Research Catalog

Title

Science fiction, ethics and the human condition / Christian Baron, Peter Nicolai Halvorsen, Christine Cornea, editors.

Publication

• Cham, Switzerland : Springer, [2017]
• ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Baron, Christian
• Halvorsen, Peter Nicolai
• Cornea, Christine

Description

246 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

"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"--Provided by publisher.

Subjects

• Ethics in motion pictures
• Science fiction films > History and criticism
• Ethics in literature
• Science fiction > History and criticism

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Contents

Introduction : science fiction at a crossroad between ethics and imagination / Christian Baron, Peter Nicolai Halvorsen and Christine Cornea -- The perfect organism : the intruder of the Alien films as a bio-fictional construct / Christian Baron -- Science fiction at the far side of technology : Vernor Vinge's singularity thesis versus the limits of AI-research / Mikkel Willum Johansen -- A greenhouse on Mars / Peter Westermann -- 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 -- Our serial (and parallel) selves : identity in the age of the transhuman / Stig W. Jørgensen -- Commodified life : post-humanism, cloning and gender in Orphan Black / Sherryl Vint -- Religion in a world of androids and aliens : life and death in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Prometheus / Peter Nicolai Halvorsen -- I am Omega Man : religious repositioning of the secular apocalypse film in I Am Legend / Tony Degouveia -- From isolationism to globalism : an overview of politics and ethics in the Hollywood science fiction film / Christine Cornea -- Reinventing utopia : politics and ethics of choice in the works of Kim Stanley Robinson / Niels Dalgaard -- 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 -- 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 / Maud M.L. Eriksen and Mickey Gjerris.

Call Number

JFE 18-1303

ISBN

• 9783319565750
• 3319565753

OCLC

978289974

Title

Science fiction, ethics and the human condition / Christian Baron, Peter Nicolai Halvorsen, Christine Cornea, editors.

Publisher

Cham, Switzerland : Springer, [2017]

Copyright Date

©2017

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references.

Added Author

Baron, Christian, editor.

Halvorsen, Peter Nicolai, editor.

Cornea, Christine, editor.

Research Call Number

JFE 18-1303