Science fiction is a genre about extrapolating contemporary knowledge of the society we live in, in order to build imaginary, future societies in order to understand the consequences and evolution of our knowledge. In this work, I explore the predictive aspects of science fiction by making a comparative analysis between Frank Herbert's Dune and Isaac Asimov's Foundation. The questions I have chosen to explore are: How are the novels are influenced by the life experiences of the authors?How does the novels reflect the time period in which they were written?How does prediction function as a plot device in the novels?As a theoretical basis for my work I have used the academic journal Science Fiction Studies, as well as individual articles, academic books and author biographies that touch upon the subject.My approach has been to apply a traditional literary critique to the authors and the novels in order to understand the relationship between the authors and their novels.Asimov, a professor in chemistry, reflects in his fictional writing a deep faith in the sciences and their ability to navigate problematic futures with pinpoint accuracy, whereas Herbert makes known his distaste for authority figures. Asimov's predictive psychohistory leads the novel's psychohistorians to a better, more utopian society, whereas the prescience of Paul Atreides leads mankind to violence and ruin. Herbert's writing functions almost like a polemic against Asimov's idea that scientists would function as flawless leaders in society, and that prediction of the future would lead inevitably to a more prosperous society. From my analysis I have concluded that both the authors and the time period in which they wrote their respective novels played a significant role in shaping the futures depicted in each novel. Far from being novel predictions of potential futures, the future societies of Herbert and Asimov's novels reflect their own ideology and the time periods in which the novels were written.

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This written portion of my thesis chronicles my experience as director and producer of Visionary Futures: Science Fiction Theatre for Social Justice Movements, in collaboration with playwrights, activists, actors, designers, and a dramaturg. In this thesis, I explore the process of creating a meaningful thesis project during the Covid-19 pandemic. I discuss the idea of visionary fiction as created by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha and how to create theatre within that genre. This thesis chronicles the development and production of three new plays of visionary fiction that wrestle with contemporary social issues, all designed for digital performance. I share my process pairing each writer with an activist to create work that envisioned more just worlds while also being responsive to the current moment. I explore the opportunities and challenges of reimagining the generative writing process, making theatre within a digital medium, and being creative during a global pandemic. This thesis also includes the full text of each play and links to the recordings of the digital productions.

This paper explores the Xenogenesis trilogy written by Octavia Bulter and how it presents Otherness as a concept.  It provides several examples of otherness and additionally presents ideas of how it can be seen as something to be celebrated.

Given its early connection to western science fiction, it is not entirely surprising that contemporary Chinese science fiction (csf) frequently references the "west" in general and Greek mythology in particular. The three works that I analyze in this paper are Xia Jia's "Psychology Game," Gu Shi's "Chimera," and Egoyan Zheng's The Dream Devourer. These three texts utilize Greek mythology in different ways, to different degrees, and with different purposes, and yet they all use Greek mythology to visually disrupt their respective texts. Xia Jia ends "Psychology Game" with a direct Greek-language quotation. Throughout "Chimera," Gu Shi quotes Chinese translations of Greek texts. Finally, in The Dream Devourer, Egoyan Zheng's references to Greek myth are more playful and extensive. Although Zheng names certain significant characters in his novel after figures in Greek mythology, the connections to those figures are rarely explicit and are often twisted or inverted. By analyzing these three texts together we can more clearly see the overarching connection that Greek mythology has to contemporary csf. Although multilingual references are not new to Chinese literature, the Greek references commonly found in csf are likely foreign not only to their Chinese-language audience, but to their Anglophone audience as well. As such, there is a very distinct visual divide between the Chinese-language references and the Greek or Roman script in these texts. Though each script remains clearly discernable, they are connected by the interweaving of the languages and by the text itself, the final result being a literary "cyborg" that unites supposedly binary aspects of "East" and "West." As Donna Haraway claims in her "Cyborg Manifesto," the cyborg represents the rejection of rigid binaries and two-word definitions. She claims, "We are cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality" (50). By combining Greek, Roman, and Chinese scripts these authors simultaneously represent and complicate the dichotomy of "East" and "West," acknowledging how these supposedly distinct cultures have blended.

Denna explorativa undersökning har sökt efter ett svar till frågeställningen: vilka faktorer är det i en science fiction-miljö som gör att den kan upplevas som trovärdig?För att undersöka detta har en utredning utförts genom diverse litteraturstudier om vad trovärdighet och realism kan vara. Sturken och Cartwright (2009) menar på att den tidpunkt som betraktaren befinner sig i, och den tidpunkt som den betraktade produkten är skapad under, påverkar uppfattningen om produktens antagna realism. Det var från denna teori som arbetet hade sin grund och utgångspunkt. För att undersöka detta argument i en 3D-miljö delades området in i tre olika kategorier: Ljus, form och föremål.Utifrån detta skapades tre varianter av en och samma scen där de tre olika områdena representerades. Från dessa scener renderades tre filmklipp om 12 sekunder vardera. Sedan utfördes fem kvalitativa intervjuer där deltagarna fick se klippen och svara på frågor. Målgruppen fokuserade på personer som konsumerade mycket film, spel och media. Undersökningen skedde med kvalitativa intervjuer.Analysen och slutsatsen visar på att Sturken och Cartwrights (2009) teori om att betraktarens bakgrund påverkar uppfattningen om ett verk. Från de tre områden som undersöktes i den här rapporten så bedömdes ljussättningen och textureringen ha störst påverkan på trovärdigheten. Formvarianten bedömdes som mest trovärdig.

Language is a central concern of science fiction. From first contact to interstellar warfare, stories about aliens inevitably raise questions of communication. But how do we conceive of alien languages within the constraints of human language? And what do depictions of alien languages reveal about our own language use? Several studies have established the significance and magnitude of the theme of language in (predominantly twentieth century western) science fiction. Building on these studies, I combine macro-analysis with close reading to argue that these alien languages fall on a spectrum of alterity. Within this spectrum, I organise these languages into three distinct gradations of alterity: they help to define their speakers as alien people, creatures or inscrutable beings. The languages of alien 'people’ are structurally similar to our own, and explore the socio-political relationship between language and culture. Those of ‘creatures’ are radically, physically unlike human languages and explore the boundary between humans, animals and aliens. Finally, the languages of ‘beings’ are incomprehensible and prone to spiritualisation. They bring to light the aspects of experience we deem beyond language. This typology provides a framework through which to explore the major themes and questions regarding language, humanity and alterity in science fiction. By presenting these categories in increasing degrees of alterity, I aim to demonstrate that language, like the figure of the alien, is a fundamentally anthropocentric concept. Each category identifies different facets of our language use that simultaneously alienate and define us.

Given its early connection to western science fiction, it is not entirely surprising that contemporary Chinese science fiction (csf) frequently references the "west" in general and Greek mythology in particular. The three works that I analyze in this paper are Xia Jia's "Psychology Game," Gu Shi's "Chimera," and Egoyan Zheng's The Dream Devourer. These three texts utilize Greek mythology in different ways, to different degrees, and with different purposes, and yet they all use Greek mythology to visually disrupt their respective texts. Xia Jia ends "Psychology Game" with a direct Greek-language quotation. Throughout "Chimera," Gu Shi quotes Chinese translations of Greek texts. Finally, in The Dream Devourer, Egoyan Zheng's references to Greek myth are more playful and extensive. Although Zheng names certain significant characters in his novel after figures in Greek mythology, the connections to those figures are rarely explicit and are often twisted or inverted. By analyzing these three texts together we can more clearly see the overarching connection that Greek mythology has to contemporary csf. Although multilingual references are not new to Chinese literature, the Greek references commonly found in csf are likely foreign not only to their Chinese-language audience, but to their Anglophone audience as well. As such, there is a very distinct visual divide between the Chinese-language references and the Greek or Roman script in these texts. Though each script remains clearly discernable, they are connected by the interweaving of the languages and by the text itself, the final result being a literary "cyborg" that unites supposedly binary aspects of "East" and "West." As Donna Haraway claims in her "Cyborg Manifesto," the cyborg represents the rejection of rigid binaries and two-word definitions. She claims, "We are cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality" (50). By combining Greek, Roman, and Chinese scripts these authors simultaneously represent and complicate the dichotomy of "East" and "West," acknowledging how these supposedly distinct cultures have blended.

TITLE: THE SUNKEN COUNTRY & OTHER STORIESMAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Rebekah Frumkin The Sunken Country & Other Stories collects five works that place personal tales of alienation, repression, isolation, obsession, and romance and broader themes of dramatic shifts in the workings of culture and environment under a microscope and vivisect them with tools gathered from the New Weird tradition

Bibliography: leaves 208-219. / Religious apocalyptic literature appears to have been written in response to a situation of crisis in which the believers found themselves. It is the catalyst which provided the energy which the society needed in order to withstand that crisis, and it did this by radically inverting the dimensions which make up a worldview, that is the dimensions of time and space, and the classification of groups, so that it reflects the possibility of a new order, a new heaven and a new earth. Since the nineteenth century, the Western world has seen itself in a constant state of crisis in terms of the rapid secularisation, industrialisation and urbanisation, and it would seem that the notion of an apocalypse is still relevant. But religious visions of the apocalypse do not seem to have relevance to the largely secular society they would have been addressing. Something new, immediate and drastic was needed, which would supply the society with the energy to withstand the crisis of a secular world. Science fiction as a literary genre arose in the late nineteenth century, and it would seem as if the new social situation generated a new symbolic vocabulary for ancient apocalyptic themes, in other words, science fiction appeared as an imaginative literary genre of mythic, apocalyptic dimensions to address this situation. In the same way as religious visions of the apocalypse, science fiction inverts the components of a worldview so that a new social order, a new heaven and a new earth are seen as possible. In order to explore this theme, science fiction is examined in the light of radical inversion of accepted worldviews, and the genre is divided into three historical periods in order to understand the conditions under which it was written, as well as the content of the material involved. These periods are: 1. Apocalypses of Expectation and Hope. The late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century; the beginnings of the genre in the crisis of rapid industrialisation, secularisation and urbanisation, using the works of Jules Verne and H G Wells. 2. Apocalypses of Irony and Despair. The nineteen twenties to the end of the Second World War; the crises of the two World Wars on a complacent world, using the works of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. 3. Apocalypses of Destruction and Redemption. The nineteen fifties to the present; the crisis of nuclear power and thinking machines, using the works of Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov. Also examined are the quasi-religious nature of science fiction, apocalypse as a cleansing agent of the universe, and the myths of noble survivors of post-apocalyptic literature and films. In the light of the above, it can be understood why science fiction can be seen as the functional equivalent to religious apocalyptic myth, but relevant to the largely secular Western world of the twentieth century.