Human Culture and Science Fiction: A Review of the Literature, 1980-2016
Abstract
Introduction
Method
Results and Discussion
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bainbridge, W.S. | 2004 | “The Evolution of Semantic Systems” | Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
If scientific and cultural development can be assessed in terms of semantic and systematic systems, considering growing technological capabilities for computational analysis | Science and technology studies | A range of critical–historical texts and quantitative analysis of online recommendation systems, surveys, and government statistics | Quantitative | The convergence of social and natural sciences brought about through technological applications and concerns may enable the collecting together of disparate disciplines with different approaches into a more functional and effective way of approaching the world from a convergent scientific perspective | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Banerjee, A. | 2003 | “Electricity: Science Fiction and Modernity in Early Twentieth-Century Russia” | Science Fiction Studies | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
The depiction of electricity in 20th-century Russia and how it reflects political and cultural values and change | Connections between science fiction and human culture | Science fiction and historical texts | Qualitative | Seemingly radical elements of the Bolshevik vision, such as the construction of a technological utopia in a traditionally “backward” agrarian society, originated and developed in the era that it actively tried to negate” | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Bina et al., | 2017 | “The Future Imagined: Exploring Fiction as a Means of Reflecting on Today’s Grand Societal Challenges and Tomorrow’s Options” | Futures | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
On the use of science fiction to identify trends in human interest and concern that can be used to inform the development of government policies on science innovation | Influence of human culture on science fiction content | Science fiction texts, government policy, and advisory papers | Quantitative | Changes in public concerns and attitudes toward science and innovation should be monitored through examination of science fiction film and text, and governments and funding bodies should use this information to guide policy development | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Brandau, D. | 2012 | “Cultivating the Cosmos: Spaceflight Thought in Imperial Germany” | History and Technology | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
How the boundaries between fiction and popular science became blurred in the 1900s: how this can be illustrated by the emergence of spaceflight as a popular fictional theme | Science and technology studies/two cultures | Primary texts and subsequent literary criticism | Qualitative | The links between science and fiction were of variable value in Imperial Germany but the relationship did demonstrate more general interests in science | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Carpenter, C. | 2016 | “Rethinking the Political/-Science-/Fiction Nexus: Global Policy Making and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots” | Perspectives on Politics | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
The influence of science fiction on global international relations policy—carrying out objective observational research on this topic | Science communication | Interviews, participant observation notes | Mixed | More reliable information is gained by primary interview and participant observation than other interpretative or pedagogical approaches. Science fiction breeds familiarity but is not demonstrably causal of attitudes. This methodology exposes scope for further valuable work. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Coyer, M.J. | 2014 | “Phrenological Controversy and the Medical Imagination: A Modern Pythagorean in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine” | Scottish Medicine and Literary Culture, 1726-1832 | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Studying the relationship between comparative representations of medical and fictional medical content in a single magazine and the resulting hermeneutic issues | Relationship between science fiction and science culture | Articles from Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine | Qualitative | Popular science and real science reinforce and inform each other. Writers and public seemed quite sceptical of phrenology (among other medical approaches that were covered in the magazine). | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Dunnett, O. | 2012 | Patrick Moore, Arthur C. Clarke and “British Outer Space” in the Mid 20th Century” | Cultural Geographies | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
How the notion of “space from Earth” is illustrated by the works of Patrick Moore and Arthur C. Clarke and is linked to the philosophy of the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) | Relationship between science fiction and science culture | History of the BIS, BIS publications, works of Clarke and Moore | Qualitative | This article seeks to rediscover trends such as the cosmographical connection to geography, working toward “a human geography of celestial space, a cosmography for the twenty-first century.” | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Erren, T.C.; Falaturi P. | 2009 | “Research Insights and Insides: “Science-in-Fiction” as a Contribution to the Third Culture Concepts” | Medical Hypotheses | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
How science fiction may be an instructional/educational medium addressing Snow’s two-culture issues (synthesis of humanities and science) of 1960 and extension into a “third culture” by Brockman in 1995 | Pedagogy/two cultures | Historic texts and history of popularization of science fiction | Qualitative | Science fiction can be used as an educational medium to promote science in two-culture and three-culture environments | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Fendt, J. | 2015 | “The Chromosome as Concept and Metaphor in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome” | Anglia-Zeitschrift Fur Englische Philologie | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
To explore within the context of science studies how a subject of scientific research can be inscribed in a literary text and can offer insights beyond its “factual” or “hard” knowledge of the sciences | Science and technology studies/two cultures | Novel by Amitav Ghosh, history and philosophy of science, critical and analytical texts | Qualitative | That fiction may be a good way of linking the imagination and the concrete and that this is essential for the proper development of science, that it forms an essential part of the cultural ecology that enables science to progress and there is a strong interconnectedness between science and literature | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Geraci, R.M. | 2007 | “Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction: Theological Implications of Artificial, Intelligence” | Zygon | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Whether human beings have elevated intelligent machines to divine status and if this is a threat to traditional Christian theologies | Connections between science fiction and human culture | Primary fictional sources in literature, film and drama, theological literature, and criticism | Qualitative | The allure and dread of technology often parallels human metaphysical and theological concerns and concepts. That our relationship with machine intelligence is ambivalent seeing it as both a source of fear and one of inspiration. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Ginway, M.E. | 2005 | “A Working Model for Analyzing Third World Science Fiction: The Case of Brazil” | Science Fiction Studies | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Aims to create a critical model for analyzing third-world science fiction | Literary criticism/influence of human culture on science fiction content | Brazilian science fiction texts | Qualitative | Brazilian ideas of national and cultural identity are strongly demonstrated by the representation in science fiction of analogues for slaves and neoliberal colonists and the application of mythological Brazilian notions of their culture and values to overcome and surmount problems that appear in the narrative | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Guerra, S. | 2009 | “Colonizing Bodies: Corporate Power and Biotechnology in Young Adult Science Fiction? | Children’s Literature in Education | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Cultural concerns about technology that are reflected in the content of science fiction | Relationship between science fiction and science culture | Science fiction texts aimed at juvenile readers, statistics, government committee reports, and marketing sources | Mixed | Juvenile fiction concerned with cultural developments and impacts of the applications of biotechnology warn that the future of humanity will be defined by corporate greed and loss of individual freedom, and that the prevalence of these themes in fiction should be of concern to current policy and decision makers | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Hansen, B. | 2004 | “Medical History for the Masses: How American Comic Books Celebrated Heroes of Medicine in the 1940s” | Bulletin of the History of Medicine | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
How comic book “real story” literature with medical heroes affected the perception of medical science and the attractiveness of a medical career to young Americans in the mid-20th century | Pedagogy/science communication | Historical sources and contemporary comic book, film, and radio examples | Mixed | It is very likely that the “true story” medical comics had a significant positive impact on the cultural value and profile of medical advances and medical scientists. That they provided simple but realistic information in an immediately accessible form and reflected the common themes in mass culture of the time. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Hills, M. | 2003 | “Counterfictions in the Work of Kim Newman: Rewriting Gothic SF as “Alternate-Story Stories” | Science Fiction Studies | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
The distinction between the style and purpose of counterfictional, counterfactual, and fictional literature | Literary criticism | Works of Kim Newman, other historical literary texts | Qualitative | The cultural politics of existent fiction can be explicitly and directly questioned by counterfiction. When existent fictional worlds become the starting point for extrapolation, a wider, more intertextual, view of science fictional “alternate-story stories” is called for. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Hrotic, S. | 2014 | “The Evolution and Extinction of Science Fiction” | Public Understanding of Science | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Cognitive group membership of SF genres, possibility that genre SF no longer exists as a specific—Steampunk as evidence to support this hypothesis | Connections between science fiction and human culture | Various secondary literature and critical commentary | Qualitative | Familiarity with the disappointing outcomes of technological progress has led to a decline in the attractiveness of genre science fiction and this is reflected in a switch to an imaginative genre (Steampunk). This is rooted in an alternate reality that is able to conceive of a positivistic vision of technology and the future, borrowing this view from characteristics of Victorian culture. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Hull, E.A. | 2005 | “Science Fiction as a Manifestation of Culture in America” | Foreign Literature Studies | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
The relationship between science fiction and broader American culture. The role of popular fiction as accessible cultural commentary | Connections between science fiction and human culture/two cultures | The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov, literary criticism | Qualitative | Science fiction analysis is best carried out in a mixture of forms, that historical perspective is necessary for most interpretation, that science fiction contains rich examples and can be read from a number of different, mixed, perspectives. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Idema, T. | 2015 | “Toward a Minor Science Fiction: Literature, Science, and the Shock of the Biophysical” | Configurations | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Applying science and technology studies approaches (primarily) to the study of science fiction as a “minor literature,” which is embedded in scientific and sociocultural constructs | Connections between science fiction and human culture/science and technology studies | Greg Bear’s books: Blood Music and Darwin’s Radio | Qualitative | Science fiction, as well as other literature, can be read as a mode of thinking with science about the future of human life | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Jameson, F. | 1987 | “Science Fiction as a Spatial Genre: Generic Discontinuities and the Problem of Figuration in Vonda Mclntyre’s ‘The Exile Waiting’” | Science Fiction Studies | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
What science fiction offers which goes beyond the formulas of soap opera and distinguishes it from what might be considered equally banal forms | Literary criticism/connections between science fiction and human culture | Vonda McIntyre’s The Exile in Waiting | Qualitative | Science fiction adds richness primarily due to the imaginary of space, being less to do with time than with more openly structured and flexible environments | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Jonsson, E. | 2013 | “The Human Species and the Good Gripping Dreams of H.G. Wells” | Style | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
How early stories by Wells reflect upon evolutionary and cultural historical/biographical factors that give them their resonance and lasting success | Relationship between science fiction and science culture/connections between science fiction and human culture | Early works by H.G. Wells: The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau | Qualitative | Wells explored the differences between natural and artificial culture that were new and confronting during his period, the theory of evolution only recently having been published. That adventurous “gripping yarns” on these topics have become Wells’ legacy due to their popularist content. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Kohlmann, B. | 2014 | “What Is It like To Be a Rat? Early Cold War Glimpses of the Post-Human” | Textual Practice | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Ecology: Exploring the interaction and mutual reinforcement of cultural concerns in early cold-war literature and science | Relationship between science fiction and science culture/connections between science fiction and human culture | Four primary texts and the history of contemporary scientific and cultural views on ecology | Qualitative | Early cold-war fascination with the posthuman drove a preoccupation with nonhuman forms of human existence and consequently raised ecological concerns for the future | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Kotasek, M. | 2015 | “Artificial Intelligence in Science Fiction as a Model of the Posthuman Situation of Mankind” | World Literature Studies | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
The function of science fiction in shaping ideas about evolution, posthumanism, artificial intelligence, and the processes that define the human mind | Connections between science fiction and human culture/science and technology studies | Primary fictional texts and secondary critical literature | Qualitative | Connections between humans and technology, and fiction written about technology, exist in a hermeneutic relationship | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Larsen, K. | 2011 | “Hobbits, Hogwarts, and the Heavens: The Use of Fantasy Literature and Film in Astronomy Outreach and Education” | Role of Astronomy in Society and Culture | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Use of fantasy literature to teach astronomy | Pedagogy | Fantasy literature primary texts and curricula content designed for astronomy education | Qualitative | That fantasy literature is a very effective tool for teaching astronomical science | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Lin, T.H. | 2013 | “Beyond Science Fiction: Vladimir Odoevskij’s The Year of 4338 as a Hybrid Text” | Russian Literature | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Classification of a specific work of science fiction as a genre hybrid | Literary criticism | Primary text | Qualitative | That the work in question is more effectively considered as a hybrid text than specific genre | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Maguire, M. | 2013 | “Aleksei N. Tolstoi and the Enigmatic Engineer: A Case of Vicarious Revisionism” | Slavic Review | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Analysis of the relationship between science fiction featuring engineers and their status in contemporary society esp. Stalinism | Science and technology studies | Primary texts | Qualitative | There is a strong correlation between the socio/cultural environment of Stalin’s Russia and how harshly or positively engineers were portrayed in fiction | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
McIntire, E.G. | 1982 | “Exploring Alternate Worlds” | Yearbook—Association of Pacific Coast Geographers | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
To examine how geographers might benefit from examining how science fiction treats notions of space and environment | Pedagogy/science communication | Science fiction texts and geographical literature | Qualitative | Science fiction provides a way of creating environments and ecologies and modeling human interactions with them that enables us to see our own geographical and environmental issues in a fresh light | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Miller, T.S. | 2011 | “Preternatural Narration and the Lens of Genre Fiction in Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” | Science Fiction Studies | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Examination of the role of science fiction as a lens through which to focus the narrative of the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | Literary criticism/two cultures | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, genre and secondary literature | Qualitative | Science fiction serves as a very effective lens through which the narrative of the novel is focused, in part due to the expansive and imaginary qualities of the genre | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Milner, A. | 2009 | “Changing the Climate: The Politics of Dystopia” | Continuum-Journal of Media & Cultural Studies | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
To test theoretical models of utopia/dystopia in science fiction studies and assess the value of science fiction as the source of thought experiments on climate change | Pedagogy | The Sea and Summer by George Turner (1987), SF literary criticism and theory, historic literary dystopia novels | Qualitative | There are undervalued yet apposite tales of resonance and wonder, intelligence, and warning to be found in Australian dystopian SF. That these stories have resonance with the environmental questions and issues raised in contemporary society | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Nerlich, B.; Clarke, D. D.; Dingwall, R. | 1999 | “The Influence of Popular Cultural Imagery on Public Attitudes Towards Cloning” | Sociological Research Online | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
How existing human ideas about science, often expressed in metaphors and sourced from science fiction, influence public perception of and representations of science | Science communication | Literature and media reporting on cloning | Qualitative | Discourse on cloning is based on a network of metaphors and commonplaces that are provided by vivid images linked to science fiction media. We use common knowledge to provide meaning and cannot ignore the impact of public images of technology that have been created in fiction. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Newell, D; Lamont, V. | 2005 | “Rugged Domesticity: Frontier Mythology in Post-Armageddon Science Fiction by Women” | Science Fiction Studies | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
How women represented domesticity and frontier themes in SF written by women pre-1970 | Literary criticism/influence of human culture on science fiction content | Four primary SF texts by women | Qualitative | Female SF writers made strong contributions to feminist literary concepts before the 1970s, that they portrayed a characteristic “frontier” domestic style in the representation of women in the narrative | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Parrinder, P. | 2009 | “Robots, Clones and Clockwork Men: The Post-Human Perplex in Early Twentieth-Century Literature and Science” | Interdisciplinary Science Reviews | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
The distinction between the human and posthuman as portrayed in science fiction and from a historical perspective on the nature of humanity | Connections between science fiction and human culture | Historical cultural concepts of the posthuman, both literary and scientific | Qualitative | Consideration of the gradually changing historical concepts of what it is to be human informs the current (and complex) posthumanism debate and contrasts the postmodern approach to earlier perspectives. A historical view is invaluable for rationally examining current debates. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Piper, A. | 2013 | “Leo Perutz and the Mystery of St Peter’s Snow” | Time & Mind—The Journal of Archaeology Consciousness and Culture | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Analyzing the validity of belief that a specific work of science fiction was prophetic | Literary criticism | Primary source and comparative historical literature | Qualitative | That the author would have had ready access to preexisting information that would explain the narrative content without the need for prophecy | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Rabkin, E.S. | 2004 | “Science Fiction and the Future of Criticism” | Publications of the Modern Language Association | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
The future of criticism lies in making qualitatively more informed, imaginative, judgments that draw on systemic analysis of a vast, technologically mediated set of collective knowledge and experience | Literary criticism/connections between science fiction and human culture | Examples of cultural artifacts in science fictional culture. Analysis of 1,959 stories in American SF Magazines between 1926 and 2000 | Mixed | Science fiction is a “system” that reflects modes of modern science, and is fundamentally networked and collaborative. It is the most influential cultural system now that technological change “constantly provokes hope, fear, guilt, and glory.” Analysis of science fiction texts may provide insights into cultural attitudes and contemporary society. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Rutten, K; Soetaert, R; Vandermeersche, G. | 2011 | “Science Fiction and a Rhetorical Analysis of the ‘Literature Myth’” | CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
What science fiction tells us about cultural literacy and literary culture, analyzed through work of rhetorician Kenneth Burke. Examining specifically science fiction as “equipment for living” (literature) as a genre of “satire by entelechy.” | Literary criticism | Works of Kenneth Burke, selection of primary fiction texts—1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, TV and Film | Qualitative | Rhetorical analysis of science fiction narratives “offers possibilities to reflect critically on our contemporary attitude towards literacy, literacy culture, and art in general . . . perspectives of the future dramatized in science fiction reveal much about the context in which these narratives are told and therefore can teach us something about cultural practices and social values.” | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Schwartz, M. | 2013 | “How Nauchnaia Fantastika Was Made: The Debates About the Genre of Science Fiction From NEP to High Stalinism” | Slavic Review | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Genre definition and role of Soviet Science Fantasy. Relation between cultural demands and literary content and form—especially anxieties and stress | Science and technology studies | Literature, contemporary accounts | Qualitative | The efforts of the Soviet state to control science fantasy were inconsistent and had strong influences on direction at certain times, even subduing the genre almost entirely during the mid-1950s. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Shaddox, K. | 2013 | “Generic Considerations in Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’” | Human Rights Quarterly | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
How sentiment and the rights of the human are expressed in Never Let Me Go similarly to abolitionist literature, and other emotionally charged cultural critique | Literary criticism/connections between science fiction and human culture | Primary texts and subsequent literary criticism | Qualitative | That Never Let Me Go has stronger links to sentimental literature than to science fiction and that the issue it discusses deserves broader treatment outside of fantastical fiction | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Sielke, S. | 2015 | “Science Studies and Literature” | Anglia-Zeitschrift Fur Englische Philologie | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
The link between science studies and the cultural work of literary texts that probe the history of knowledge production | Science and technology studies | Science studies research, historical two and more cultures debates and the work of Richard Powers | Qualitative | Defines and positions science studies within the current discussions on science, culture, and literature | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Slaughter, A. | 2014 | “Ray Guns and Radium: Radiation in the Public Imagination as Reflected in Early American Science Fiction” | Science & Education | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
The representation of radiation in early American science fiction as a corollary to existing history and philosophy of science treatments of the subject | Science and technology studies | Amazing Stories, 1929 and Astounding Science Fiction, 1934 | Qualitative | Early science fiction reflects the popular interest in science but does not contain proper or realistic scientific method. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Steinmuller, K. | 2003 | “The Uses and Abuses of Science Fiction” | Interdisciplinary Science Reviews | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Influence of science fiction on science, pseudoscience, and the realism of science and scientists portrayed in literature | Relationship between science fiction and science culture | Science fiction literary criticism, history, and philosophy of science | Qualitative | Science fiction is strongly linked to pseudoscience and has reflected social and cultural historical interests in science. The relationship and focus between science and science fiction reflects contemporary issues of the time. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Strauss, K. | 2015 | “These Overheating Worlds” | Annals of the Association of American Geographers | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Ecological issues: Opportunities to explore climate change in human geography are opened up by utopian and dystopian representations in science fiction | Relationship between science fiction and science culture | “Cli-fi” and historical geography texts | Qualitative | Utopias and dystopias are fundamentally spatial, stories of a better present and archaeology of the present, enabling exploration of alternative political futures and other socioeconomic systems | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Toscano, A. A. | 2011 | “Using I, Robot in the Technical Writing Classroom: Developing a Critical Technological Awareness” | Computers and Composition | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
How technical writing and comprehension can be enhanced beyond the practical elements by considering science fiction representations of technology in a broader cultural context | Pedagogy/science communication | I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, contemporary theory on technical writing, close reading of student essays in response to topic questions | Qualitative | Students must understand that technologies are not merely tools but products of culture and society before they can acquire critical technological literacy | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Van Dijck, J. | 1999 | “Cloning Humans, Cloning Literature: Genetics and the Imagination Deficit” | New Genetics and Society | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Science fiction as a tool for comprehending and evaluating the scientific “imagination deficit” and associated oversimplification of science | Pedagogy | Historic and current fiction regarding cloning, media reporting of cloning | Qualitative | Cloning is represented in a variety of positive, negative, and neutral ways in fiction, and literary narratives are important intermediaries (between nature and science, science and culture) and rhetorical tools in the construction of public meanings and the public understanding of science. | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Van Gorp, B; Rommes, E; Emons, P. | 2014 | “From the Wizard to the Doubter: Prototypes of Scientists and Engineers in Fiction and Non-Fiction Media Aimed at Dutch Children and Teenagers” | Public Understanding of Science | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Identifying prototypes of scientists in juvenile media and how that may affect the image of science in society | Pedagogy | Media consumed by schoolchildren—written and broadcast | Mixed | Creates seven prototypes of fictional scientists and contrasts with prototypes of real scientists—the fictional prototypes provide misinformation that is unrepresentative and often negative | |
Author(s) | Date | Title | Publication | ||
Wilsing, M; Akpinar-Wilsing, N. | 2004 | “Integrating ‘Outer Space Design’ Into Design Curriculum” | International Journal of Art & Design Education | ||
Focus of research | Theme | Data sources | Methods | Summary | |
Using science fiction concepts to stimulate the creative imagination of design students | Pedagogy | Research on classroom experiences, science fiction literary criticism | Qualitative | Science fiction is a very effective pedagogical tool for teaching design students and the use of it is to be encouraged as an aid to conventional curricular teaching. |
Theme | Number |
---|---|
Connections between science fiction and human culture | 12 |
Influence of human culture on science fiction content | 3 |
Literary criticism | 10 |
Pedagogy | 9 |
Relationship between science fiction and science culture | 7 |
Science and technology studies | 7 |
Science communication | 5 |
Two cultures | 5 |
Total | 58 |
Thematic Analysis
Discussion
Science Fiction, throughout the centuries, has been a significant cultural tool for comprehending and evaluating the scientific, moral and social consequences of new technologies . . . besides projecting a possible future, science fiction often entails criticism of present technological or social arrangements. (p. 9)
Conclusion
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