EN 4241 Utopias & Dystopias

Course Description and Objectives

This module examines the utopian impulse and its inversion through fictional constructs which extrapolate from familiar mind-sets, existing systems of social, political and ethical organisation, current technologies and eco-systems to possible worlds and alternative modes of existence that refract an acute crisis of the contemporary. The module provides an opportunity to study the imaginative impulse which revises our sense of the relation between what has been to what could have been, and of what is, to what might come to be.

This module will address the following questions: What is the appeal and function of imaginative utopias and dystopias? How do such forms of imaginative writing address the constantly changing relation of science and technology to human life as we know it, to the human individual, to human society, and to the many institutions and notions, from gender and sexuality to race, family, nation, religion and species through which the relation of the individual to the group is mediated in time and place?

Primary Texts
1. Yevgeny Zamyatin	We (1924, trans. Clarence Brown, 1993)
2. Walter M. Miller, Jr.	A Canticle for Leibowitz 1959
3. Anthony Burgess	A Clockwork Orange (1962)
4. Philip K. Dick	The Man in the High Castle (1962)
5. Ursula le Guin	The Dispossessed (1974)
6. William Gibson	Neuromancer (1984)
7. Philip Kerr	A Philosophical Investigation (1992)

Assignments & Continuous assessment

End-of-semester Examination of 2 hours (60%)

1 Class-presentation (5%)

general Class-participation (5%)

1 essay of approx. 2-3,000 words (30%), which should include reference to material outside the set texts, relate it to set text(s), and integrate the discussion into issues, topics and themes dealt with in the course.

Essay due in week 13 (Tuesday: 22 October)

Suggested Essay Topics

(You should take up one text from the syllabus and discuss it in relation to any other sf text you have read, adopting or adapting any one of the following topics as a focus for the argument of your essay)

The relation between alternative histories as a recurrent theme in SF and the notion of dystopia

The role played by science and technology in dystopian worlds

The relation between the individual and the State as a recurrent theme in dystopian fiction

The relation of dystopia to ethics, morality and didacticism

The role of narrative form and narrative technique in dystopian fiction

How do the invented fictional cultures of dystopian fiction relate to the mores of contemporary societies?

The role of religious themes, motifs and preoccupations in dystopian SF

The relation between linguistic sub-cultures and societies in decline

Violence and dehumanization in fictional societies

The transformations undergone by gender roles and sexual conventions in dystopian fiction

Lecture Schedule
Week	Starting	Text/Author/Topic	Lecturer
1	30 july	Introduction	SA
2	06 Aug	Zamyatin	RSP
3	13 aug	Zamyatin/Miller	SA
4	20 aug	Miller	RSP
5	27 aug	Burgess	SA
6	03 sep	Burgess/Dick	RSP
7	09 sep	1-week recess
8	17 sep	Dick	SA
9	24 sep	le Guin	RSP
10	01 oct	le Guin/Cyberculture	SA
11	08 oct	Gibson	RSP
12	15 oct	Gibson/Kerr	SA
13	22 oct	Kerr	RSP
14	29 oct	Conclusion & Revision

Supplementary Reading

REFERENCE WORK

J. Clute & P. Nicholls (ed), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993)

CRITICAL WORKS

Richard Gerber, Utopian Fantasy 1973)

Alexandra Aldridge, The Scientific World View in Dystopia (1984)

Ursula le Guin, The Language of the Night (1979)

Ursula le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World (1989)

Tom Moylan, Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (1984)

Brian Stableford, The Sociology of Science Fiction (1987)

Frances Bartowski, Feminist Utopias(1989)

Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction (1993) Jenny Wolmark, Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism (1994)

Neil Barron, Anatomy of Wonder 4 (4th edn., 1995)

Damien Broderick, Reading by Starlight:Postmodern Science Fiction (1995)

Brooks Landon, Science Fiction After 1900 (1997)

JOURNALS

Science-Fiction Studies

Extrapolation

Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction

LINKS

ISF Database

SF Bibliographies

http://sflovers.rutgers.edu/bibliographies/authorlists/

http://access-co2.tamu.edu/hhall/