This book explores what science fiction can tell us about the human condition in a technological world, with the ethical dilemmas and consequences that this entails. This book is the result of the joint efforts of scholars and scientists from various disciplines. This interdisciplinary approach sets an example for those who, like us, have been busy assessing the ways in which fictional attempts to fathom the possibilities of science and technology speak to central concerns about what it means to be human in a contemporary world of technology and which ethical dilemmas it brings along. One of the aims of this book is to demonstrate what can be achieved in approaching science fiction as a kind of imaginary laboratory for experimentation, where visions of human (or even post-human) life under various scientific, technological or natural conditions that differ from our own situation can be thought through and commented upon. Although a scholarly work, this book is also designed to be accessible to a general audience that has an interest in science fiction, as well as to a broader academic audience interested in ethical questions.
Table of Content
1. Introduction: Science Fiction at a Crossroad between Ethics and Imagination; Christian Baron, Peter Nicolai Halvorsen and Christine Cornea.- Section I: Science, Technology and Science Fiction.- 2. The Perfect Organism: the intruder of the Alien films as a bio-fictional construct; Christian Baron.- 3. Science Fiction at the Far Side of Technology: Vernor Vinge’s singularity thesis vs. the limits of AI-research; Mikkel Willum Johansen.- 4. A Greenhouse on Mars; Peter Westermann.- 5. Fascinating! Popular Science Communication and Literary Science Fiction: the shared features of awe and fascination and their significance to ideas of science fictions as vehicles for critical debate about scientific enterprises and their ethical implications; Gitte Meyer.- Section II: Identity and the Post-Human Condition.- 6. Our Serial (and Parallel) Selves: identity in the age of the trans-human; Stig W. Jørgensen.- 7. Commodified Life: post-humanism, cloning and gender in Orphan Black; Sherryl Vint.- 8. Religion in a World of Androids and Aliens: life and death in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Prometheus; Peter Nicolai Halvorsen.- 9. I Am Omega Man: religious repositioning of the secular apocalypse film in I Am Legend; Tony Degouveia.- Section III: The Politics and Ethics of Science Fiction.- 10. From Isolationism to Globalism: an overview of politics and ethics in the Hollywood science fiction film; Christine Cornea.- 11. Reinventing Utopia: politics and ethics of choice in the works of Kim Stanley Robinson; Niels Dalgaard.- 12. The Final Frontier: survival ethics in extreme living conditions as portrayed in Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations and Ridley Scott’s Alien; Christian Baron.- 13. The Politics of Post-Apocalypse: ideologies on trial in John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids; Jerry Määttä.- 14. On Ustopias and Finding Courage in a Hopeless Situation; Mickey Gjerris and Maud M. L. Eriksen.About the author
Christian Baron is assistant professor at Center for Bioscience and Techo-Anthropology at the Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Originally trained in evolutionary biology and the history and philosophy of science, his areas of interest include the dynamics of biological controversies, the role of expertise and counter-expertise in in policy-advising and public debates on science and the premises for making moral claims. He is also the author of several science fiction short stories that has been published in DanishPeter Nicolai Halvorsen is student vicar at the Faculty of Health, University of Copenhagen and chairman of the Copenhagen University Network on Science and Religion. His mains areas of interest include naturalism
Christine Cornea is a Lecturer with the Department of Film, Television and Media at the University of East Anglia. She is the author of Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality (co-published RUP/EUP, 2007) and has published widely on science fiction film and television, including articles for Velvet Light Trap, Genders and the Quarterly Review of Film and Video journals. Christine has also published two previous edited collections and is currently completing a further monograph book for Rutgers University Press that focuses upon the post-apocalyptic television drama.
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