This course examines the utopian, futuristic and science fiction genres which became highly popular in the 19th century. These genres are precursors of our digital and virtual age. We will examine some seminal works of science fiction, written in the formative years of the Net and digital culture, namely the 1980’s and the 1990’s.

The literary, filmic, theoretical and pop culture texts we’ll discuss in this course are indicative of the ways 19th century utopian ideas of future societies, or their dire predictions about the wars between Man and Machine have influenced the works of the counter-culture “prophets” of the digital age in the late 1970s and 1980s.

We will examine the works of science fiction writers beginning with H.G. Wells in the late 19th century and moving on to Philip K. Dick in the late 1960s, William Gibson in the early 1980s, Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, and Greg Bear in the 1970s and 1980s, Neil Stephenson in the 1990s to the contemporary works of John Sclazi.

We’ll see how their works reflect the fear and longing of an imagined future: Futuristic visions of a dystopian future where the monstrosity of the machine overcomes the human versus utopian dreams of a “brave new world” where technology offers a way to overcome man’s greatest enemy: his own mortality.

We’ll also look at some filmic representations of the struggle between Man and Machine, and man the big corporations, a struggle that can be named, borrowing the title of H.G Wells’ most famous work: The War of the Worlds. We’ll read texts that challenge the dichotomy between categories such as man/machine, human/ animal, human/alien.