Lavender, Isiah
MTWRF 9:30 AM
Park Hall 144
ENGL 4897: Contagious Science Fictions in a Science-Fictional Moment
A lethal virus rampages across the globe, emptying out schools, offices, and stadiums, and clearing out restaurants, movie theaters, and shopping malls. People face isolation for days, weeks, and months. Society remains, but those venturing outside wear masks as a semblance of protection. This is the stuff of science fiction and, yet, this is real life too. While the present tense of the COVID-19 pandemic may seem too dreadful to dwell upon, science fiction offers us the opportunity to dwell on what could happen, consequently allowing us to simultaneously reflect on what is and what to do next. Pandemics in science fiction nearly always represent planetary events that habitually happen in the near future, where the remnants of humanity must unite or perish. These novels (and perhaps films) will necessarily prompt a deeper scrutiny of our COVID-19 crisis because of how SF defamiliarizes the present in making the common seem strange thus inviting an augmented view of the familiar. Therefore, we will delve into the human truths of these science fictional worlds as we wander into unreal realms. The guiding questions for this class: What is the cultural relevance of science fiction to our real-world responses? Why? Is science fiction a useful tool?
Novels under consideration: Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Orleans, Ling Ma’s Severance, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, Mike Chen's A Beginning at the End, John Scalzi's Lock In, Karen Thompson Walker’s The Dreamers, and Charles Wheelan’s The Rationing