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H. G. Wells helped pioneer science fiction with his 1898 book The War of the Worlds. Many iterations later, it still scares and fascinates us.
Rotating black holes suck up anything that gets near enough.
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Twisted sound beams suggest an advanced civilisation may be able to harness immense amounts of power from a black hole.
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In fiction and popular culture, parasitic characters appear as a metaphor for the threat and spread of disease. But they’ve also played for laughs.
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Fictional, magical cities can help us understand our own urban lives.
Science fiction offers readers a way to rethink social dilemmas.
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Fantasy fiction provides more than escapism for young readers.
Wade Watts becomes a better global citizen when he reconnects to the real world in Ernest Cline’s novel ‘Ready Player One.’ Tye Sheridan stars as Watts in Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation.
(2018 edition of 'Ready Player One'/Penguin Random House)
The bestselling novel turned film exposes paradoxes of fixing a broken system with its own tools. As we collectively meditate on the world’s problems, why not imagine better worlds?
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Travel somewhere new from lockdown.
Afrofuturism, like the kind seen in Marvel’s Black Panther, allows Black people to imagine themselves into the future.
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Afrofuturism allows Black people to not only imagine their distant futures but also how to survive the anti-Black present.
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Psychologists have stigmatised science fiction fans as losers who retreat into fantasy worlds. This is unfair.
The role of women in futuristic drama TV series ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ makes references to Darwin’s writings on evolution.
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In the television show ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ Charles Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man’ makes a cameo — and its appearance makes a comment on how Gilead functions.
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Some people are growing weary with romantic and dystopian visions of the future. Instead, our focus is on now.
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Boris Johnson’s adviser is asking job applicants to give him their all. And in return? He’ll fire them on the spot if they don’t fit in.
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‘Use the reinforced concrete, Luke.’
HBO’s Westworld.
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At the heart of the debate is that most fundamental question: what does it mean to be human?
The character of Judge Dredd was designed to be satirical, depicting the ultimate draconian cop.
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The fictitious world of Judge Dredd highlights authoritarianism, including laws against outsiders, walls around cities and rules that deny people basic rights. Are the Dredd comics a cautionary tale?
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Technology firms should use more design fiction to explore and avoid potential negative consequences, such as AI bias.
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An obscure Russian prince lays claim to being the first person to announce that humanity may destroy itself through its own technological advancement.
Science fiction can serve as an imaginative production of political theory.
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Science fiction writing often serves as a thought experiment that explores shared and hidden beliefs whose material and political reverberations lie further in the future.
A document in Tengwar, the script of the Elvish languages invented by JRR Tolkien, Dozza, Italy.
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From Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones, writers and linguists have invented an array of new languages.
Doctor Who is a popular cosplay theme. But some people base more than just their outfit on the Time Lord’s exploits.
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The first peer-reviewed survey of Doctor Who fans’ attitudes to science reveals it was literally life-changing TV for some. But the verdicts were surprisingly nuanced and sometimes contradictory.