Science fiction and imagining futures
This week we will be continuing conversations on abolition and the tools we have to imagine a different future using science fiction.
We invite you to read this essay, written by Walidah Imarisha, titled “Rewriting the future using science fiction to re-envision justice”, followed by two short stories:
- “The river”, by Adrienne Maree Brown (in Perusall), co-editor of Octavia’s Brood short story collection. This story “explores what justice looks like for crimes the current criminal justice system does not even acknowledge as criminal—gentrification, displacement, economic devastation, generational institutionalized oppression”
- “Half-Eaten Cities”, by Vajra Chandrasekera – from “Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction, Vol II” which features stories from the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination’s 2019 Climate Fiction Contest: https://csi.asu.edu/story/half-eaten/
While reading, consider how science fiction can manifest itself in the classroom as one of our primary spaces of intervention at the University level. Additionally, how can we view science fiction in relation to social and environmental justice movements, and the ways it can shape our collective imaginations?