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This study examines the experiences of 10 neurodiverse students in Amsterdam, Netherlands, who all participated within in-class youth-led book clubs that centered science fiction. Over a 6-month period, the researcher conducted pre- and post-interviews and analyzed these along with transcription data from 24 book club sessions. Findings reveal that book clubs, using culturally sustaining science fiction and healing-centered facilitative practices, provide opportunities to address students' academic and emotional literacies as well as their sense of agency.

Science fiction conventions are places where individuals with an interest in diverse genres and mediums can engage with a community that bridges the world of science fiction and fact. Many of these conventions provide a science "track" where science experts share their expertise and research on scientific findings and applications of science with science fiction enthusiasts. This study explored science fiction conference attendees' (n = 241) interest in science, as well as how attendees (n = 172) plan to utilize science shared at science track sessions. Survey responses were analyzed within "STEM career" groups by comparing science track and non-science track attendees, and documenting what science track attendees plan to do with the information gained at a science track session. There were no differences in how science track attendees and non-science track attendees with STEM careers reported their interest in science. For the attendees that did not report having a career related to STEM, science track participants reported higher interest scores than non-science track attendees. Over half of the science track attendees (66%) shared they will apply what they learned from a science track session to their own personal context. Furthermore, the demographics of the survey respondents may suggest that science fiction conventions are an untapped science learning environment connecting to a younger, more diverse community. Overall, recognizing the benefit of science fiction conventions is crucial to provide spaces for accessible venues of science communication to foster an interest in science for a diverse, public audience.

Engineering and pop-culturist instructors team-teach a first-year experience course exploring science through the lenses of history, literature, film, television, and sequential art. Authors present science fiction discourses as unique for synthesizing fields in the humanities and STEM, and they present curricular and co-curricular design strategies for harnessing its potential in the honors classroom. Course objectives and outcomes are presented, with authors noting specific challenges in implementation and emendation. Adaptability and compatibility figure prominently in the successful delivery of the course. A review of literature relating to interdisciplinary education and team-teaching in honors is included.

In the study, it is aimed to examine the relationship between science fiction self-efficacy and spatial ability of science teacher candidates. The study is quantitative research and correlation research was used as a research design. The study group consisting of 200 science teacher candidates was formed by using the convenience sampling method. The data collection tools are Santa Barbara Solids Test, Spatial Ability Self-Report Scale and Science Fiction Self-Efficacy Scale for Science Teacher Candidates. Correlation analysis was performed in the analysis of data and Pearson Correlation for normally distributed data and Spearman Correlation for non-normally distributed data was used. As a result of analyzes, for science fiction candidates it was concluded that there is a moderately positive and significant relationship between spatial ability and spatial ability self-report, a moderately positive significant relationship between science fiction self-efficacy and spatial ability self-report, and a weak positive significant relationship between science fiction self-efficacy and spatial abilities. According to the findings, it was concluded that science teacher candidates make a consistent self-assessment in terms of their spatial ability. Moreover, it has been determined that some improvement in spatial ability can be achieved by using science fiction as a tool to develop spatial ability.

"The Ballad of Proxima-B" is an educational RPG that promotes learning and collaboration. Students contribute to world-building and game mechanics, creating fictional worlds and characters, including a dystopian Earth, the planet Proxima-B, and alien races. The game incorporates constructivist, constructionist, and Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) principles. The hands-on and collaborative nature facilitates learning, reflection, and a strong classroom community. During gameplay, characters form alliances, encouraging students to reflect on their interactions. Design challenges include workload balance and addressing student anxiety. Game elements emphasize critical thinking and self-reflection, foster collaboration and community, and encourage exploring identity through serious play.

To provide the current student generation with an innovative online learning method, podcasts with science fiction short stories are introduced to marketing education. Findings from neurology and psychology point to positive effects of storytelling for gaining knowledge and developing interpersonal skills. Science fiction stories challenge common conceptions and enable students to engage with upcoming marketing issues in creative ways. An overview of eight marketing related science fiction stories is provided that are available for download as open access podcasts, with 23 more management and economics podcast stories available in the online appendix. To show how science fiction podcasts can be implemented in class, one of the stories is discussed in more detail. Further suggestions for implementation and possible challenges are outlined.

This essay offers a rationale for deploying ecofeminist science fiction stories as object-oriented thought experiments in science and environmental education, with particular reference to developments in genetics and evolutionary biology, and their implications for human (and more-than-human) reproduction and kinship in the period following the determination of the double helical structure of DNA by scientists affiliated with Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory in 1953, and the impact of subsequent gene-centric discourses on the biological sciences and the wider culture. The utility and defensibility of this approach is exemplified by reference to two science fiction novels by the late Naomi Mitchison that foreground and anticipate implications of genetic sciences for matters of concern to ecofeminists, including reproductive rights and responsibilities, population control, human relations with the more-than-human, and problematizing gendered (and other) binaries in everyday speech and popular culture.

Science fiction conventions are places where the convergence of science fiction and science is discussed within diverse communities. Many of these science fiction conventions offer programming focused on science, often described as "science tracks," for science experts to share their experiences, expertise, scientific findings, and applications related to current research in connection to science fiction with the public. Framing the study within a socio-cultural context, this study surveyed experts' (n = 19) perceived beliefs of science communication at science fiction conventions. Experts cited "accessibility" and "promoting scientific curiosity" as the greatest benefits and identified "misconceptions" or "misinterpretation" by the audience as challenges. Overall, experts agreed that "communicating science is important" and "science fiction has a great impact on science." Because of the public access to experts, it is important to highlight the potential influence science fiction conventions may have on science communication via socio-cultural experiences and contexts within popular culture.

Given the increasing popularity of the science-fiction genre, its capacity for worldbuilding and its long-durée vision, coupled with both the difficulty of discussing issues of migration in today's world as something more than a problem of the present and the necessity to go beyond this presentism, the author argues that science-fiction films provide an excellent tool for peace education inside and outside the classroom in general and to address migration in particular. This article discusses the why and how of using science fiction films for peace education, which the author claims is not necessarily taught in the classroom or special programs but should also be seen as part of lifelong learning/continuous education.

Minimum Competence Assessment resembling PISA and Characters Survey replace National Examination in 2021. However, the Indonesian students' score in PISA is still left behind the international average scores. This study aims to find out the extent of the relationship between science informative text and science fiction text skills in secondary school. This research is a quantitative correlational study carried out by distributing online tests of science informative texts and science fiction texts. The participants of this study were 133 students of grade ten at 4th Pematangsiantar Senior High School and they were selected using simple random sampling technique. A bivariate correlation test with the Pearson Product Moment method was implemented to analyze the data. The result found that the value of the correlation coefficient was 0.96 (r = 0.96) meaning that the alternative hypothesis is accepted. In other words, there is a very strong positive correlation between the students' reading skills in fiction text with the students' reading skills in informative text. In short, the result indicates that when the students' ability to read science fiction text increases, their ability to read science informative text will also increase.

The iPhone 62 has just been released. Political gridlock and the governmentally approved process of locking immigrant children in cages continue ad infinitum. Public schools resort to primarily remote learning as pandemic viruses ebb and flow. University students study post-postmodernism on campuses that remain on stolen Indigenous land. In this year of 2071, where humans remain desperately attached to "normalcy," suffering continues beneath the fear that transformation would surely be devastating. Unknowns horrify privileged communities, eased only by the comfortability of a level of "bad" with which they are at least familiar. The world has settled into the Great Banal, an age of blind faith that tomorrow's problems can be answered with solutions of yester-today. Written as an "e-seance" Zoom conversation among "ghost-scholars of the future," we explore the horrors of a future in which the "normalities" of 2021 all persist. This is not a dystopian nightmare in which climate disasters wreak unparalleled havoc on vulnerable communities and new fascist regimes sink their claws into education, nor is it a utopic imagining of a society that has made great bounds toward social-ecological justice. In this seemingly absurd imaginary of "no substantial change at all," we draw from (eco)critical, Indigenous, and feminist frameworks to ask: "What might education look like in a world that has adamantly resisted radical transformation for fear of the worst, in exchange for all hopes of the best?"

Technologies have become an essential part of the daily life of our children. Consequently, artifacts that imply the early adoption of abstract thinking affect the imagination of children and young people in relation to the world of technology, now much more than they did in the past. With the emerging importance of robots in many aspects of our everyday lives, the goal of this study is to investigate which mental representations children have about robots. To this end, drawings from 104 children aged between 7 and 12 years old were used as a map of representations, considering the drawings as a proxy capable of evoking learned or emerging mental frameworks. The drawings were analyzed in several steps: they were first labeled using binary descriptors and then classified using clustering methods based on Hamming distances between drawings. Finally, questionnaire items covering children's perceptions about robots were analyzed for each of the resulting cluster separately to identify differences between them. The results show that there are relationships between the way children draw robots and their perception about robots' capabilities as well as their aspirations to pursue a career in science. These findings can provide meaningful insights into how to design educational robots and learning activities for children to learn with and about robots.

Instead of seeking the slick aesthetics of consumer-friendly creative stories, this paper ventures to the sublime of the incomprehensible and invites us to look into the abyss of education's possibilities. Drawing inspiration from Jeff Vandermeer's 2017 novel, "Borne," and filmmaker David Cronenberg's aesthetic, this paper aims to tell a story that unfetters easily compartmentalized notions of creativity in education. "Borne" tells the story of a young female scavenger who finds and proceeds to care for a sentient--and quite vocally curious--experimental biotech remain, while Cronenberg's films famously bridge science fiction and body horror. Popular culture, in identifying this aesthetic, developed the slang term "to Cronenberg," meaning to affectively highlight exaggerated mutations. To this end, this paper explores specific questions for educational futures: what does creativity mean for a Cronenberg pedagogy and how does the ethics of creativity inform future educational policy directions?

This paper explores a possible future of postdigital education in 2050 using the means of social science fiction. The first part of the paper introduces the shift from 20th century primacy of physics to 21st century primacy of biology with an accent to new postdigital--biodigital reconfigurations and challenges in and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The second part of the paper presents a fictional speech at the graduation ceremony of a fictional military academy in a fictional East Asian country in 2050. This fictional world is marked by global warfare and militarization, and addressed graduates are the first generation of artificially evolved graduates in human history. The third part of the paper interprets the fictional narrative, contextualizes it into educational challenges of today, and argues for a dialogical, humanistic conception of new postdigital education in a biotech future.

In this article, we present reflections on the possible dialogs between literary creation and science teaching. Our considerations will be directed to the work of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the role of science and science education over the text that gave rise to the genre "science fiction." This work aims at presenting the possibilities of using Shelley's work in order to explore historical, methodological, conceptual, social, and political implications that may be useful for motivating reflection in teaching science in the classroom in times of "post-truth." In order to do this, we base our notes on the conceptions of Science, Technology, and Society (STS); in rationality and reasonability; in aspects of bioethics; and on the man-machine implications according to the scientific community in the educational field. In addition to the pedagogical mediation of concepts by the teacher, we seek to look at different strategies as alternatives for pedagogical action in science teaching, through dialog.

The global pandemic has pushed many of us to online streaming services. A particular genre in these services is the 'end of the world' science fiction film, in and through which the speculated results of processes such as climate change are depicted. CGI technology is frequently deployed to create images of the end of the world, which is a backdrop to the narrative of, 'saving ourselves amidst the ruins'. This philosophy of education essay will critically examine ten films in order to: (1) Explain how 'the end of the world' images connected to processes such as climate change, obscures and displaces attention from the real, scientifically proven processes that are not so entertaining, but are still deadly. The images are created by capital and its machines for audience attention and have little to do with real social change. Science sits in an ambiguous position in this paper in that the real processes of climate change proven by science may be funded by capitalist mechanisms that can also be their cause. (2) Introduce a reformulated notion of ecosophy from the work of Félix Guattari, Murray Bookchin, Arne Naess and Andre Gorz. This essay will suggest that ecosophy has the potential to teach the underlying split between depictions of the end of the world through the capitalist machine and the real social change necessary under climate change. Ecosophy is in the context of this essay a specific conceptual construction designed for teaching about climate change through cinema.

Science fiction (SF) combines realistic and imaginary elements of science and technology and develops students' imagination, creativity, and interest in science. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine SF stories written by pre-service science teachers (PSTs) in terms of various textual and science variables. The case study of SF story writing aimed to develop a theoretical framework to analyze how narrative elements, plot structure, agency, the nature of science content, characteristics of the SF genre, and ethics in scientific research are included in the stories of a group of Turkish PSTs. The participants of the study were 58 pre-service teachers enrolled in the science education department at a public university in Turkey. Working in groups, they wrote 13 different SF stories. The stories were analyzed with a rubric including two parts: narrative and other story elements and the characteristics of the SF genre. The results showed that the stories included fictional and realistic features of science and technology, scientific concepts, and details about scientific realities. The stories addressed the social and cultural embeddedness of scientific knowledge and details about the scientific method. However, the originality is limited in many stories as they had traces from popular movies, books, and TV series. The stories did consider a range of ethical issues, including unauthorized experimentation and manipulating scientific information for personal, political, and financial interests. The current study could contribute to the literature about the use and assessment of SF stories in science education.

I argue that an analysis of antiblack racism in music education discourse is crucial in identifying and addressing potential for harm in the music classroom. I contend that Black children are particularly, and regularly, subjected to poor stereotypical depictions of their identity in digital media. Furthermore, I contend that this digital socialization has far-reaching implications in school. I use the framework of Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit) to explore interpersonal, curricular, and environmental sites of antiblack assault that are commonplace in schools and, specifically, music classrooms. Using a selection of Janelle Monáe's music, I explore themes of resistance and affirmation through an Afrofuturist lens. I conclude my paper by proposing that Afrofuturism can serve as a disruption that may create sites of affirmation for Black children. [Note: The page range (131-58) shown on the website is incorrect. The correct page range is 131-158.]

This paper reflects on the classroom use of the "Star Trek" American science fiction television franchise to teach critical and emotional geographies to undergraduates specializing in science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM). Both science fiction and STEM education are ambivalent and contradictory scenes of social reproduction, extending a promise of social transformation, but often maintaining complicity in heteropatriarchy, racial capitalism, and empire. Enlivening students to what Ashon T. Crawley calls the "otherwise possibilities" immanent to both science fiction and STEM education is necessarily difficult emotional work. Reflecting on teacher shame and anxiety and student resistance to course material, I turn to psychoanalysis, particularly the work of Donald W. Winnicott, to argue that "Star Trek" offers a richly contradictory "transitional object" for students to play with otherwise possibilities.

Through the use of horror movie motifs like zombies and mad doctors, "The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" (2015) stands in drastic contrast to other young adult dystopian properties like "The Hunger Games" (2012), for example, in that "Scorch Trials" uses allegory as a means to comment on neoliberalism, alienated labor, and commodity fetishism essentially functioning as a Marxist critique of capital. However, this reading only occurs subtextually. By using a contextual cultural studies approach, which reads film as embedded in cultural politics, and a "monsterology," which captures capital as a specter within the film, this essay will serve as an intervention surrounding discourse on "The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials." In doing so, this analysis will make the case that films targeted at students and young adults are important sites of pedagogy that contribute to an understanding of how capital alienates us from ourselves, each other, and social democratic structures.

This article provides tips on how popular media, specifically that of science fiction and horror, can be utilized in the classroom to elucidate complex concepts concerning race and ethnic relations. Drawing from the television series "Lovecraft Country," I highlight how concepts found in the work of authors such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon are made more interesting and digestible for students at the undergraduate level when presented in films that rely heavily on science fiction and imagination. Reflections are included from students who watched this series in class during weeks where Du Bois and Fanon were required reading, demonstrating the impact the show had on their understanding of the two thinkers specifically and the study of race and ethnicity generally.

Sci-fi has the power to open dialogue because its alternate world-building enables students to feel far enough from reality to discuss social problems unreservedly. In this essay, I review an assignment I developed using "Black Mirror" and "Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams" that present episodes in which militarized policing, segregation, and genocide occur with the consent and complicity of populations convinced that these measures enable their safety. Paralleling U.S. carceralism, the fictional communities have been inundated with media and political advertising for greater segregation but have themselves never experienced the criminalized violence that justifies widespread state harms. Through a generative dialogue engaging the media, a discussion question, and the concept of state terrorism, students move to observe their positionality and critically assess state violence. Therefore, I recommend this teaching tool for any critical instructors--especially minoritized professors teaching primarily White classrooms--to inspire a stimulating dialogue in service of connection-making and peacemaking in the classroom.

While prior research has illustrated the strengths of collaborative teaching between sociology and English, less has examined the potential of cross-listed courses, instead largely focusing on how to bring writing instruction into the sociology classroom. Similarly, other work has explored the possible uses of literary examples "within" sociology lessons. We argue that a fully collaborative teaching model capitalizing on strengths from both sociology and English studies can be beneficial not only for students but also coteachers. Drawing from autoethnographic approaches, we reflect on our experience teaching a cross-listed sociology and English course in science fiction literature as well as the sociopolitical landscape that motivated our pedagogical decisions. We discuss our rationale for choosing the theme of the "alien" as "other" and the importance of low-stakes writing assignments. We offer practical ideas for integrating science fiction into sociology classes and provide insights for anyone thinking about cross-listed classes on any topic.

Sociologists are uniquely positioned to use science fiction literature in the classroom. Despite students reading less, the science fiction novel "The Handmaid's Tale" is more popular than ever. I obtained the data for this study through content analysis of 108 student journal entries in a sociology of gender course at a small liberal arts college. Journal entries were analyzed for identification and application of class concepts in addition to an overall rating of "The Handmaid's Tale." Students successfully identified and connected 58 distinct class concepts to the novel. The most common concepts that students identified were gender stereotype, doing gender, and patriarchy. In addition, students enjoyed the novel and rated it highly. The average rating was 4.2 stars out of 5. Results from this study suggest that science fiction remains relevant and useful in the contemporary sociology classroom.

The Alien Worlds project teaches ethnographic skills using the societies of dystopian, postapocalyptic, and science fiction texts as imagined field sites and targets for analysis. These exercises and assignments, which illustrate principles of qualitative fieldwork, were developed when COVID-19 precautions made it impossible to assign tasks that involved in-person social interaction. Preliminary findings from use in 2020-2021 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (n = 140) and Science Fiction and Society (n = 10) classes suggest that science fiction may have an ongoing place in beginning and intermediate social science courses, as it provides an entertaining, low-stakes way for students to practice observation and analysis. The original project is designed to span at least six weeks or the course of a semester, but variations for shorter and stand-alone assignments are provided in addition to ways that it can be adapted to suit the needs of different audiences. Though it will not replace all in-person field experience for advanced sociology and anthropology students, it provides a bridge between classroom content and hands-on interaction that encourages a growth mindset in learning.

This exploratory case study affirmed the merit of using science fiction-inspired story writing to help Saudi Arabian Grade 10 female students learn science. Recognizing that teacher-centered rote learning was not reaching her rural students in the western part of Riyadh Province, the female teacher in this case switched to the constructivist active learning pedagogy, especially story writing. The case study report reflects data from a teacher interview, classroom observations (n = 2), and a content analysis of students' (N = 25) two homework assignments. In the spirit of science fiction (SF), they were required to (a) demonstrate their science learning by weaving their imagination and personalities with the world of arthropods and writing a story that reflected the values and principles they aspired to spread in society and (b) answer the third conditional sentence question "What would you ask god for if you were a Crustacean?" A content analysis confirmed that students correctly used science facts while creatively and innovatively using their imagination to write stories reflective of their value systems. They valued identity, societal recognition, validation and respect, enduring friendships, dialogue and conversations, protection, and family. Regarding the God/Crustacean question, they wanted to be happy, at peace, safe, valued, respected, and have a clean place to live. The study confirmed the value of further investigating the use of the science fiction genre in Saudi science education and using writing to learn science.

Higher education is at a pivotal point of reflection due to the forces of neoliberalism, anti-Blackness, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In the past, higher education has overlooked the university's far future, opting to focus on readily conspicuous change. Along with this disregarded conversation, these crises present higher education faculty, administrators, and staff an opportunity to critically re-think the future of higher education given what we know now and what we do not. In this dialogic essay between a higher education policy doctoral student and a tenured media and communications professor, the authors peer into the hit HBO series "Lovecraft Country" and its underlying themes of horror, fantasy, and historical reality to extract vital lessons for higher education. The authors further participate in conversations about utilizing world and story-making tactics to help higher education envision the university of the future--a future that is radical and boundless.

For the past 20 years, a constant effort has been made by physics teachers and communication specialists to promote the use of characters from comics or science fiction films in physics teaching practice, because of its positive impact on student motivation and attention. This implementation often comes up against the problem of obtaining permissions to use copyrighted images, leading some authors to avoid using images and simply mention the character's name and others to resort to avatars.

Greater emphasis on ethical issues is needed in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. The fiction for specific purposes (FSP) approach, using optimistic science fiction texts, offers a way to focus on ethical reflection that capitalizes on role models rather than negative examples. This article discusses the benefits of using FSP in STEM education more broadly, and then explains how using optimistic fictions in particular encourages students to think in ethically constructive ways. Using examples of science fiction texts with hopeful perspectives, example discussion questions are given to model how to help keep students focused on the ethical issues in a text. Sample writing prompts to elicit ethical reflection are also provided as models of how to guide students to contemplate and analyze ethical issues that are important in their field of study. The article concludes that the use of optimistic fictions, framed through the lens of professional ethics guidelines and reinforced through ethical reflection, can help students to have beneficial ethical models.

Since ChatGPT's release in November 2022, artificial intelligence has come into the spotlight. Inspiring both fascination and fear, chatbots have stirred debates among researchers, developers, and policy makers. The concerns range from concrete and tangible ones—which include replication of existing biases and discrimination at scale, harvesting personal data, and spreading misinformation—to more existential fears that their development will lead to machines with human-like cognitive abilities. Understanding how chatbots work and the human labor and data involved can better help evaluate the validity of concerns surrounding these systems, which although innovative, are hardly the stuff of science fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper takes a critical posthumanist lens to study the consequences of rapid urbanisation of the Chinese landscape as presented in the short story ‘Good Hunting’, by Ken Liu. One of the main characters in the story is Yan, a huli jing (fox-spirit), whose ability to switch between her fox and human forms is severely impaired by the loss of remnant nature in China, and the subsequent erosion of the qi from the soil. It is not just the natural landscape that undergoes a transformation during urbanisation – the remnants of nature do not remain untouched by this process. Beings like Yan, who continue to inhabit the place that used to be their home, do not remain the same that they were pre-urbanisation. The city changes them, moulds them in ways hitherto inconceivable, and they undergo this transmogrification of their bodies and their self in order to survive. The article draws out the historical relationship between urban spaces and (post)human bodies, with a specific focus on the Chinese body, drawing parallels between the ideals associated with the city and juxtaposing them with what it means to be posthuman. The paper also interrogates Yan’s status as a liminal entity before and after Hong Kong’s transformation, and her use of liminality as a survival strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberalism as phenomenon has been noted for its pervasiveness, persistence and negative impact in society. The uncertainty, pessimism and tension associated with neoliberal societies have found expression in popular culture entertainment, more specifically in dystopic depictions of societies influenced by neoliberal logic. These dystopic presentations offer fantastical depictions as allegories, holding up our current realities for critique. While many studies have examined presentations of dystopia from various scholarly perspectives, we employ here a social semiotics approach to examine how semiotic resources are deployed in dystopic presentations of neoliberalism – neoliberal dystopia – to engender critical stances and attitudes. Using excerpts from the Netflix science fiction series Black Mirror, our study shows how combinations of semiotic resources are employed to draw critical attention to representations of neoliberal realities and society. The use of a social semiotics approach offers systematicity in the examination of representations of meaning via the utilization of established analytical frameworks, adding to already-existing commentaries on neoliberal dystopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The technology for even the most advanced missions in the solar system doesn't need advances in basic science. Traveling through the solar system can be described through what is called ‵hard science fiction', i.e. science fiction strictly based on scientific knowledge. Interstellar exploration is a completely different matter. Robotic flyby missions to the nearest stars using nanoprobes can be performed using technologies based on known science, while anything beyond this requires advances which we don't know how to implement, or even we are not sure whether they are possible at all. The point applies not only to the technological aspects but even the scientific bases on which the relevant technologies may rest. The missions requiring less scientific-technological advances, are slow missions, like space arks (generation ships) or missions based on hibernation with travel times up to hundred years. To implement both, the uncertainties are more related to the advances in space medicine and biology than in propulsion and physics. The fastest travels allowed by the current interpretations of the relativity theory are relativistic missions in which the time contraction at speeds closing the speed of light is exploited to decrease the travel time for the astronauts, although the travel time seen by those who remain on Earth is close, in years, to the distance traveled expressed in light years. However, the energy required for this type of missions is large and grows drastically with the increase of time contraction. Faster than light travel, which seems to be possible following some interpretations of relativity involving either wormholes or some sort of warp drive, requires substantial advances in fundamental physics. A symptom of this is that the novels dealing with interstellar travels belong more to the space opera – which doesn't follow strict scientific credibility – than to the hard science fiction subgenre. No novel of this kind explains details about how the relevant machinery works, and even less scientifically realistic are the movies, TV series, and videogames of this kind. Moreover, to achieve a travel time allowing to reach distant star systems in reasonable times using warp drives, the authors of Star Trek had to resort to the Warp Factor which is essentially a nonlinear scale. This makes the requirements for FTL travel even more difficult to achieve. • Interstellar travel requires advances in technology and, in some cases, in science. • Generation ships, which travel for centuries, require only technological advances. • Slow travel with hibernated crew is simpler but requires to develop long term hibernation. • Faster than light (FTL) travel might be not incompatible with present day science. • Interstellar travel as fast as in science fiction, requires speeds hundreds times FTL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution proposes to explore different forms of postcapitalist futures that have been imagined in science fiction and analyze their reflexive potential. The field of studies on diverse economies, those economies often made less visible by the preeminent economic system, should also be concerned with fictional representations oriented towards the future. The article first emphasizes how science fiction can participate in the political imagination, precisely because of its capacities for problematization and exploration. The next step is to exploit a corpus of mainly literary works to show how science fiction can be an original and heuristic vector for the exploration of transformative socioeconomic possibilities. The worlds created in these works allow us to show what a variety of alternative and postcapitalist socioeconomic systems might look like. A typological matrix of postcapitalist futures is then proposed to highlight the hypotheses on which these visions are based and the inspirations they provide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the experiences of 10 neurodiverse students in Amsterdam, Netherlands, who all participated within in‐class youth‐led book clubs that centered science fiction. Over a 6‐month period, the researcher conducted pre‐ and post‐interviews and analyzed these along with transcription data from 24 book club sessions. Findings reveal that book clubs, using culturally sustaining science fiction and healing‐centered facilitative practices, provide opportunities to address students' academic and emotional literacies as well as their sense of agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article theorises the 'speculative anthology' as a formal experiment in futurity that challenges how anthologies have been used to publish, and promote, science fiction from the Global South in the international literary marketplace. It focuses on the 'Futures Past' series of anthologies published by Comma Press – Iraq+100 (2016), Palestine+100 (2019), Kurdistan+100 (2021), and Egypt+100 (2024) – in which indigenous writers are asked to imagine regional futures one century after a major historical event that has defined the pasts and presents of these existing, or aspiring, nation states. Building on recent scholarship in postcolonial print culture which has proposed new strategies for reading evolving genres of the anthology, I first consider the speculative anthology as a heterogeneous literary form which has the capacity to facilitate creative collaboration and collective forms of critique. At the same time, I show how such anthologies reveal a homogenising impulse, often rooted in national imaginaries, and can encourage an anthropological approach to literary writing, especially by minoritised authors. Reading across the paratextual infrastructures of the 'Futures Past' series, I then compare how individual anthologies are shaped by various speculative editorial and publishing practices. I conclude that this experiment in futurity undertakes meaningful, yet imperfect, speculative work as it imagines how writing about the future by authors from the Global South might be anthologised otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]