Questions about the future have always been an integral part of our human condition, and
Science Fiction has been a prime area to imagine, and thus to engage in thought experiments –
the ‘what ifs’ of past, present, and coming worlds and pluriverses. Those questions and
experiments have never been more relevant than now, when our wandering ‘blue dot’ planet is
suffering the devastating effects of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and climate
change. It is as if humankind is receiving a stern warning from the earth in the form of an
invisible, rapidly evolving organism that is questioning all of our given assumptions: medical,
ecological, social, technological, political, economic, cultural, and psychological, putting us on
notice about the very survival of our species, if we don’t get our act together. To be certain, not
all the members of our human family bear the same burdens and carry the same responsibilities
for this unequal state of affairs, and we need to explore the differential impact of cultural and
economic systems that are imposing more suffering on some than on others. Ideally this class
could be a creative opportunity for us to engage in this common inquiry.
We will consult ancient oracles, diviners and augurs, as well as futurists, econometricians, long-
term forecasters, planners, quants, and innovators, who are trying to see past the non-linear abyss
of the unknown. Today the ideal society, the democratic Utopia, promised by modernity and the
Enlightenment or, more recently, by networked information, platform technologies and
neoliberal globalization, is nowhere to be seen. Through sci-fi and its novum or kehuan and Mo
Biao as avenues to imagine alternative worlds, we will explore the topologies of estrangement,
magic, cognition, time, and the politics of nature, virtual reality, AI and machine learning. We
will draw on the tradition of mechanical simulacra, retro and high-tech, science and critical
imagination, to help us confront health, power, religion, environment, economy, beauty, gender,
race, and sexuality. Drawing from film, graphic novels, theory, literature, and current news, we
will search beneath the hidden recesses of middle earth, in quantum or warp space, in our
puppets, zombies, and cyborgs, androids, robots and cyberpunks, in cities and hinterlands, for
clues about our past and paths to our future. It has never been more urgent to imagine and to
create new stories and new worlds.

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