Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction

Preface

Acknowledgements

Praise for Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction

Contents

Notes on Contributors

Part I: Ethics and the Other

Chapter 1: Science Fiction’s Ethical Modes: Totality and Infinity in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s ?? (We)

Introduction

Totality and Ethics

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy

Infinity and the Face-to-Face Encounter

Yevgeny Zamyatin’s ??

Science Fiction and the Unenglobable Literary Space

Conclusion

Works Cited

Chapter 2: Inversion and Prolepsis: Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Feminist Utopian Strategies

Hossain’s Life and Works

Hossain’s Rhetorical Strategies in Sultana’s Dream and ???????

Hossain’s Dual Vision of Feminist Ethics

Works Cited

Chapter 3: Better Societies for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: Vegetarianism and the Utopian Tradition

Introduction

Formative Utopias

Nineteenth-Century Utopias

H. G. Wells

Feminist and Critical Utopias

Ecological Utopias

Conclusion

Works Cited

Part II: Environmental Ethics

Chapter 4: Eutopia, Dystopia and Climate Change

Introduction

Utopia, Eutopia and Dystopia

An Ideal Typology of Contemporary Climate Fiction

Some Preliminary Generalisations

Climate Eutopias: Robinson, Fleck, Atwood

Works Cited

Chapter 5: Evolving a New, Ecological Posthumanism: An Ecocritical Comparison of Michel Houellebecq’s Les Particules élémentaires and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy

Introduction

Defining an Ecological Posthumanism

A Transhumanist Perspective of Michel Houellebecq’s Les Particules élémentaires

Ecological Posthumanism in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy

The Role of Liminality in Our Ecological Future

Works Cited

Chapter 6: The Perverse Utopianism of Willed Human Extinction: Writing Extinction in Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem (??)

Introduction

The Utopian-Dystopian Dialectic in the Three-Body Problem

The Utopian Legacy: Science Fiction and Socialist Realism

Utopian Reason and Its Nihilistic Fate

Allegorising Extinction and the End of Science Fiction

Conclusion: Utopia Must Die

Works Cited

Chapter 7: Ecopocalyptic Visions in Haitian and Mexican Landscapes of Exploitation

Introduction

Mythic Time, Ecopocalypse, and Visions of Hope

Crisis of Representation

Ecopocalypse and Social Degradation

Bridge the Human/Nature Divide

Conclusion

Works Cited

Part III: Postcolonial Ethics

Chapter 8: Postcolonial Science Fiction and the Ethics of Empire

Introduction

Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis

Slavery

Ethics of Cloning and Interbreeding

Is Oankali Culture Ethical?

Transcultural Ethics

Conclusion

Works Cited

Chapter 9: The Postcolonial Cyborg in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome

Introduction

The Calcutta Chromosome as Postcolonial Science Fiction

Science Fiction and Postcolonial Ethics

When Western Science Met the Colonised

Silence Is Power

The Postcolonial Cyborg

Conclusion

Works Cited

Chapter 10: Wagering the Future: Split Collectives and Decolonial Praxis in Assia Djebar’s Ombre sultane and Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber

Pan-Africanism, Afrofuturism and African Futurism

Dependency and Splitting

Care as Consensus: Split Collectives

Concluding Remarks

Works Cited

Part IV: Ethics and Global Politics

Chapter 11: Rewriting France’s Future: From Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s Pre-Revolutionary Projections to Michel Houellebecq’s Islamic Agendas via Secular State Ethics

Introduction

Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s Pre-revolutionary Projections

City of Light: City of Dark

French Secular State Ethics

Michel Houellebecq’s Islamic Agendas

Conclusion

Works Cited

Chapter 12: The Appearance of Dystopian Fiction in Macedonia and its Ethical Concerns

The Political Circumstances and Settings of the Novels

The Rulers’ Concealment of the Past and the Protagonists’ Nostalgia

Wars and Dehumanisation

Ambiguous Visions of the Future

Works Cited

Chapter 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

Parallel Futures, or Parallels in the Future?

Two Rare Science Fiction Imaginings of Cairo

Orient of the Past, Orient of the Future: A Well of Images

Predator and Prey

Literary Fiction, Revealer of Urban Transformations

Urban Dysfunction

Vertical Segregation/Horizontal Segregation

Dystopias: The Reinvention of Worlds

Grand Projects and Black Clouds

The New Economic and Social Reality

Geopolitics of the Middle East: A World of Chaos and Dependence on the West

Cairo, an Eschatological City: Earthquakes and Revolutions

Conclusion

Works Cited

Chapter 14: Post-Capitalist Futures: A Report on Imagination

The Return of Realism?

Cli-Fi and Crisis

Post-Capitalism: Theory and Practice

Reading (Post-)Capitalist Possibilities

The Politics of Time (Travel)

Looking Backward at Looking Backward

Utopia as Redemptive (Class) Struggle

Why Utopia Is So Hard

Why Utopia Is So Necessary

Works Cited

Index