Issues (Full Index)

For the third year in a row philosophical reflections on AI developments take front stage, with Garland’s Ex Machina and Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun continuing to ground nuanced reflections about mind, sentience, embodiment and personhood, and anticipating the complex moral issues that may arise in a world in which artificial operators become ubiquitous.

But that is not all: in our new section, Charting the Stars, we explore the impact of the most influential authors and works of SF, beginning with a classic among classics, Jules Verne.

Enjoy your visit!

Science fiction authors have covered all ranges of opinions and possibilities regarding the development of artificially intelligent beings. Robots, supercomputers, cybermen, replicants, even overgrown space probes, these have been envisioned as mindless laborers, loyal sidekicks, menacing overlords, wise saviors, genocidal exterminators, sly impersonators, artificial friends, or as a new form of slave underclass. As we approach the technological capacity to create artifacts that may become performatively indistinguishable from human activity, philosophical questions about them become increasingly urgent, whether it be questions about their being (metaphysical and epistemological), or about their treatment and place in society (ethical and political). In this volume we contrast two different approaches to the future possibilities of AI: the deep, existential questioning of Philip K. Dick against the practical, logical conundrums proposed by Isaac Asimov.

Published: 2024-07-01 (July 1, 2024)

Science fiction authors have covered all ranges of opinions and possibilities regarding the development of artificially intelligent beings. Robots, supercomputers, cybermen, replicants, even overgrown space probes, these have been envisioned as mindless laborers, loyal sidekicks, menacing overlords, wise saviors, genocidal exterminators, sly impersonators, artificial friends, or as a new form of slave underclass. As we approach the technological capacity to create artifacts that may become performatively indistinguishable from human activity, philosophical questions about them become increasingly urgent, whether it be questions about their being (metaphysical and epistemological), or about their treatment and place in society (ethical and political). Should we think of artificially intelligent beings as objects, tools, servants, saviors, competitors, partners..?

Published: 2023-06-01 (June 1, 2023)

Published: 2022-06-15 (June 15, 2022)

For nearly two centuries science fiction authors have been playing around with an enormous variety of pandemic scenarios. While some stories focus on attempts to avert them, many explore their catastrophic consequences, or the plight of victims and survivors in-between, and the ways in which the most trivial daily routines and the simple facts of life we take for granted may be critically, perhaps permanently disrupted. From eerily prophetic accounts of origin and spread (Stephen Soderbergh’s Contagion) to post-apocalyptic tales of heart-wrenching loneliness (Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend), SF stories anticipate the plight that humanity is facing during the COVID pandemic. This volume invites us to reflect on the lessons from science fiction stories, and how they help us illuminate philosophically our present times.

Published: 2021-06-01 (June 1, 2021)

The Blue Pill Dilemma: Is Knowledge a Blessing or a Curse?

Vol 3 (2020)

The question about choosing between harsh truths or willful ignorance is as old as Plato’s Cave; older perhaps, down to the Tree of Good and Evil. Science Fiction writers can be as illuminating as they can be ambiguous. In the original Matrix Neo took the Red Pill, choosing Truth – and got himself into a world of trouble. Wouldn’t the Blue Pill (of “Ignorance is Bliss”) have served him better? This volume examines the double-edged quality of knowledge, as explored in a variety of SF scenarios. Can a truth cause more harm than a lie? Can we live in self-deception? Is there a danger of knowing too much? Is knowledge something inherently good, worth seeking for its own sake, is it just a neutral tool, or is it, perhaps, something better left alone?

Dystopian Caves and Galactic Empires: Social and Political Philosophy in SF Stories

Vol 2 (2019)

One of the main roles of science fiction has been to warn us (sometimes humorously, sometimes through grim pessimism) of looming social dangers, the product of particular ideas, technologies or social trends. Just how powerful these warnings can be in the public’s imagination may be gauged by the ubiquity of the expression “Big Brother” in political reflection. Occasionally, too, SF has been used to propose somewhat utopian forms of organization. The goal of our 2019 Yearly Theme is to promote a critical discussion of these themes.

All Persons Great and Small: The Notion of Personhood in SF

Vol 1 (2018)

SF stories are in a unique position to help us examine the concept of personhood, by making the human  world engage with a bewildering variety of beings with person-like qualities – aliens of bizarre shapes and customs, artificial constructs conflicted about their artificiality, planetary-wide intelligences, collective minds, and the list goes on. Every one of these instances provides the opportunity to reflect on specific aspects of the notion of personhood, such as, for example: What is a person? What are its defining qualities? What is the connection between personhood and morality, identity, rationality, basic (“human?”) rights? What patterns do SF authors identify when describing the oppression of one group of persons by another, and how do they reflect past and present human history?