Can I read The Ex-Human: Science Fiction and the Fate of Our Species on EtoBox?

The Ex-Human: Science Fiction and the Fate of Our Species by Michael Bérubé is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Ex-Human: Science Fiction and the Fate of Our Species about?

Facing threats like climate change and nuclear warfare, science fiction authors have conjured apocalyptic scenarios of human extinction. Can such gloomy fates help us make sense of our contemporary crises? How important is the survival of our species if we wind up battling for an Earth that has become an unhabitable hellscape? What other possible futures do narratives of the end of humanity allow us to imagine? Michael Bérubé explores the surprising insights of classic and contemporary works of SF that depict civilizational collapse and contemplate the fate of Homo sapiens. In a lively, conversational style, he considers novels by writers including Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Liu Cixin, Philip K. Dick, and Octavia Butler, as well as films that feature hostile artificial intelligence, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, and the Terminator and Matrix franchises. Bérubé argues that these works portray a future in which we have become able to see ourselves from the vantage point of something other than the human. Though framed by the possibility of human extinction, they are driven by a vision of the “ex-human”―a desire to imagine that another species is possible. For

Who reads The Ex-Human: Science Fiction and the Fate of Our Species?

Author

Michael Bérubé

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published

2024

Language

EN

ISBN

9780231215046

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Social Science, Cultural, Social_sciences