“Some people think the future means the end of history. Well, we haven't run out of history quite yet.” 

- Captain Kirk, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

Building from a successful summer conference, this edited collection is about science fiction media in the 1990s. We are looking for high quality papers that examine science fiction properties and fiction during that decade. As several papers from the conference have already been selected, we are now calling for additional chapters for the collection generally related to the following topics:

• Science fiction literature of the period
• The conspiratorial nature of the X-Files
• The dream/virtual worlds of cyberpunk and mainstream works (e.g. The Matrix, eXistenZ)
• Babylon 5 and its move beyond binary oppositions
• The end of the Cold War and science fiction: metaphorical representations of the fall of the USSR
• The related between gender focused stories to the formation of queer theory as a discipline during the decade
• Urban fantasy and “goth” aesthetics in relation to topics such as race and queerness
• Japanese kaiju and tokusatsu cinema/TV, and their changing set of metaphors
• Japanese cyberpunk in relation to body politics and national identity
• Additional topics will be considered.

There has been interest from a publisher in the book. The title for this collection is taken from the concept “End of History” by Francis Fukuyama. Papers do not need to interface with this theory directly. This project is affiliated with Bath Spa University, as an output of their Film and Media Imaginaries and Infrastructures Research Group.

Full Abstract: In 1989, political theorist Francis Fukuyama published the essay “The End of History?” in which he argued that, with the Cold War at a close, liberalism had won out as the inevitable endpoint of human progress. Consequently, the idea that capitalist liberal democracy was now an apolitical tenet of society became normalised in the cultural consciousness. One area of tension however can be found in the world of science fiction. As Fukuyama’s theory became increasingly culturally prevalent, imagined futures needed to reckon with it. Did they agree, and was the future simply a technologically advanced liberal democracy? Did they break with the theory and make a directly political opposition? Did they imagine futures that continued this trend, but instead of a positive ideal, the capitalist status quo became a dystopian trap? Did they view politics as over, and therefore move into different spheres of the human experience? Whichever perspective a work or creator had on the issue, it became difficult to imagine a future outside of the terms of explicitly engaging (positively or negatively) with it. For how can a future be manifested if history is over?

Science Fiction at the End of History aims to explore science fiction during the 1990s - the so called End of History -  with chapters on the various forms of science fiction media being produced at the time.

contact email: 

endofhistorysf@gmail.com / c.gerrard@bathspa.ac.uk

Submission Guidelines:
Please send an approximately 300 word abstract alongside a title and a 100 word bibliography to endofhistorysf@gmail.com The deadline for submissions is November 30th, 2024, and successful proposals will be contacted by December 20th.

We look forward to receiving your submissions!