Reading Science Fiction

This course focuses on narrative science fiction, allowing students to explore the ways in which texts construct stories, present and explore ideas, and engage with today's world. An influential critical definition of science fiction is that it is the literature of 'cognitive estrangement': that it de-familiarises the world by presenting alternate realities that are conceptually explored so as to raise questions about consensus views of reality, technology, consciousness, identity and politics. This course introduces students to some of the most influential science fiction writing of the last hundred and fifty years, and encourages them to explore the narrative techniques it employs to depict and explore both alternative worlds and the world we live in. Rather than offering a complete survey of the history of the genre, this course will be analysis-focused and concept-led: taking two or three key themes clearly specified at the beginning of the course (which might include such topics as identity, time, consciousness, the human and the alien, counter-factual history, evolution and the politics of ecology, reality and representation, gender, race, sex, etc.), it will ask students to discuss the forms of presentation used to explore them in a range of science fiction narratives. Credit Level: 10 Year taken: Year 3 Undergraduate