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Although the academy tends not to recognize it, scholars and students from working-class backgrounds are automatically at a disadvantage. To demonstrate both sides of the university experience, I provide here a detailed, personal account of my journey from undergraduate to postgraduate to post-Ph.D. researcher. I pay special attention to my chosen subject of classics and ancient history, an area of study with its own set of class-based problems ‐ for while those from working-class backgrounds might be (and are) subject to classism in any discipline, the seemingly inherent elitism of the classics and ancient history field makes it doubly hard for the underprivileged to succeed. I begin by illustrating how ‘working-class knowledge’ of popular culture granted me access into an otherwise closed, exclusionary set of subject materials and go from here to detail how such work is undervalued by the field, before ending on the violent effects that the all-too-familiar casualized employment structure has on those would-be academics who lack access to family wealth, savings and freedom of opportunity/action. Ultimately, I try to show how that ‐ no matter how hard you try ‐ if you are from working-class background, you are highly unlikely to succeed in the modern-day academic system.

Beginning with early twentieth-century literature, the first chapter takes the reader on a tour through the development of science fiction writing as a genre, and the influence of Classics on it. The works of authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, S. P. Meek, Dennis Wheatley, Lester Del Rey, John Russell Fearn, Leigh Brackett, Henry Kuttner, Isaac Asimov, J. G. Ballard and Michael Moorcock are explored, along with (amongst others) fascination with Atlantis and the Amazons, through (by modern standards) very different societal lens. Attitudes to antiquity ranged from begrudging fascination and even respect in the early twentieth century to a more outright disdain for the classical past on behalf of 1940s and 50s writers for whom modern science-led ingenuity was the only real means of progress.

The introduction outlines the central tenets of classical reception studies, bringing in the concepts of representation, narrative, and meaning, which is followed by a brief introduction to the world of science-fiction criticism. It emphasizes the need for students (and teachers, and scholars) to embrace interdisciplinarity, and characterizes classical study as being rooted in the present as much as it is in the past. It briefly discusses the depth, breadth and influence of the science fiction genre and the consistent placement of antiquity within it throughout the centuries. The many social and political issues that classical reception studies (and science fiction) so often bring up are also briefly summarized.

So, it turns out those many, many Atlantises were all too often riven with misogyny and racism. Those Amazonian tales were frequently vehicles for male fears of powerful capable women seeking rights and recognition. The Greek gods were almost always aliens, immeasurably powerful yet destined to fall. Time travel to Greece and Rome often served to demonstrate how much better ‘we’ are than ‘them’, or conversely (sometimes simultaneously) how much we ‘owe’ them. The iconoclasts of the New Wave literature and the subversive filmmakers of the 1970s were endlessly fascinating, as are the current game developers adapting ancient materials to new and exciting results. Here were glimmers of progressive politics or nuanced representation with classics at their core – elsewhere was a return to the reverence not even of art or culture, but the perceived superiority of manly men from antiquity to support regressive ideologies....

Science fiction and the ancient world have been represented in film and on TV since the beginning of both media. This chapter narrows focus further on the intersection of antiquity and science fiction as each medium developed throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The chapter ranges from early examples of science fiction films in the 1950s, though more examples in the 1960s, to the advent of Star Trek, which over several separate episodes launches a three-pronged attack on mythology and religion, the historical realities of ancient Rome, and even the ideas and pseudo-scientific beliefs of the ancient Greeks. Star Wars, Battlestar Galatica and the Matrix films take the story further forward.

The heavy pessimism that weighed upon the New Wave period bled right into the 1980s only to mutate further, and as a result the classical material science fiction writers appropriated and refigured took on new, often revealing characteristics. The upswing in attitudes towards humanity in the early years of science fiction turned into a kind of wistful hopelessness by the 1960s and 70s – although in most cases, from Moorcock to Theodore Sturgeon, the literature provides something of a resolution at the end. In the 1980s and 90s, we see a far less easy to pin down malaise reflected in science fiction, a certain internal anxiety on behalf of western writers. As ever, authors turned once again to the ancient world to explore and externalise these concerns. Works by Murray Leinster, Michael A. Banks and Dean R. Lambe, David Drake, Kirk Mitchell and others are discussed.

Chapter 3 focusses on videogames. The digital, interactive technologies of the videogame are such that consumers of antiquity-flavoured science fiction games may come closer than ever to the ancient (and modern) materials that constitute the text. And with the narrative sophistication of videogames improving at an exponential rate, games stand as an untold, and largely untapped, mine of classical allusions and influences. Readers are first introduced to the differences between videogames and the more ‘traditional’ media of literature and television before being guided through analyses of specific game examples which face the player with now-familiar issues and themes in a very direct way. A fun exploration of early games leads to examination of the first major franchise Fallout: New Vegas (2010), then Mass Effect and Assassin’s Creed.

Ancient Greece and Rome in Modern Science Fiction introduces and analyses the reception of classical antiquity in contemporary science fiction. By using up-to-date methods from classical reception theory, science-fiction analysis and fictional-world studies, the book helps to furnish the reader’s understanding of the ways in which the literature, culture, history and mythology of ancient Greece and Rome are appropriated and represented across multiple media platforms in the science-fiction genre today. The book therefore serves as an entry point into several areas of study: the reception of classics in popular culture, antiquity in modern media, the uses of the ancient world in science-fiction, and broader science-fiction criticism. The chapters – structured by medium – principally offer a roughly chronological overview of that medium and its treatment of ancient history, mythology, literature and culture. An abundance of case studies from literature, film and television and videogames including Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Fallout: New Vegas, the Mass Effect franchise and Assassin’s Creed show how classical antiquity is reused, encountered, re-encountered by creators and consumers of the present – how we bounce off it, and it bounces off us, and how this reciprocation creates new visions of Greece and of Rome.

A major gap in policy making is learning the lessons from past interventions and integrating the lessons from evaluations that have been undertaken. A meta-evaluation, an evaluation of evaluation studies, was undertaken by Collingwood Environmental Planning Ltd (CEP) as an intensive piece of research (July-November 2016) to provide early outputs as part of CECAN's scoping process. A sample of 23 projects (out of a total of 43) was selected on the basis of publicly available documentation (final evaluation reports) and current CEP staff with knowledge of those projects from across the nexus issues, including valuations of flood risk, biodiversity, landscape, land use, climate change, catchment management, community resilience, bioenergy, and EU Directives.