Essays on Science Fiction

After the end of World War II, Americans lived under the fear of nuclear war. The government built up huge arsenals of nuclear bombs, and used propaganda to assuage the American people’s fear. The best known example of that is the Duck and Cover propaganda...

George Carlin famously said “When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and Smiley shirts”. This quote couldn’t be more relevant in Dave Eggers novel The Circle in...

Many science fiction stories feature aliens, especially the interaction between humans and the extraterrestrials. These interactions from range from one-on-one encounters to merely experiencing the aliens’ culture from afar. No matter the nature of said encounter, the human nearly always leaves changed in some way....

The Difference Engine, co­written by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, imagines an alternate historical outcome during the industrial era of Europe in the late 19th century. The book follows three characters with different stories that intertwine respectively with their relation to the Kinotrope cards, a...

The full title of Le Guin’s 1974 novel reads “The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia” and proves to be just what the title suggests. This science fiction novel is also a utopia, but not one which serves as “a hopeful prescription for a near perfect future”...

Can an equivalent society really exist? The story, “Harrison Bergeron” gives one point of view reply to this inquiry all through the story. The story depicts one fundamental clash between Harrison Bergeron, a virtuoso kid who is extremely capable, against a “government” that makes the...

Setting and Background Information The novel is set in Berne, Switzerland in the spring of 1905. Einstein is twenty-six years old, working on his theory of relativity in his extra time. The novels portrays Einstein’s dreams on physics, time and relativity. The year 1905 has...

In Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, Hoban portrays a post-apocalyptic society ravaged by a nuclear war. While he masterfully crafts the story to warn readers about the dangers of technology, the real achievement is in the strange language, called Riddleyspeak, in which the book is written...

Vivisection, an issue explored by many different scholars, including religious, scientific, and literary, has engendered a fierce debate since its inception. Philosophers early as Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas began addressing issues concerning mankind’s relation to animal, which had great implications in shaping societal views...

The anime was created by Mika Nomura and Yoshinao Doi, coordinated by Hiroshi Hamasaki and Takuya sato, and composed by Jukki Hanada, withcharacter design done by Kyuuta Sakai, and music by Takeshi Abo. A self-proclaimed mad scientist Rintarou Okabe leases a room in a trashy...

The Martians in the book and the movie The War of the Worlds are a metaphor for the evils of cultural imperialism because their arrival severs the most important means of communication and transportation technology, challenges religion, and leaves identity unclear. The Martians in The...

From the beginning of Metropolis, there is a stark divide between the upper class and the working people. We see working people walk like soldier into huge elevators, heads hanging in clear misery, descending into what we can only assume is their version of hell,...

The mind can only be controlled if at some point, the person starts to believe what is being told to them as truth. It is at that point they will question their own opinions. In the novel, The Circle by Dave Eggers, the protagonist, Mae...

Nothing can stand the test of time greater than the form of relation or sympathy. But even greater than that is the ability to force that compassion and relation into the reverse perspective… in other words, rather than feeling emotion upon reacting simply to what...

“Divergent” – searching the place you belong to and determining how you fit in as you transition from adolescence to adulthood. Every year, all 16-year-olds must choose a faction. Their choices are permanent “Faction before blood”. Beatrice’s tester (Maggie Q) warns her not to reveal...

“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.” This quote from Edsger W. Dijkstra is a fantastic illustration of the question that surrounds the world of artificial intelligence. These technologies have become...

This paper is about the postmodern IR theory with the ideas of Michael Foucault and the movie The Matrix (1999). In first place postmodernism explained as a critical IR theory and its assumptions discussed. Secondly The Matrix (1999) will be summarized. After that the movie...

What if our world were simply a hyper-realistic simulation, with all of us merely characters in an artificial world? Summarizing The Matrix, it is a movie where people are kept inside capsules and are experiencing a real life simulation without noticing it being artificial. Throughout...

The movie began in an abandoned building, where a woman dressed in black was surrounded by a police squad in a room. The opening scene then cuts to a group of men in suits that arrived to accompany the police in pursuing this woman. With...