The Philosophy of Science Fiction: Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip K. Dick explores the deep affinity between two seemingly quite different thinkers, in their attempts to address the need for salvation in (and from) an era of accelerated...
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The Philosophy of Science Fiction: Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip K. Dick explores the deep affinity between two seemingly quite different thinkers, in their attempts to address the need for salvation in (and from) an era of accelerated mechanization, in which humans' capacity for destroying or subjugating the living has attained a planetary scale. The philosopher and the science fiction writer come together to meet the contradictory imperatives of a realist outlook-a task which, arguably, philosophy and science fiction could only ever adequately undertake in collaboration. Thei
FC; Half title; Also available from Bloomsbury; Title; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; Philosophy and science fiction; Bergson and Dick at the edge of the known; The ethics of balking; Philip K. Dick studies; Note on terminology; 1 Fabulation: Counteracting Reality; Mechanization and the war-instinct; The biological origins of society; Countering the intellect; The morality of violence; Open morality and the misdirection of mechanism; True mysticism: Immanent salvation; An incomplete soteriology; Fabulation for the open; Conclusion
2 Fabulating Salvation in Four Early NovelsSolar Lottery (1972 [1955]); The World Jones Made (1993b [1956]); Vulcan's Hammer (1976c [1960]); Time Out of Joint (2003c [1959]); Conclusion: Super-everyman to solar shoe salesman; 3 The Empire that Never Ended; A matter of life or (life under the sign of) death; The open and the universal; The life-death chiasmus; The fictitious event; The messianic tension; The remnant and messianic time; The magic of language; Sci-fi: The genre of 'as not'; Conclusion: Gnostic politics; 4 Objects of Salvation: The Man in the High Castle
The fabulation of historyMechanization and paralysis; Worldly remains; Openings between worlds; The tyranny of the concrete; Objects of salvation; Conclusion: Reality fields; 5 How We Became Post-Android; The mechanization of pot-healing; The alien god; The saviour in need; Robot theology; Humans: The cosmic bourgeoisie; Android and theoid; Creative destruction; Conclusion; 6 The Reality of Valis; Salvator salvandus; The believer and the sceptic; The pharmakonic god; Reduplicative paramnesia (time becomes space); The fabulative cure; Recursion: Valis as limitlessly iterative soteriology
Befriending godConclusion; Epilogue: Soter-ecologies; Notes; Bibliography; Index
