Speculative Realism and Science Fiction - by Brian Willems (Paperback)

About the Book

Brian Willems draws on the science fiction of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessing and Kim Stanley Robinson alongside speculative materialists including Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux and Jane Bennett, to try and imagine the end of anthropomorphism.

Book Synopsis

Brian Willems draws on the science fiction of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessing and Kim Stanley Robinson alongside speculative materialists including Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux and Jane Bennett. By questioning it, these writers and philosophers both develop and challenge anthropomorphism. Willems looks at how nonsense and sense exist together in science fiction, the way that language is not a guarantee of personhood, the role of vision in relation to identity formation, the difference between metamorphosis and modulation, representations of non-human deaths and the function of plasticity within the Anthropocene.

From the Back Cover

'Speculative Realism and Science Fiction is an exhilarating intellectual adventure. Moving deftly between philosophical and science-fictional modes of speculation, Brian Willems uncovers a landscape of beauty and strangeness, in which we find ourselves lost, and yet touched and moved by the unknown.' Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University Imagining the end of anthropocentrism with contemporary science fiction and speculative realism One of the reasons that speculative realism challenges anthropomorphism is that a human-centred approach to the environment is leading to ecological collapse. But when non-human things are taken to be no less valid as objects of investigation than humans, a more responsible and truthful view of the world takes place. Brian Willems uses a range of science fiction literature which questions anthropomorphism both to develop and challenge this philosophical position. He looks at how nonsense and sense exist together in science fiction, the way in which language is not a guarantee of personhood, the role of vision in relation to identity formation, the difference between metamorphosis and modulation, representations of non-human deaths and the function of plasticity within the Anthropocene. The works of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessing and Kim Stanley Robinson are considered alongside some of the main figures of speculative materialism including Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux and Jane Bennett. Brian Willems is Assistant Professor of literature and film at the University of Split, Croatia. Cover image: Science, Fiction, Diana Thater, 2014. Installation View at David Zwirner, NY Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN [PPC[ 978-1-4744-2269-7 ISBN [cover] 978-1-4744-2270-3 Barcode

Review Quotes

Speculative Realism and Science Fiction is an exhilarating intellectual adventure. Moving deftly between philosophical and science-fictional modes of speculation, Brian Willems uncovers a landscape of beauty and strangeness, in which we find ourselves lost, and yet touched and moved by the unknown.--Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University

Brian Willems's recent monograph serves as a much-needed addition to studies of both sf and the evolving strand of philosophical thought known as speculative realism.--Lance Conley "Foundation Vol. 47.2 No. 130, 2018"

About the Author

Brian Willems is Assistant Professor of literature and film at the University of Split, Croatia. He is the author of Hopkins and Heidegger (Continuum, 2009), Facticity, Poverty and Clones: On Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (Atropos Press, 2010) and Shooting the Moon (Zero Books, 2015). He is co-editor of The First Ten Years of English Studies in Split (Split University, 2011).