This site is a resource for students of the World Science Fiction (WSF) course.
WSF explores the local, global, and universal natures of the speculative genre of science fiction (SF) from the early twentieth century through the present. It highlights works from the Golden Age (late 1930s-’50s), the New Wave of the 1960s and ’70s, cyberpunk in the 1980s, and today’s various sub-genres and cross-over incarnations. It approaches the genre as a mode of thought-experimentation and world-building that problematizes actual and possible political, cultural, natural, human, and techno-scientific realities. Among the themes included are the human-machine interface, environmental apocalypse & solutions, the alien, time travel.
Readings/viewings/listening include short stories from nearly every continent, short films and tv episodes, music, visual art & architecture, journalism, and literary criticism.
With thanks to
–Franco Brambilla for permission to use his artwork
-David Israel, Academic Technology at Bowdoin College
-Victoria Rea-Wilson (Bowdoin, ’14), Research Assistant
-Raisa Tolchinsky (Bowdoin, ’17), Research Assistant
-Bradford Dudley (Bowdoin, ’22), Teaching Assistant
-Nora Sullivan Horner (Bowdoin ‘24), Research Assistant
-Rebecca Shillenn, Web Content Manager at Johns Hopkins University
Questions, suggestions, and recommendations
These are welcome and may be sent to Arielle Saiber