Laughing All the Way to the Apocalypse: Satirical Science Fiction from Kurt Vonnegut to Margaret Atwood In-Person/Online
- Date:
- Tuesday, January 30, 2024
- Time:
- 7:00pm - 8:00pm
- Time Zone:
- Eastern Time - US & Canada (change)
- Location:
- Wakelin Room
- Campus:
- Main Library
- Audience:
- Adult
- Categories:
- Lecture
- Online:
- This is an online event. Event URL will be sent via registration email.
Presented in partnership with Wellesley Neighbors.
Not all science fiction is funny, but the writers who turn to satire have a track record of success that stretches back to Gulliver's Travels. This talk explores some science fiction from the Atomic Age (e.g. Slaughterhouse Five) and from our current climate catastrophe (e.g. Oryx and Crake). John Plotz hopes to show that laughter is the royal road to Science Fiction’s greatest ability: to reshape the way its readers see the world.
John Plotz (plotz@brandeis.edu) is Mandel Professor of Humanities at Brandeis University, and editor of the B-Sides feature in Public Books. He co-hosts the podcast Recall This Book. His books include Portable Property (Princeton University Press, 2008), Semi-Detached (Princeton University Press, 2017) and Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea: My Reading (Oxford, August 2023). He and his wife Lisa live in Brookline; they recently became empty-nesters and are considering getting chickens once again.