York's Amanda Rees has published a volume with the University of Chicago Press

Posted on 10 September 2019

The publication examines the way that history can use science fiction both to understand the past and to make the past more relevant to the present.

The publication, Presenting Futures Past: Science Fiction and the History of Science, arises out of an AHRC funded project, Unsettling Scientific Stories.

Taking a global approach, Presenting Futures Past examines the ways in which science fiction can be used to investigate the cultural status and authority afforded to science at different times and in different places.

The essays consider the role played by science fiction in the history of specific scientific disciplines, topics, or cultures, as well as the ways in which it has helped to move scientific concepts, methodologies and practices between wider cultural areas.

Ultimately, it explores what science fiction can tell us about the histories of the future, how different communities have envisaged their futures and how science fiction conveys the socioscientific claims of past presents.

Amanda will be speaking about matters related to the book on In Our Time, with Melvyn Bragg (Radio 4), on Thursday 17 October.

She will also be giving a talk about it to the Centre of American Studies in Rome on Monday 11 November.

See Dr Amanda Rees's staff profile.