I am about to begin reading for my second candidacy exam to complete a PhD in English Literature. The first exam was a whirlwind tour of the literature of the 20th century (with all the stress and excitement such a large exam brings) and my intentions to keep a running log and casual notes here on the blog for that first exam did not amount to anything. I still have notes on the texts and plan to incorporate them into the blog at some point, but since I’m certain you are not holding your breath, I won’t ask you not to.
The second exam however, is a different story, as I will be working with texts that are specifically drawn from my areas of interest leading into my dissertation project. Those areas are Science Fiction more broadly and Critical Posthumanism more specifically. I am happy to share this list with you, and my thoughts on the texts as I work through them later. What a difficult list to solidify – If it were not for the paring down of possible texts that the condition of a relation to posthumanism allows for, I don’t think I could ever craft a master list of Science Fiction texts. You might notice also, that my interests in apocalypticism and post-apocalyptic fiction are an influence here. You might wonder why certain monumental SF works are missing from this list, or why I chose certain texts by an author when another by the same author seems more relevant. My answer to that will come in the near future when I add a page to the site compiling my advice for those working towards a PhD in Literature.
My tentative list so far is below. What are your thoughts on these selections?
Novels:
Margaret Atwood
Oryx and Crake (2003)
The Year of the Flood (2009)
Maddaddam (2013)
William Gibson
Neuromancer (1984)
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go (2005)
Richard Matheson
I am Legend (1954)
Mary Shelley
Frankenstein (1818)
The Last Man (1826)
Richard Jeffries
After London (1885)
H. G. Wells
The Time Machine (1895)
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)
Theodore Sturgeon
More Than Human (1953)
Venus Plus X (1960)
John Wyndham
Day of the Triffids (1951)
The Chrysalids (1955)
Frank Herbert
Dune (1965) N
Aldous Huxley
Brave New World (1931)
Isaac Asimov
The Gods Themselves (1972)
Philip K. Dick
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
Ubik (1969)
David Marusek
Counting Heads (2007)
Alistair Reynolds
Blue Remembered Earth (2012)
P. D. James
The Children of Men (1992)
Walter M. Miller Jr.
A Canticle For Leibowitz (1960)
Harlan Ellison
A Boy and His Dog (1969)
Ursula K. Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
Octavia E. Butler
Patternmaster (1976)
Joe Haldeman
The Forever War (1974)
Films:
George A. Romero
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Ridley Scott
Blade Runner (1982)
Alien (1979)
Alex Garland & Danny Boyle
28 Days Later (2002)
Ex Machina (2015) (Without Boyle)
Sunshine (2007)
Stanley Kubrick
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) (finished/directed by Steven Spielberg)
James Cameron
The Terminator (1984)
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
Lana and Lilly Wachowski
The Matrix (1999)
Cloud Atlas (2012)
Theory:
Richard Grusin
The Nonhuman Turn (2015)
Mads Rosendahl Thomsen
The New Human in Literature (2013)
Steven Shaviro
The Universe of Things (2014)
N. Katherine Hayles
How We Became Posthuman (1999)
Donna Harraway
A Cyborg Manifesto (1983)
Claire Colebrook
Death of the Posthuman: Essays on Extinction, Vol. 1 (2014)
Rosi Braidotti
The Posthuman (2013)
Robert M. Geraci
Apocalyptic AI (2010)
William V. Spanos
The End of Education: Toward Posthumanism (1993)
Cary Wolfe
What is Posthumanism? (2010)
Louis Althusser
On The Reproduction Of Capitalism: Ideology And Ideological State Apparatuses (2014)
Michel Serres
Biogea (2012)
The Parasite (1982 [2007])
Graphic Novel:
George A. Romero
Empire of the Dead (2014)
Poetry:
Sampsa Nuotio Google Poetics (Blog: 2012 – ) P
There are specific poems, such as: “Untitled” by Anwen Hayward or “Drunkard’s Confession” by Martina, however, the point of the poems is that they are authored by Google and simply generated by search terms. The blog contains user submitted poems in the form of screenshots. I propose to read the blog in full as a collection of poetry.
Wallace Stevens
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (1954)
Non-Fiction:
Alan Weisman
The World Without Us (2007)
Ray Kurzweil
The Singularity is Near (2006)
Short Fiction:
Harlan Ellison
“I have no Mouth and I Must Scream” (1967)
Isaac Asimov
I Robot (1950)
Some authors and works that would have been alternative choices: Suzette Haden Elgin (Posthumanist poet and theorist); Samuel R. Delaney; Robert A. Heinlein; A. E. Vogt; Larissa Lai; David Mitchell; Frederick Pohl; Kurt Vonnegut Jr.; George Orwell; Larry Niven; Stanislaw Lem; Ray Bradbury; Arthur C. Clarke; Paolo Bacigalupi; Edgar Rice Burroughs; Robert J. Sawyer; Charles Stross; Vernor Vinge; Darko Suvin; Don DeLillo; Marissa Meyer; Jules Verne; Amitav Ghosh; Jane Bennett; Mel Chen; George R. Stewart; Timothy Morton; Samuel Beckett; William Carlos Williams; Angela Carter; Doris Lessing; Margaret Cavendish; Carl Sagan; Edgar Allen Poe; Christian Duguay Screamers (Based on “Second Variety” by Philip K. Dick); Craig Harrison/Geoff Murphy The Quiet Earth; Danny Boyle’s Impostor (based on Philip K. Dick’s short story); Pixar (Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Cars, The Incredibles); Christina Rossetti “Goblin Market”; Terry Gilliam; Christopher Nolan; Huxley’s Ape and Essence; Pierre Boulle, Rod Serling & Franklin Schaffner: Planet of the Apes; Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story.
