distance is changed.