Tag Archives: science fiction

Sci-Fi Provides Pandemic Guidance

Our society is currently split on the value of scientific expertise. That split goes back at least as far as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Donne’s Lovers, Spooky at a Distance

Tuesday Adam Gopnik makes some nice literary allusions in a recent New Yorker essay-review of George Musser’s Spooky at a Distance, which is about the history of quantum entanglement theory. Entanglement, also known as non-locality and described by Einstein as “spooky at a distance,” claims that two particles of a single wave function can influence each other, even […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Vonnegut’s Sci Fi Says the Unsayable

Yesterday I spent all day—from 9 am to 6 pm with occasional breaks—listening to our English majors present their senior projects. That I was energized rather than drained by the experience testifies to the strength of the talks. In today’s post I report on my student Chris Hammond’s essay on Kurt Vonnegut’s use of science […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments closed

Vonnegut’s Sci Fi, a Response to PTSD

Kurt Vonnegut’s science fiction can be seen as a way of coping with his PTSD.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Atwood and the Eve of Destruction

Margaret Atwood’s most famous novel may be her futurist nightmare The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). In her two most recent novels, Atwood returns to the dystopian genre and paints a picture of a world in which unbridled capitalism, environmental devastation, urban decay, sexual license, runaway gene splicing, and extreme income disparity rule the earth. My book […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed