Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics

This book brings together two important cultural trends: alien encounters and posthumanism. By considering scenarios of encounters with intelligent aliens in literary science fiction, Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism argues that the ethics of empathy and politics of human rights are insufficient to meet the challenges of our posthuman age. Rather, posthumanism requires an ethics of transformation, in which the encounter with the Other remakes the human subject. The book offers a typology of alien encounters and addresses a wide range of texts. Its scope includes, but is not limited to, classic novels of alien encounter by H.G. Wells and Robert Heinlein; recent blockbusters by Greg Bear, Octavia Butler and Sheri Tepper; and experimental science fiction by Peter Watts and Housuke Nojiri. It also contains an extensive discussion of Soviet science fiction and of the novels of Stanislaw Lem, bringing important aspects of global posthumanist culture to the attention of the Anglo-American reader.