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bibliogrammaEarly this year, Morgan told me she was trying to finish a lot of books she had started but not finished. But there were still several half-read books on her ipad, and I found seven partially completed reviews, which I am cleaning up and posting here. I suspect most of the reviews were started before she decided she needed to focus more on reading than on doing write ups of what she had read.
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It is generally accepted that one of the driving questions behind science fiction is ‘what if?’ - the desire to explore the consequences of some aspect of human experience under specific conditions. In this sense, science fiction is a vast body of detailed sociological thought experiments, and if one looks, one may find explorations of virtually every aspect of human life, history and culture.
In Science Fiction and Empire, Patricia Kerslake looks at the ways that science fiction has explored power and imperialism, using a post-colonial lens. A large body of work within the science fiction genre is explicitly imperialist in nature, being inevitably concerned with the power relations with a stratified and extensive society - often comprised of a home world and colonies - and how they affect the goals of the protagonist situated within that society. The introduction of an Other, an alien species whose role is to be conquered, repulsed, or incorporated into the existing society, renders the imperialism explicit.
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It is generally accepted that one of the driving questions behind science fiction is ‘what if?’ - the desire to explore the consequences of some aspect of human experience under specific conditions. In this sense, science fiction is a vast body of detailed sociological thought experiments, and if one looks, one may find explorations of virtually every aspect of human life, history and culture.
In Science Fiction and Empire, Patricia Kerslake looks at the ways that science fiction has explored power and imperialism, using a post-colonial lens. A large body of work within the science fiction genre is explicitly imperialist in nature, being inevitably concerned with the power relations with a stratified and extensive society - often comprised of a home world and colonies - and how they affect the goals of the protagonist situated within that society. The introduction of an Other, an alien species whose role is to be conquered, repulsed, or incorporated into the existing society, renders the imperialism explicit.