LIT 3312 - Spring 2026 - Adhikari

James Hilton warns, “There will be no safety by arms, no help from authority, no answer in science. It will rage till every flower of culture is trampled, and all human things are levelled in a vast chaos” (Lost Horizon, 189). Hilton’s cautionary vision embodies the anxieties that animate much twentieth- and twenty-first-century science fiction. This course examines how speculative writers imagine worlds and confront the limits of rationality and control. Our readings foreground technological hubris, apocalyptic transformation, and the fragility of culture. We will approach science fiction not as a lesser form, but as a dynamic genre that interrogates the state, the prospects, and the very nature of the human condition. We will trace the genre’s dialogue with the historical present—from the Industrial Revolution through the information age—examining how rapid social and technological change shapes narrative possibilities.