Horror/Science: Gothic Echoes in Science Fiction
“It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, Chapter IV.
Over 40 years ago, Patrick Brantlinger argued in “The Gothic Origins of Science Fiction” that a problem in reading Science Fiction as “realistic prophecy … arises from the fact that the conventions of science fiction derive from the conventions of fantasy and romance, and especially from those of the Gothic romance. Science fiction grows out of literary forms that are antithetical to realism.” More recently, two 2019 essays by Daniel Pietersen on Sublime Horror, “The universe is a haunted house – the Gothic roots of science fiction” and “Spiders and flies – the Gothic monsters of sci-fi horror,” explore the intersection of terror and horror tropes in what we can only call Gothic Science Fiction.
This course is not about slick shiny optimistic visions of the future. It’s also not about magical and supernatural creatures (even if some of its characters might resemble them). It’s not about science research that has vastly benefitted worlds and their inhabitants: it’s about bizarre singular passion projects and their progeny, about science gone wrong, about the byways of pseudoscience and paranormal investigations. We will examine the theoretical bases of contemporary approaches to the Gothic and apply them to various examples of fiction and film. The text list will be finalized in the spring, but the foundation texts will be Frankenstein (1818 edition), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and possibly The Island of Dr. Moreau. We will also examine a few modern/contemporary novels (possibilities include but are not limited to I Am Legend, The Haunting of Hill House, Black Sun Rising, The Passage, Gideon the Ninth) and one or two films (again, possibilities include but are not limited to Alien, Ex Machina, Blade Runner, Underworld, Annihilation).
I will request that the UBC Library put Weird Fiction and Science at the Fin de Siècle and the edited collection Gothic Science Fiction 1980-2010 on reserve and will request that Gothic Science Fiction 1818-Present be ordered (preferably in an online version).
Evaluation will tentatively be based on a seminar presentation, a formal research paper, contribution to discussion both in class and on the course’s Canvas site, introduction of a relevant critical/theoretical work and a primary text not on our finalized reading/viewing list, and a take-home final reflection essay.
Please keep checking my blog for updates: https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/