以历史的角度观之，世纪变换的年代已成为人们更倾向去检视现在及思索未来的时刻。现在，并非只是一个世纪而是整个千禧年的流逝，这样的检视和思索就不可避免地愈演愈烈。在廿一世纪，什么样的未来在等着我们？之后又会是什么样子？而那未来的景象又会如何反映及回应我们现在所处的世界？在这个写作的课程里，我们将会读到并写出一些廿世纪的作家及电影制片如何以想像的方式来关注现在—并警告我们—随之而来的可能世界。经由我们阅读及讨论的带领下，我们将会透过深度的原文阅读以及当代文化的面向来检视当下，并建构我们自己的未来远景。 都市及环境危机经济帝国主义,性及复制人政策,种族及性别争议,科技迷思,机器人学及生体机械人,媒体饱和, 语言及图像表征以及他们在这新千禧年的开端所提出，身为人类的意义为何等等这些持久不衰的问题。Turn-of-the-century eras have historically been times when people are more than usually inclined to scrutinize the present and speculate about the future. Now, the turn not just of a century but of a millennium having recently passed, such scrutiny and speculations inevitably intensify. What will the future that awaits us in this twenty-first century and beyond be like? And how do visions of that future reflect and respond to the world we live in now? In this writing course we will read and write about how some twentieth-century writers and filmmakers have attended to the present as a way of imagining -- and warning about -- possible worlds to come. Guided by our reading and discussion, we will scrutinize our own present and construct our own visions of the future through close readings of the texts as well as of some aspects of contemporary culture -- urban and environmental crises, economic imperialism, sexual and reproductive politics, issues of race and gender, the romance of technology, robotics and cyborg cultures, media saturation, language and representation -- and the persistent questions they pose about what it means to be human at this threshold of a new millennium.
