Utopia, Dystopia, and Technology in Science Fiction: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

This course explores how science fiction (sf) narratives from East and West imagine the future of humanity and human-nature relations. The blind faith in technoscientific power has aggravated class disparity, eroded the social fabric, and undermined the humanist legacy of the Enlightenment. Technological fetishism has given rise to apocalyptic futures of dystopia marked by destructive AI, the digital jungle of existential struggle, environmental degradation, climate disasters, class disparity, and posthuman barbarism. On the other hand, sf narratives keep hopes alive by projecting utopias, exposing the pitfalls of technological 'progress' and keeping faith with human sovereignty in renewing social ecology in balance with natural conditions.