We Live in a Science Fictional Universe

We live in a science-fictional universe. We know this to be true because someone asserts it roughly every thirteen seconds. What is meant by this hypothesis is not just that some of the shiny techno-fantasies of science fictions past have become parts of our day-to-day reality (cell phones for all; jetpacks for some), but rather that science fiction is now the literary and cultural formation most equipped to represent the world we inhabit. In eras past, the sea narrative or the documentary film or the soap opera or the historical novel might have been more fitting, more capable of illuminating the circumstances and problems of an era; now, though, is science fiction’s time. The project of this course, then, will be to test this hypothesis, and to think about the ways in which science fiction—in addition to being endlessly fun and entertaining!—matters.