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• 1 2025-04-28T23:40:04+00:00 Introduction 135 visual_path 2025-05-21T19:20:25+00:00
  This graduate seminar, titled "Speculative Fiction and Philosophy", offered at Hood College, covered a range of classic and contemporary works of literature and film. The syllabus included: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro / dir. Mark Romanek), Solaris (Stanisław Lem / dir. Andrei Tarkovsky), "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote", "The House of Asterion", and "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges, Blade Runner (dir. Ridley Scott), "Bloodchild", "Speech Sounds", and "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" by Octavia Butler, "The Key" and "Africanfuturist 419" by Nnedi Okorafor, and "2BR02B" by Kurt Vonnegut, beside supplemental philosophical readings, like Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche, The Burnout Society, by Byung Chul Han, among others.

  At the core, this course adopted an approach exploring the points of contact between History—understood as the narration of "real" and ostensibly "objective" events—and their fictional counterparts, particularly in relation to issues that shape our present: armed conflicts, genocide, ostracism, forced migrations, climate change, and more. In this context, John Hennessey, Associate Professor at Lund University, observes that “excellent history, like excellent speculative fiction, should cause us to reconsider crucial aspects of our society that we normally overlook, or else help us to break free of such discursive constraints by familiarizing ourselves with radically different forms of social organization, whether in the factual past or the fictional future (or past or present)” (1). I truly recommend the book History and Speculative Fiction: Alternative Realities to anyone interested in finding out about how colonialism, gender/national identities, the idea of the monster, etc. are re-defined and portrayed in contemporary literature. Open access material in the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/oapen-20.500.12657-88320

  
  

  Throughout the course, students engaged with critical frameworks from both science fiction studies and philosophy. In particular, the concept of the "novum"—a term popularized by science fiction scholar Darko Suvin to describe a scientifically plausible innovation that distinguishes the fictional world from our own—was used to identify and discuss the central speculative elements around which each narrative universe was constructed. Some of the "novums" we identified were: time traveling, in the case of "A Sound of Thunder", by Ray Bradbury, 
  
  
  space traveling, as seen in Solaris and in "Bloodchild", human clones, in Never Let Me Go, advancement in medicine, the cure of cancer, in "The Evening the Morning and the Night" and the disappeareance of any illnesses (and thus, human inmortality) in "2BR02B". Something that stayed with me throughout the semester was the participants’ ability to make meaningful connections—not only between the readings, but also with real-life events—while fostering a respectful environment for diverse perspectives. I was especially struck by the thoughtful ways in which they engaged with and questioned exclusionary practices showing both critical insight and empathy. In fact, several personal pages focus on related topics, such as: the "Politics of Female Bodies in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale" by Paula Anselmo, "Paradise Imagined: The Divine Woman and Her Garden of Life" by Kayli Harling, "Isolation and Mistreatment of the Other", by Neil Maher, and "Sacrifice, Consent, and Complicity: A Comparative Study of Le Guin’s "The Ones that Walk Away from Omelas and Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go", by Bukola Abiodun Ossai.

  The authors in this collection come from diverse academic backgrounds—including medicine, literature/ journalism, history, ceramics, linguistics, and education—and represent a range of countries, including France, Germany, Nigeria, Spain, Peru, and the United States. This diversity fostered a positive and dynamic environment that, for me personally, made each of our weekly three-hour evening sessions something to look forward to. I anticipated the group's collective energy would keep us fully engaged—and it did. Time seemed to fly as we combined reading discussions with hands-on activities, interacting with IIIF visual objects and working in Scalar. I recognize that learning new digital tools can be challenging, but we overcame the technical hurdles and successfully created this multifaceted collaborative project.

  What sparked this course, a few years ago, was Solaris. Lem’s novel from 1961 is an extraordinary instrument of imagination. It is difficult to think of another writer so meticulously detail-oriented—someone who explains the science behind the fiction with such precision that the reader becomes fully immersed in a world where everything has its logic, and nothing exists without purpose. Reading Solaris alters the mind of the reader; it demands a kind of attentiveness that draws one into the tense atmosphere of a sentient ocean, a godlike entity still discovering the extent of its own powers, invading the minds of the human visitors with memories, regrets, and desires. It is a singular book—one I would willingly re-read, not because it is easy, but because it continues to provoke thought long after the final page.
  
  It is available for fair use & educational purposes in the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-236.

  
  

  On the other hand, we watched the film adaptation directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, and I sensed that our reactions were mixed. Tarkovsky’s Solaris is haunting, meditative, and visually striking, but its slow pacing can be disorienting—even alienating—for some viewers. For example, Rasmus was presenting on it and he showed a scene in which it showed the painting "Hunters in the Snow" by Pieter Brueghel, the Elder. There was a temptation to fast forward it, because the camera leisurly pans across the canvas of the Dutch Reinassance artist, stopping at every corner, at the action of every single people in the town under inhospitable weather. We can recreate that experience with IIIF. I invite you to get lost in it, and then try to "be in the shoes" of Hari (the copy made by Solaris), as a brand-new "person" with no recollections. 
  
  

  While the film captures the philosophical core of the novel, it also takes significant departures, shifting focus toward the human and emotional elements rather than the speculative and scientific. This contrast between the book and the movie has become one of the key threads in our course: how different mediums explore the same narrative terrain, and how the limits and strengths of each form shape our understanding of the story. To be honest, at first I was not too impressed with the movie, but then I watched Will Self talk about it and it made me appreciate it in a whole new level.

  
  

   

  In other cases, the seminar focused on philosophical analysis and hermeneutics to unpack the symbolism embedded in key narrative elements and visual motifs. Students closely analyzed scenes from the films, examining how cinematography, mise-en-scène, and narrative structure conveyed philosophical themes such as identity, free will, the nature of reality, and ethical responsibility. One of the first readings we came across was the "Allegory of the Cave", by Plato. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave was applied to the modern world of social media and artificial intelligence. In the allegory, prisoners are chained inside a cave, mistaking the shadows on the wall for reality because they have never seen the world outside. Similarly, people immersed in social media often engage with curated, filtered versions of life, mistaking these digital projections for the full truth. Are our phones the new cave walls, constantly feeding us images and narratives that shape our perceptions?

  A writer who has always guided me in that direction—someone who has mastered the art of blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction—is, without a doubt, Jorge Luis Borges. We began our journey through the Borgesian universe with "The House of Asterion", a text that subverts the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur by shifting the point of view to the creature traditionally cast as the monster. In doing so, Borges crumbles a millennia-old narrative and invites the reader to question the very nature of monstrosity and heroism. A similar strategy unfolds in "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote", where Borges takes the most celebrated novel in Western literature and deconstructs it by assigning authorship to a fictional 20th-century writer who recreates Don Quixote word for word—yet whose text, we are told, is radically different due to its new context. This recursive layering becomes even more intriguing when we recall that Cervantes himself, within Don Quixote, attributes the tale to a fictional Moorish historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli—further complicating the boundaries between author and narrator, fact and fiction. Finally, in "Tlön, Uqbar Orbis Tertius" Borges implies that fiction has an impact in our world... so powerful that Tlön ends up taking over.
  Tlön embodies a philosophical argument of materialism; in it there is no three-dimensional space populated by discrete objects (like our perceived universe is). Instead, what takes place is a heteregenous series of independent acts: it is sucessive, temporal, and non-spatial (difficult to mentally conjure). It helps to shift the intersection between one's mind/body and sensed phenomena... this intersection, this relational connection, can be described in terms of adjectives, verbs, and adverbs that capture the essence of an experience. However, once someone in Tlön is not longer perceiving something, it no longer exists...While this might be a bit confusing, instead of trying to approach it from a philosophical perspective, it can be useful to consider that Borges is principally interested in fiction not philosophy. And that the strange dimension of Tlön corresponds to the very nature of literature, of imagined fiction. Literary worlds (like the one imagined while reading any story) are composed of lines of text, series of words (words that can be considered as heterogenous, independent acts). In this sense, fictional worlds are successive, temporal, and non-spatial. In an imagined fictional world, a mind tends to bring about colors, shapes, voices, sounds, objects, & people/characters... but all of these elements are not real objects. They disappear from "view" as soon as the reader stops thinking about them, as soon as they move to a different line of text. Likewise, one action or event does not cause something else to occur in fiction; there is no true causality, just the associated ideas of an author...

  One could go on; Tlön can be read as kind of an extended allegory of fiction (of fictional space) that combines philosophical and also theological sources. Griffin Hunt's "Literature in the Age of Simulation: Jorge Luis Borges' Literature from a Structuralist Perspective" and "Jorge Luis Borges and the Truth", by Kelly Esposito, venture into parallel topics, having in common the notion that truth is not a fixed, external entity but a product of the structures—linguistic, literary, and cultural—that organize human understanding.
  
  To anyone interested in reading more from the Argentinean author, his collected fictions are available for fair use and educational purposes in the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/collected-fictions-of-jorge-luis-borges-jorge-luis-borges-andrew-hurley-1999-pen

  It is not a concidence then that we found connections between History and speculative fiction, as both engage with questions about reality, perception, and truth. In the allegory, prisoners are confined to a cave where they mistake shadows for reality, and only through a painful process of enlightenment can one escape and see the world as it truly is. We arrived to the conclusion that Speculative fiction often mirrors this journey, using imagined worlds, futuristic technologies, or alternate realities to question the assumptions that shape our cognizance of existence. Trough a combination of literary analysis, philosophical inquiry, and film studies methodologies, the seminar encouraged students to critically reflect on the ways speculative fiction not only imagines alternative worlds but also interrogates the fundamental questions of human existence.

  As we read texts that blend elements of fantasy, dystopia, and historical fiction to explore human nature, their potential for real-world impact became increasingly clear. Personally, after reading Byung-Chul Han’s The Burnout Society, I felt as though the book was speaking directly to me—or at least to the aims of this course—and I realized that a radical change was needed in how it was taught. We replaced some reading materials with films, engaged with texts through audio recordings, and occasionally shared delicious meals together. Students also found creative ways to express the lessons they learned in class—and at Hood College more broadly—through non-traditional and innovative formats, often sharing their insights with the public. For example, Millicent Jordan, author of "Building Cognition Among Human and AI Teams", presented a poster on team cognition and the integration of artificial intelligence, drawing on Stanisław Lem’s The Cyberiad, at the SPIRE Symposium. Paula also participated in the 3MT competition and presented a paper at the same symposium, applying and critically examining an ecofeminist framework in relation to two contemporary literary works.
  
  At last, I want to highlight one of the most important lessons I re-learned this semester: the value of dialogue—the importance of pausing, listening, and truly engaging with others. Although I had read many times the course materials before, revisiting them alongside Bukky, Griffin, Hal, Jay, Kaitlyn, Kayli, Kelly, Lucie, Luke, Millicent, Neil, Paula, Rasmus, Rudy, and Ryan transformed the experience entirely. Their insights, questions, and personal reflections enriched the texts, adding layers of meaning I hadn't encountered before. What was once familiar became unfamiliar in the best way—dynamic, multidimensional, and deeply human. This collaborative approach reminded me that learning is not just about acquiring knowledge but about co-creating understanding through shared inquiry.