Age and Ageing in Contemporary Speculative and Science Fiction

Sarah Falcus is a Reader in Contemporary Literature at the University of Huddersfield, UK. She is interested in the intersection of ageing studies and literary studies, and is the co-author (with Katsura Sako) of Contemporary Narratives of Dementia: Ethics, Ageing, Politics (Routledge, 2019). She has published in journals such as Feminist Review, Women: A Cultural Review and Ageing and Society. She co-edited a special issue of the European Journal of English Studies (2018), focussed on the intersection of English Studies and Ageing Studies. Her current work centres on two main areas: children’s literature and ageing; and ageing/the lifecourse in science and speculative fiction. She is the Primary Collaborator on the project 'Ageing and Illness in British and Japanese Children's Picturebooks 1950-2000: Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives', funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. She is the co-director of the Dementia and Cultural Narrative Network.Maricel Oró-Piqueras is Associate Professor at the Department of English and Linguistics, Universitat de Lleida, Spain. She has been a member of research group Dedal-Lit since it started working on the representation of fictional images of ageing and old age in 2002. Her research interests include ageing and old age in contemporary fiction and representations of gender and ageing in film and TV series. She has co-edited two collections of essays entitled Serializing Age: Aging and Old Age in TV Series (2015, with Anita Wohlmann) and Narratives of Mentorship: Rediscovering (Age)ing (2019, with Núria Casado-Gual and Emma Domínguez-Rué) and a special issue of the European Journal of English Studies with Sarah Falcus (2018). Moreover, she has published her research in national and international journals such as English Studies, The Gerontologist and Journal of Aging Studies.

Bringing together the critical perspectives of scholars from both SF studies and aging studies, Age and Ageing in Contemporary Science and Speculative Fiction tackles a gap in the study of representations of age, by exploring the possibilities that SF aesthetics afford to capture and reconceive the human experience of time. The variety of theoretical approaches that the contributors employ opens the book up to be used across a range of scholarship, which may further show the centrality of age and aging, rejuvenation, and immortality to SF… It lays a foundation for scholars who would like to further explore SF as a source of new and subversive visions of aging

• Introduction: Intersections between Age Studies and Science and Speculative FictionMaricel Oró-Piqueras and Sarah FalcusChapter 1Remaking Ourselves: Age, Death and Techno-bodies in the Fiction of Transhumanist ImmortalityTeresa BotelhoChapter 2 Ageing and Youthing: Portrayals of Progression and Regression in Science Fiction Film and TVPeter Goggin and Ulla KrieberneggChapter 3Ageing and Generation in Recent Narratives of LongevitySarah Falcus and Maricel Oró-PiquerasChapter 4Biological Slaves: Discardable Bodies in DystopiaMaria Aline FerreiraChapter 5Prejudice Against Our Feared Future Self: Contemporary Perspectives on Ageing in European Dystopian LiteratureAleksandra Pogonska-BaranowskaChapter 6Ageing and Age-Based Extinction in Twentieth- and Early-Twenty-First-Century Speculative and Science Fiction: William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s Logan’s Run (1967) and Christopher Buckley’s Boomsday (2007)Stella AchilleosChapter 7‘Whatever comes after human progress’: Transhumanism, Antihumanism, and theAbsence of Queer Ecology inLidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of JoanSean SeegerChapter 8A Spectral Future: Dementia and the Nonhuman in Marjorie PrimeMichael HooperChapter 9A Cure for Ageing: Digital Cloning as Utopian End-of-life Care in the ‘San Junipero’ Episode of Black MirrorEszter UreczkyChapter 10Ageing, Anachronism and Perception in Dystopian Narrative: The Case of Margaret Atwood’s ‘Torching the Dusties’Susan WatkinsChapter 11Playing with Possibilities: Ursula Le Guin and Speculations on the Human Condition: An Anocritical Approach Roberta Maierhofer