Post-National Futures in National Contexts: Reading ‘British’ Fictions of Artificial Intelligence

Slocombe, WG (2019) Post-National Futures in National Contexts: Reading ‘British’ Fictions of Artificial Intelligence. In: New Approaches to the 21st-century Anglophone Novel. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 195-215. ISBN 978-3-030-32597-8

Text Slocombe_Chapter REVISED 3 Dec.docx - Author Accepted Manuscript Download (63kB)

Abstract

This chapter explores how the vaunted ‘British Boom’ of science fiction of the late 1990s relates to more regional visions of the future from authors within a post-devolutionary United Kingdom. Despite situating British science fiction in contrast to science fiction productions from the US or Europe, the ‘British Boom’ elided the role of such regional visions, and this piece examines whether regionality has any place in a genre more generally known for its ‘far future,’ post-national settings. Addressing representations of Artificial Intelligence in three works by Neal Asher, Iain M. Banks, and Alastair Reynolds, it considers the role of science fiction’s ‘visions’ in such geographical and political contexts, and more broadly queries the role of location-based identity politics within new British and Anglophone science fiction.

Item Type:	Book Section
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	04 Apr 2019 07:57
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 00:55
DOI:	10.1007/978-3-030-32598-5_11
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3035745