Overview
- Looks at imaginative science fiction through the lens of neuroscience
- Guides readers to many novels and stories they might not yet have encountered
- Traces a path through the maze of philosophical attempts to understand consciousness
Part of the book series: Science and Fiction (SCIFICT)
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Table of contents (11 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Science fiction explores the wonderful, baffling and wildly entertaining aspects of a universe unimaginably old and vast, and with a future even more immense. It reaches into that endless cosmos with the tools of rational investigation and storytelling. At the core of both science and science fiction is the engaged human mind--a consciousness that sees and feels and thinks and loves. But what is this mind, this aware and self-aware consciousness that seems unlike anything else we experience? What makes consciousness the Hard Problem of philosophy, still unsolved after millennia of probing? This book looks into the heart of this mystery - at the science and philosophy of consciousness and at many inspiring fictional examples - and finds strange, challenging answers.
The book's content and entertaining style will appeal equally to science fiction enthusiasts and scholars, including cognitive and neuroscientists, as well as philosophers of mind. It is a refreshing romp through the science and science fiction of consciousness.
Reviews
“Broderick’s assessments are never less than stimulating, combining just enough intellectual and narrative scene-setting to draw focus on each author’s approach to imagining the consciousness of something Other. … Consciousness and Science Fiction is well worth the price of entry.” (Cosmos, cosmosmagazine.com, May 25, 2019)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Damien Broderick, PhD, is an award-winning science fiction and science writer, editor and critic who has published more than 70 books. He has received the Distinguished Scholarship Award of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. A former Senior Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and founding science fiction editor of Cosmos magazine, he now lives in Texas.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Consciousness and Science Fiction
Authors: Damien Broderick
Series Title: Science and Fiction
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00599-3
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Physics and Astronomy (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-00598-6Published: 11 December 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-00599-3Published: 30 November 2018
Series ISSN: 2197-1188
Series E-ISSN: 2197-1196
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXII, 196
Topics: Popular Science in Physics, Neurosciences, Artificial Intelligence, Popular Science in Philosophy, History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics