Consciousness and Science Fiction

Front Cover
Springer, Nov 30, 2018 - Science - 196 pages

Science fiction explores the wonderful, baffling and wildly entertaining aspects of a universe unimaginably old and vast, and with a future even more immense. It reaches into that endless cosmos with the tools of rational investigation and storytelling. At the core of both science and science fiction is the engaged human mind--a consciousness that sees and feels and thinks and loves. But what is this mind, this aware and self-aware consciousness that seems unlike anything else we experience? What makes consciousness the Hard Problem of philosophy, still unsolved after millennia of probing? This book looks into the heart of this mystery - at the science and philosophy of consciousness and at many inspiring fictional examples - and finds strange, challenging answers.

The book's content and entertaining style will appeal equally to science fiction enthusiasts and scholars, including cognitive and neuroscientists, as well as philosophers of mind. It is a refreshing romp through the science and science fiction of consciousness.

 

Contents

The Machine in the Ghost
1
The Language of the Mind
19
What Is It Like to Be a Conscious SF Writer?
29
The First CenturyPlus
40
The Second Golden Age
77
Entering the Mainstream
85
Radically Different Minds
101
L ́Être et le néant
109
Minds On Fire
118
Transcending
135
Waking Up Different
153
Conclusion
177
References and Suggested Links
182
Index
189
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About the author (2018)

Damien Broderick, PhD, is an award-winning science fiction and science writer, editor and critic who has published more than 70 books. He has received the Distinguished Scholarship Award of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. A former Senior Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and founding science fiction editor of Cosmos magazine, he now lives in Texas.


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