The Island of Dr Moreau: Biopower and the Savage

By Joseph Hurtgen, Ph.D.

H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) is a postcolonial commentary on empire, examining Moreau’s biological construction and rule over a subordinate species. Moreau, mad scientist that he is, fails to civilize his subordinate species, but in his barbaric civilizing attempt demonstrates the savage nature of mankind, civilized or not. The Island of Dr Moreau demonstrates that civilization, created and sustained through war and strife, is savage.

Why We Need Science Fiction Books | Sci-fi and Social Critique

Science Fiction does an important job of keeping the institutions in society honest. In a world with too few whistleblowers, sci-fi sends off regular warning shots about a range of problems, including corporate greed, environmental concerns, military practices, technological application, and identity politics.

Philip K Dick Books | A Scanner Darkly & Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

This post will explore Philip K. Dick's recurring theme of the confusion of identity and its relation to Dick's life as well as its relation to larger social and economic forces.

Blade Runner 1982 and the Sublime | Science Fiction Movies

"It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?" - Gaff

I'm going to examine themes of birth and death in Blade Runner (1982) as they relate to the sublime. These themes are shared with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Indeed, you can view Blade Runner as a meditation on Frankenstein. Shelley was preoccupied with the sublime, a sometimes physical, sometimes metaphysical representation of the limitations of mankind. 

Walter Jon Williams - Implied Spaces | Science Fiction Book Review

Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams is sword and singularity rather than sword and sorcery, and it will blow your mind. The first forty pages or so might as well be one of Robert E. Howard's Conan books. Like Conan, Aristide fights as no one else can fight, only says what's necessary, and beds all comers. Williams is a prose stylist, so it actually reads better than Robert E. Howard, who was given to writing purple prose every now and then.