The ex-human

• Verfasst von: Bérubé, Michael [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: The ex-human
• Titelzusatz: science fiction and the fate of our species
• Verf.angabe: Michael Bérubé
• Verlagsort: New York
• Verlag: Columbia University Press
• E-Jahr: 2024
• Jahr: [2024]
• Umfang: xx, 287 Seiten
• Fussnoten: Includes bibliographical references and index
• ISBN: 978-0-231-21505-3
• ISBN: 978-0-231-21504-6
• Schlagwörter: (s)Englisch / (s)Science-Fiction-Literatur / (s)Science-Fiction-Film / (s)Mensch
• Sprache: eng
• Bibliogr. Hinweis: Erscheint auch als : Online-Ausgabe: Bérubé, Michael, 1961-: Ex-human. - New York : Columbia University Press, 2024 |(DLC)2023049520
• Sach-SW: Literary criticism
• Sach-SW: Film criticism
• K10plus-PPN: 1884410421

Abstract

"The "what-will-become-of-us genre" is a distinctive feature of the post-World War II literary landscape, for the obvious reason that with World War II humans achieved the power to destroy themselves-and the awful awareness of that power. Perhaps no genre has focused on the collapse of civilization or the destruction on man so insistently and so imaginatively as science fiction. Increasingly, science fiction has been read in ways that speak to environmental threats and the effects of the Anthropocene. In this sense, science fiction, as Michael Berube argues, offers a radical interpretation of the human - one that challenges our species parochialism not only from the perspective of some greater galactic alien or universal intelligence but from the perspective of the world we share from the living creatures we already know. In Ex-Human, Michael Berube, who teaches a very popular science fiction class, discusses a variety of novels and films and how they respond to the question of what will become of us as a species-and whether one can fruitfully imagine the world without us. Writers and works discussed include Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Liu Cixin, Margaret Atwood, The Matrix, 2001, and Blade Runner. Drawing on his interpretations of the novels and films and the responses of other readers and viewers, including his students, Berube provides a lively yet sobering account of how science fiction imagines the end of the planet with our without humans"--