Message

S1523 Science Fiction and Postmodernity

Gomel Elana

We are living in a world of cyborgs, genetic engineering, instant communication, and super computers. This is the world whose essential features have been predicted (and often shaped) by science fiction (SF). Many critics have argued that SF plays the same central role in relation to postmodernity that realism played in relation to Victorian culture.
In this course we will discuss SF as a literary genre and as a cultural phenomenon within a theoretical framework developed by Darko Suvin, Fredric Jameson, Adam Roberts, Brian McHale and others. We will consider how SF’s creation of alternative ontologies resonates with the cultural climate of postmodernism. We will debate the meaning and significance of such well-known SF tropes as alien invasion, new world exploration, artificial intelligence, apocalyptic transcendence, and life in cyberspace. And we will read a selection of classic and contemporary SF texts by H. G. Wells, Stanislaw Lem, Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Stephen Baxter, and others.
Coursework
Each week, the students will be expected to read the texts listed as background reading in advance.