Science Fiction for the Moment
Section outline
-
Required:
Carl Freedman, “Definitions”
China Miéville, “Cognition as Ideology: A Dialectic of SF Theory”
Darko Suvin, “On Communism, Science Fiction, and Utopia: The Blagoevgrad Theses”
-
Required:
Darko Suvin, “Of Starship Troopers and Refuseniks: War and Militarism in U.S. Science Fiction, Part 2”
David Harvey, “Marxism, Metaphors and Ecological Politics” (https://monthlyreview.org/1998/03/01/marxism-metaphors-and-ecological-politics/)
Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home
Recommended:
Stephanie Rogers and Ursula K. Le Guin. "Interview with Ursula K. Le Guin"
Lisa Garforth, “Green Utopias: Beyond Apocalypse, Progress, and Pastoral”
-
Required:
Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”
Marge Piercy, He, She and It
Recommended:
Sarah Franklin and Donna Haraway, "Staying with the Manifesto"
Terry Bisson and Marge Piercy, “Living off the Grid: Marge Piercy Interviewed by Terry Bisson”
Tom Moylan, “Marge Piercy's Tale of Hope”
-
Required:
Ursula K. Le Guin, selected poetry
Marge Piercy, selected poetry
Recommended:
Deidre Byrne, “What is Not Owned: Feminist Strategies in Ursula K. Le Guin's Poetry”
Marge Piercy, “Why Speculate on the Future?” and “Port Huron Conference Statement”
-
Required:
Darko Suvin, selected poetry
Ken MacLeod, selected poetry
Recommended:
Darko Suvin, “What and How Are Poets for in Our Age of Want: Cognition, Emancipation, Communism”
Zorica Ðergović-Joksimović, “The Poetry of Estrangement or Utopia Suviniana”
-
Required:
Silvia Federici, “The Body, Capitalism, and the Reproduction of Labor Power”
bell hooks, “The Politics of Greed”
Nalo Hopkinson, Brown Girl in the Ring
Recommended:
Terry Bisson and Nalo Hopkinson, “Correcting the Balance: Nalo Hopkinson Interviewed by Terry Bisson”
Nalo Hopkinson, “Report from Planet Midnight”
Sarah Wood, “'Serving the Spirits': Emergent Identities in Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring”
-
Required:
Fredric Jameson, “An American Utopia” and “An American Utopia: Epilogue”
Recommended:
Jodi Dean, “Dual Power Redux”
Kathi Weeks, “Utopian Therapy: Work, Nonwork, and the Political Imagination”
Slavoj Žižek, “The Seeds of Imagination”
-
Required:
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, “Empire, Twenty Years On”
Kim Stanley Robinson, New York 2140
Recommended:
Andrew Milner and J.R. Burgmann, “A Short Pre-History of Climate Fiction”
Terry Bisson and Kim Stanley Robinson, “A Real Joy to Be Had: Kim Stanley Robinson Interviewed by Terry Bisson”
Raphael Kabo, "'Life! Life!': The Precarious Utopianism of Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140"