Volume 4 (2021) – The Day that Coronavirus Stopped the Earth!

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 6, 2021)