Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction explores the ethical concerns and dimensions of representations of the future of global science fiction, focusing on the issues that dominate utopian, dystopian and science fiction literature. The essays examine recent visions of the future in science fiction and re-examine earlier texts through contemporary lenses. Across fourteen chapters, the collection considers authors from Algeria, Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Macedonia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the UK and USA. The volume delves into a range of ethical questions of immediate contemporary relevance, including environmental ethics, postcolonial ethics, social justice, animal ethics and the ethics of alterity.
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Part I Ethics and the Other |
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1 | (74) |
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1 Science Fiction's Ethical Modes: Totality and Infinity in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy and Yevgeny Zamyatin's Mbi (We) |
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3 | (26) |
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2 Inversion and Prolepsis: Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's Feminist Utopian Strategies |
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29 | (20) |
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3 Better Societies for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: Vegetarianism and the Utopian Tradition |
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49 | (26) |
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Part II Environmental Ethics |
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75 | (88) |
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4 Eutopia, Dystopia and Climate Change |
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77 | (22) |
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5 Evolving a New, Ecological Posthumanism: An Ecocritical Comparison of Michel Houellebecq's Lcs Particules elementaires and Margaret Atwood's MaddAddnm Trilogy |
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99 | (20) |
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6 The Perverse Utopianism of Willed Human Extinction: Writing Extinction in Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem |
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119 | (22) |
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7 Ecopocalyptic Visions in Haitian and Mexican Landscapes of Exploitation |
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141 | (22) |
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Part III Postcolonial Ethics |
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163 | (70) |
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8 Postcolonial Science Fiction and the Ethics of Empire |
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165 | (22) |
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9 The Postcolonial Cyborg in Amitav Ghosh's Tlie Calcutta Chromosome |
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187 | (24) |
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10 Wagering the Future: Split Collectives and Decolonial Praxis in Assia Djebar's Ombre sultane and Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber |
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211 | (22) |
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Part IV Ethics and Global Politics |
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233 | (96) |
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11 Rewriting France's Future: From Louis-Sebastien Mercier's Pre-Revolutionary Projections to Michel islamic Agendas via Secular State Ethics |
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235 | (26) |
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12 The Appearance of Dystopian Fiction in Macedonia and its Ethical Concerns |
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261 | (22) |
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13 Cairo in 2015 and in 2023: The Dreadful Fates of the Egyptian Capital in Jamil Nasir's Tower of Dreams and Ahmed Khaled Towfik's Utopia |
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283 | (20) |
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Anna Madoeufand Delphine Pages-El Karoui |
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14 Post-Capitalist Futures: A Report on Imagination |
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303 | (26) |
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| Index |
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329 | |
Zachary Kendal is a librarian in Rare Books at Monash University Library, Australia. He was recently an editor-in-chief of Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique and is completing a PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies at Monash University, researching ethics and literary representation in science fiction.
Aisling Smith is a teaching associate in literary studies at Monash University and Deakin University, Australia. Her PhD examined affect theory and the works of David Foster Wallace. She is also a creative writer, former editor-in-chief of Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique and an editor of the Verge: Chimera (2017) anthology.
Giulia Champion is completing her doctoral thesis at the University of Warwick, UK. Her research investigates postcolonial literature in original languages and aims to theorise literary cannibalism as a set of practices through the world ecology framework and historical materialism.
Andrew Milner is Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Monash University, Australia, and Honorary Professor at University of Warwick, UK. He is the author of numerous books including, most recently, Locating Science Fiction (2012), Again, Dangerous Visions: Essays in Cultural Materialism (2018) and, with J. R. Burgmann, Science Fiction and Climate Change (in press).
