The future is horrible: fantasy, anthropocene and the end of nature
Seminar by Joanna Bednarek
It seems that of all the literary genres, fantasy is the one best facing the challenges of the anthropocene. It does so, for example, by describing future societies – models presenting the evolution of capitalism or the alternatives to that. How to create the alternative worlds? Are the popular conventions useful, or rather hindering here? Are the differences between the specific genres (hard and soft SF, fantasy and SF, “pure” fantasy and new weird or slipstream) valid as before? Do the classic utopias and dystopias still have anything to offer? Seminar by philosopher, translator and writer Joanna Bednarek.
Readings
Readings:
Fiction:
Ursula K. Le Guin, Wydziedziczeni, w: Sześć światów Hain, Prószyński 2015.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Słowo „las” znaczy „świat”, tamże.
James S. A. Corey, Expanse 1: Przebudzenie Lewiatana, przeł. M. Pawelec, Mag 2018/The Expanse [serial], Alcon Entertainment 2015.
Kim Stanley Robinson, Lata ryżu i soli, przeł. Ł. Tabaka, Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie 2007.
Kim Stanley Robinson, Trylogia marsjańska (Czerwony Mars, Zielony Mars, Błękitny Mars), przeł. E. Wojtczak, Prószyński 1998.
Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312, przeł. M. Koczańska, Fabryka słów 2013.
Jeff VanderMeer, Trylogia Strefy X (zwłaszcza część 1, Unicestwienie), przeł. A. Gralak, Wydawnictwo Otwarte 2014.
Jeff VanderMeer, The World is Full of Monsters, https://www.tor.com/2017/11/08/this-world-is-full-of-monsters/.
William Browning Spencer, The Essayist in the Wilderness, w: Paula Guran, red., New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird, Prime Books 2011.
Orrin Grey, Black Hill, w: Ross Lockhart, red., The Book of Cthulhu II, Night Shade Books 2012.
Amelia Gorman, Bring the Moon to Me, w: Silvia Moreno-Garcia, red., She Walks in Shadows, Innsmouth Free Press 2015.
Aliya Whiteley, The Beauty, Unsung Stories 2014.
Olga Tokarczuk, Opowiadania bizarne, Wydawnictwo Literackie 2018.
Naomi Alderman, Siła, przeł. M. Glasenapp, Marginesy 2018.
Theory:
McKenzie Wark, On the Obsolescence of the Bourgeois Novel in the Anthropocene,
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3356-on-the-obsolescence-of-the-bourgeois-novel-in-the-anthropocene.
Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, Princeton University Press 2015.
Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects, University of Minnesota Press 2013.
Timoty Morton, Ecology Without Nature, Harvard University Press 2007.
Mac Kenzie Wark, Molecular Red, Verso 2015.
Graham Harman, Weird Realism, Zero Books 2012.
Benjamin Noys, The Lovecraft Event, https://www.academia.edu/548596/The_Lovecraft_Event.
Mark Bould, China Miéville, Red Planets. Marxism and Science Fiction, Wesleyan 2009.