CFP: Chapter for an anthology on ethics and/in science fiction

Submissions are welcome for a proposed collection of 13 articles, 6,000-8,000 words each, revolving around the theme of ethics and/in science fiction (SF). The phrase “and/in” denotes an interdisciplinary approach that makes use of the tools of moral philosophy in elucidating insights from SF works. The interested publisher is McFarland.

SF has clear affinities with the discipline of philosophy, inasmuch as it is “a genre based on an imagined alternative to the reader’s environment” (Seed 2011, 1). SF effectively dramatizes the problems central to metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology. Dozens of publications since at least the 1980s have dealt with the interconnections between philosophy and SF. Meanwhile, many books have been published dealing specifically with ethics and/in SF, notably Kendal et. al. (2020), Baron et. al. (2017), Blackford (2017), Gomel (2014), Bieber Lake (2013), and Pinksy (2003).

Although much ink has already been spilled on the subject, it remains rich and perennially interesting. The proposed anthology calls for chapters that feature any of the following analytical moves in their engagement with SF:

• Discusses how an SF work raises moral problems and how it can be said to prescribe a solution or stance on such problems (e.g. Anderson 2016 and Jollimore 2015);
• Shows how an SF work supports, critiques, or questions an ethical position or approach (e.g. Baron 2017 and Schneider 2016);
• Explores ethical themes in an SF work, showing how it contributes to or encourages new thinking about these themes (e.g. Bulleid 2020 and Kendal 2020);
• Extracts a moral argument from an SF work and evaluates it via an informed critical reading of the work’s formal elements (e.g. Baron 2017, Miller 2008, and Vint 2005);
• Articulates an ethical position or theme running through the works of an SF author, showing how it is embodied in specific works, discussing its nuances, and demonstrating its implications for existing debates in ethics (e.g. Eriksen and Gjerris 2017 and Paul 2020);
• Shows how an SF work engages with the ideas of a philosopher, with a view to resolving a problem or filling a gap intrinsic to the work of that philosopher (Kendall 2020);
• Demonstrates how an SF work develops or reworks a philosophical claim or thought experiment (e.g. Holt 1992);
• Brings out the philosophical import of literary subgenres in SF for applied ethics, e.g. biopunk for bioethics; cyberpunk for machine and digital ethics; utopias/dystopias for animal ethics, etc. (e.g. Anderson 2016 and Wald 2008); and
• Discusses how an SF work interrogates an issue in applied ethics and explains how insights from it can be extrapolated to our contemporary reality (Jollimore 2015 and Delgado et. al. 2012).

Please submit your article on or before August 29, 2022 to [email protected]. It should be 6,000-8,000 words long, following the Chicago style.

Noelle Leslie dela Cruz

Full Professor, Department of Philosophy

De La Salle University 

2401 Taft Avenue, Malate, Manila 1009 Philippines

References:

Anderson, Susan Leigh. 2016. “Asimov’s ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ and Machine Metaethics,” in Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, 2nd ed. Ed. Susan Schneider. Oxford and Massachusetts: Wiley Blackwell. 

Baron, Christian, Peter Nicolai Halvorsen, and Christine Cornea, eds. 2017. Science Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Baron, Christian. 2017. “The Final Frontier: Survival Ethics in Extreme Living Conditions as Portrayed in Tome Godwin’s The Cold Equations and Ridley Scott’s Alien,” in Science Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition, ed. Christian Baron, Peter Nicolai Halvorsen, and Christine Cornea. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Bieber Lake, Christina. 2013. Prophets of the Posthuman: American Fiction, Biotechnology and the Ethics of Personhood. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Blackford, Russell. 2017. Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination: Visions, Minds, Ethics. Springer. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Bulleid, Joshua. 2020. “Better Societies for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: Vegetarianism and the Utopian Tradition,” in Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction, ed. Zachary Kendal, Aisling Smith, Giula Champion, and Andrew Milner  London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Istvan. 2008. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Delgado, Ana, Kjetil Rommetveit, Miquel Barceló, and Louis Lemkow.  2012. “Imagining High-Tech Bodies: Science Fiction and the Ethics of Enhancement.” Science Communication 34, no. 2 (April 2012): 200–240. https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547011408928.

Eriksen, Maud M.L. and Mickey Gjerris. 2017. “On Ustopias and Finding Courage in a Hopeless Situation,” in Science Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition, ed. Christian Baron, Peter Nicolai Halvorsen, and Christine Cornea. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Gomel, Elena. 2014. Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism: Beyond the Golden Rule. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Holt, Philip. 1992. “H.G. Wells and the Ring of Gyges.” Science Fiction Studies Vol. 19 (July 1992), no. 2: 236-247.

Jollimore, Troy. 2015. “’This Endless space between the Words’: The Limits of Love in Spike Jonze’s Her. Midwest Studies in Philosophy Vol. 39, no. 1 (September 2015): 120-143.

Kendal, Zachary. 2020. “Science Fiction’s Ethical Modes: Totality and Infinity in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s Мы (We),” in Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction, ed. Zachary Kendal, Aisling Smith, Giula Champion, and Andrew Milner. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kendal, Zachary, Aisling Smith, Giula Champion, and Andrew Milner, eds. 2020. Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Miller, Gavin. 2008. “Animals, Empathy, and Care in Naomi Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman.” Science Fiction Studies Vol. 35, no. 2: 251-65. http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/105/miller105.htm.

Paul, Sreejata. 2020. “Inversion and Prolepsis: Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Feminist Utopian Strategies,” in Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction, ed. Zachary Kendal, Aisling Smith, Giula Champion, and Andrew Milner. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pinsky, Michael. 2003. Future Present: Ethics and/as Science Fiction. Madison and Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press. 

Schneider, Susan, ed. 2016. Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, 2nd ed. Ed. Susan Schneider. Oxford and Massachusetts: Wiley Blackwell. 

Schneider, Susan. 2016. “Mindscan: Transcending and Enhancing the Human Brain,” in Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, 2nd ed. Ed. Susan Schneider. Oxford and Massachusetts: Wiley Blackwell. 

Seed, David. 2011. Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Suvin, Darko. 1979. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Vint, Sherryl. 2005.  “Becoming Other: Animals, Kinship, and Butler's Clay's Ark.  Science Fiction Studies Vol. 32, no. 2 (2005): 281-300. Accessed June 9, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4241348.

Vint, Sherryl. 2017. “Commodified Life: Post-Humanism, Cloning and Gender in Orphan Black,” in Science Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition, ed. Christian Baron, Peter Nicolai Halvorsen, and Christine Cornea. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Wald, Priscilla. 2008. “Cognitive Estrangement, Science Fiction, and Medical Ethics.” Lancet Vol. 371, no. 9628 (June 7-13): 1908-1909.