"During my project I concentrated on two aspects, preparedness novels and ""hard"" science fiction.
PREPAREDNESS NOVELS: As the era of globalization and comfort ends, preparedness novels embrace humanity’s dystopian future and leap at the chance for societal rejuvenation on more localized terms. The three textual case studies explored here put forward a value system derived from the lives of the pioneers and settlers. The frontier, a classic trope of American mythology, is reimagined as the Neo-Frontier, a time-and-space continuum located at the porous divide between civilization and wilderness. While this trope provides an antidote against consumer culture’s perceived rootlessness and effeminacy, it also legitimizes problematic attitudes, including racism, sexism and a penchant for top-down hierarchies. By regressing to traditional models, the white man avoids succumbing to the excesses of savagery, for example cannibalism, and places himself outside of historic time.
I submitted my article ""The Neo-Frontier in Contemporary Preparedness Novels"" to the Journal of American Studies in 3. May 2019 - in month 9 of my fellowship (according to my original plan, this Milestone was planned for month 11). As expected, the article was returned with major revisions, then eventually resubmitted and accepted.
HARD SCIENCE FICTION: Once the surface of planet Earth becomes inhabitable, space migration no longer represents colonial expansion, but becomes a matter of survival. Two contemporary science fiction texts put forward scenarios of mankind’s departure from its cradle, lest it should face extinction: Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves (2015) and Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past-Trilogy (地球往事), comprised by The Three-Body Problem (三体, 2008), The Dark Forest (黑暗森林, 2008) and Death’s End (死神永生, 2010). Exploring the possibility of moving human life into space stations, they put into question the earth-bound condition of biological life. Such radical habitat change, it turns out, is possible, though accompanied by a transformation of human ethics. At the heart of my analysis lie Liu’s and Stephenson’s tableaus of humanity’s future, where the survival of our species can only be afforded by painful decisions. The implied ethics are, as I will argue, informed by modern pragmatic philosophy. My research questions are: how does Liu’s and Stephenson’s future inscribe itself in behavioural codes? What anthropology is put forward? In what way are such scenarios a description of our present?
I submitted my article ""Leaving Gaia Behind: The Ethics of Space Migration in Cixin Liu’s and Neil Stephenson’s Science Fiction"" to World Literature Studies on 2. July 2020 - two months later than planned in my timeline. Gladly, the article was accepted straight away. It will appear in the next issue this year."
