Science Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition

Front Matter....Pages i-vi
Introduction: Science Fiction at a Crossroad Between Ethics and Imagination....Pages 1-4
Front Matter....Pages 5-7
The Perfect Organism: The Intruder of the Alien Films as a Bio-fictional Construct....Pages 9-20
Science Fiction at the Far Side of Technology: Vernor Vinge’s Singularity Thesis Versus the Limits of AI-Research....Pages 21-40
A Greenhouse on Mars....Pages 41-58
Fascinating! Popular Science Communication and Literary Science Fiction: The Shared Features of Awe and Fascination and Their Significance to Ideas of Science Fictions as Vehicles for Critical Debate About Scientific Enterprises and Their Ethical Implications....Pages 59-80
Front Matter....Pages 81-83
Our Serial (and Parallel) Selves: Identity in the Age of the Transhuman....Pages 85-93
Commodified Life: Post-Humanism, Cloning and Gender in Orphan Black ....Pages 95-113
Religion in a World of Androids and Aliens: Life and Death in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Prometheus ....Pages 115-135
I Am Omega Man: Religious Repositioning of the Secular Apocalypse Film in I Am Legend ....Pages 137-154
Front Matter....Pages 155-157
From Isolationism to Globalism: An Overview of Politics and Ethics in the Hollywood Science Fiction Film....Pages 159-179
Reinventing Utopia: Politics and Ethics of Choice in the Works of Kim Stanley Robinson....Pages 181-194
The Final Frontier: Survival Ethics in Extreme Living Conditions as Portrayed in Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations and Ridley Scott’s Alien ....Pages 195-205
The Politics of Post-Apocalypse: Ideologies on Trial in John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids ....Pages 207-226
On Ustopias and Finding Courage in a Hopeless Situation....Pages 227-246