HUMA 1905 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Antiscience, Superintelligence, Natural Philosophy
16 Jan 2018
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Document Summary
It is a subgenre of science fiction dealing with stories about a catastrophic disaster, the aftermath of such a disaster, and sometimes both. Stories that deal with the aftermath are also known as post apocalyptic stories. [for the purposes of our course, all stories dealing with the actual destruction of the world/society or the aftermath of the destruction will be referred to as apocalyptic]. Most stories of this genre were written during the cold war, thus the standard scenario for the end of the world is due to nuclear warfare. Examples of stories and their means of reaching apocalypse are: A canticle for leibowitz due to nuclear war (in this story, the expectations of human survival are unrealistic since it"s known that nuclear warfare would cause a nuclear winter which would effectively wipe out all living things on earth) The sheep look up due to environmental collapse. Lucifer"s hammer due to an asteroid/comet hitting the earth.
