Science Fiction: Exploring Space and Time

Module code: EN3060

In this module we will explore strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilisations. 

Lacking warp-drive or wormhole technology, in this team-taught module, we’ll instead use the modern classics of the sci-fi genre to investigate how novelists set about fictional world-building. We’ll then move onto to how contemporary writers have used science fiction to explore concerns such as gender and sexuality, artificial intelligence, language, commercialization, colonisation, community, and the environment. In the process, they’ve questioned what constitutes ‘life’ and what counts as ‘civilisation’. 

Over the last fifty years, science fiction writers have evolved; they’ve rebelled; and, sometimes, they have a plan.