Science fiction is a future-oriented literary genre that has been gaining popularity and attention. This course introduces students to science fiction with a specific focus on the planetary in terms of apocalyptic, catastrophic and dystopian imaginations. The planetary invites scholars and students of literary studies to actively and responsibly reconfigure our understanding of, relationship with, influence onto the environment, nature, and the Earth, and to more aptly address and respond to such prevalent and urgent issues on the planetary scale such as climate change, global warming, pollution, energy crisis, biodiversity loss, biopolitics, the Anthropocene, environmental and humanitarian disaster, pandemic and world health etc.

In this course, we will study a selection of sci-fi novels, short stories and featured films that allow us to develop meaningful enquiries and discussions upon the speculative “what-if” and address issues such as exploitation and overconsumption, our collective inadequacies and unpreparedness, and what Garrett Hardin calls “the tragedy of the commons” (1968). Alongside these primary texts, students will encounter a range of critical and secondary materials that prepare us with vocabulary, theories and methods to discuss and approach urgent issues and ongoing debates regarding the planetary. 

We will read the works of leading scholars from various disciplines in the humanities such as Amitav Ghosh, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Ian Baucom, Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway among others. We will explore questions such as follows:In what ways can science fiction (sci-if ), its derivative known as climate fiction (cli-fi), and literature and literary studies provide new insights and imaginations in the wake of climate change, energy crisis, and planetary challenges? Is the scifi genre a catalyst for, or an impediment to, our imaginations of planetary futures? What are the new challenges contemporary artists of storytelling (such as novelists and filmmakers) must confront at the time of climate crisis and the Anthropocene?  

The planetary as a new paradigm in the humanities  

The Anthropocene and reimaginations of the Anthropocene 

Anthropocentrism and posthumanism 

Ecofeminism 

Ecocriticism$ and Tragedy of the commons  

Agency of history, agency in the Anthropocene, citizenship and political agency in the planetary 

Sci-fi and climate fiction (cli-fi) and dystopian fictions  

Apocalypses catastrophes and ecotopias 

Sci-fi, the novel, and their potentials and limits in the planetary 

1. Students will gain an understanding of what entails the genre known as science fiction, including its derivatives such as climate fiction, connections and contradictions between science and fiction. 

2. Students will read and analyze a wide range of literary and cinematic texts of science fiction that imagine dystopian/apocalyptic/catastrophic futures and address such planetary issues as climate change, energy crisis, the Anthropocene, the threat of nuclear power and weapons, environmental and humanitarian disaster, pandemic and world health etc. 

3. Students will familiarize themselves with ongoing debates and critical discussions from the works of leading scholars that address urgent issues and debates regarding science fiction, its promises and limitations. 

4. Students will examine the values and importance of science fiction, literature and literary studies in the face of climate change and planetary crisis. 

5. Students will responsibly and intellectually respond to and reflect on climate change and planetary crisis from the perspective of a literary critic and scholar. 

 We will meet every week for a consecutive 3-hour session. Each meeting will consist of lecture, class discussion, short presentation (casual sharing) from students, writing workshop, and/or creative project workshop. 

Assessment 

 1. Participation 10% 

2. Reflection paper 25% 

3. Creative project* 25% 

4. Final critical paper 40%

*for the creative project, students are invited to imagine their own version of a planetary future and presents it in any form or media such as a fictional prose narrative, a play, a simulated debate or speech (a court hearing, a reading of a bill in a body of legislature, an activist’s manifesto, or a keynote speech in an academic conference such as the one in the final pages of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale for instance), a short film, a webpage etc. 

It is currently intended as a group work, but individual project can be accommodated. We will discuss its details including categories of assessment criteria explicitly during the first meeting. 

(subject to minor edits) 

Amitav Ghosh. The Hungry Tide.    

Ella Hickson. Oil.  

Kazuo Ishiguro. Never Let Me Go. 

Ursula K. Le Guin. The Dispossessed.  

Emilie St.-John Mandel. Station Eleven.