The Philosophy of Science Fiction
eBook - PDF

The Philosophy of Science Fiction

Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip K. Dick

  1. 256 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Philosophy of Science Fiction

Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip K. Dick

About this book

The Philosophy of Science Fiction: Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip K. Dick explores the deep affinity between two seemingly quite different thinkers, in their attempts to address the need for salvation in (and from) an era of accelerated mechanization, in which humans' capacity for destroying or subjugating the living has attained a planetary scale. The philosopher and the science fiction writer come together to meet the contradictory imperatives of a realist outlook-a task which, arguably, philosophy and science fiction could only ever adequately undertake in collaboration. Their respective approaches meet in a focus on the ambiguous status of fictionalizing, or fabulation, as simultaneously one of mechanization's most devastating tools, and the possibility of its undoing. When they are read together, the complexities and paradoxes thrown up by this ambiguity, with which both Bergson and Dick struggle on their own, open up new ways to navigate ideas of mechanism and mysticism, immanence and transcendence, and the possibility and meaning of salvation. The result is at once an original reading of both thinkers, a new critical theory of the socio–cultural, political and ethical function of fictionalizing, and a case study in the strange affinity, at times the uncanny similarity, between philosophy and science fiction.

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Yes, you can access The Philosophy of Science Fiction by James Edward Burton in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Literary Criticism in Science Fiction. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Half title
  2. FC
  3. Also available from Bloomsbury
  4. Title
  5. Copyright
  6. Contents
  7. Acknowledgements
  8. Abbreviations
  9. Introduction
  10. 1 Fabulation: Counteracting Reality
  11. 2 Fabulating Salvation in Four Early Novels
  12. 3 The Empire that Never Ended
  13. 4 Objects of Salvation: The Man in the High Castle
  14. 5 How We Became Post-Android
  15. 6 The Reality of Valis
  16. Epilogue: Soter-ecologies
  17. Notes
  18. Bibliography
  19. Index