The great American author Philip K. Dick opposes the idea that it is the vocation of science fiction to predict the future. Rather, it questions the present from the point of view of an imaginary future. As we enter this novel yet strangely familiar space-time of the genre, our minds are freed to marvel at the possibility of realities other than those we already know. Over and beyond the “joy of discovery of newness,” writes Dick, a good work of science fiction will create “a convulsive shock in the reader's mind, the shock of dysrecognition.” It is thus not in prediction, but in this cognitive and creative liberation that the genre finds its true vocation. For this reason, some academics prefer to think of “SF” as standing for “speculative fiction,” so as to oppose this more serious and aesthetically sophisticated variety from science fiction of the purely entertaining variety. In this class we will examine speculative literature, cinema and art that addresses topical issues in the English-speaking world both past and present, issues that include gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, religion, class and work, technology, AI and robotics, transhumanism and posthumanism, climate change and collapsology, and more.
- Teaching coordinator: Robinson Christopher