Title Science fiction, alien encounters, and the ethics of Posthumanism : beyond the golden rule / Elana Gomel, Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Published Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 ©2014

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 232 pages) Contents 'The force that gives us meaning': alien invasion and search for redemption -- Idylls of the same: Soviet SF, cosmic humanism, and escape from history -- The contagion of posthumanity: alien infestation and the paradox of subjectivity -- Human skins, alien masks: allegories of postcolonial guilt -- The human trinity: what makes us other? -- Stanislaw Lem and the holocaust of humanism Summary "This book brings together two important cultural trends: alien encounters and posthumanism. By considering scenarios of encounters with intelligent aliens in literary science fiction, "Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism" argues that the ethics of empathy and politics of human rights are insufficient to meet the challenges of our posthuman age. Rather, posthumanism requires an ethics of transformation, in which the encounter with the Other remakes the human subject. The book offers a typology of alien encounters and addresses a wide range of texts. Its scope includes, but is not limited to, classic novels of alien encounter by H.G. Wells and Robert Heinlein; recent blockbusters by Greg Bear, Octavia Butler and Sheri Tepper; and experimental science fiction by Peter Watts and Housuke Nojiri. It also contains an extensive discussion of Soviet science fiction and of the novels of Stanislaw Lem, bringing important aspects of global posthumanist culture to the attention of the Anglo-American reader"--Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes English Print version record Subject Science fiction -- History and criticism. Human-alien encounters in literature. Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers. Literary studies: from c 1900. BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Literary. Human-alien encounters in literature Science fiction Literature. Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book ISBN 9781137367631 1137367636

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