Science Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition

1. Introduction: Science Fiction at a Crossroad between Ethics and Imagination; Christian Baron, Peter Nicolai Halvorsen and Christine Cornea.- Section I: Science, Technology and Science Fiction.- 2. The Perfect Organism: the intruder of the Alien films as a bio-fictional construct; Christian Baron.- 3. Science Fiction at the Far Side of Technology: Vernor Vinge's singularity thesis vs. the limits of AI-research; Mikkel Willum Johansen.- 4. A Greenhouse on Mars; Peter Westermann.- 5. Fascinating! Popular Science Communication and Literary Science Fiction: the shared features of awe and fascination and their significance to ideas of science fictions as vehicles for critical debate about scientific enterprises and their ethical implications; Gitte Meyer.- Section II: Identity and the Post-Human Condition.- 6. Our Serial (and Parallel) Selves: identity in the age of the trans-human; Stig W. Jørgensen.- 7. Commodified Life: post-humanism, cloning and gender in Orphan Black; Sherryl Vint.- 8. Religion in a World of Androids and Aliens: life and death in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Prometheus; Peter Nicolai Halvorsen.- 9. I Am Omega Man: religious repositioning of the secular apocalypse film in I Am Legend; Tony Degouveia.- Section III: The Politics and Ethics of Science Fiction.- 10. From Isolationism to Globalism: an overview of politics and ethics in the Hollywood science fiction film; Christine Cornea.- 11. Reinventing Utopia: politics and ethics of choice in the works of Kim Stanley Robinson; Niels Dalgaard.- 12. The Final Frontier: survival ethics in extreme living conditions as portrayed in Tom Godwin's The Cold Equations and Ridley Scott's Alien; Christian Baron.- 13. The Politics of Post-Apocalypse: ideologies on trial in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids; Jerry Määttä.- 14. On Ustopias and Finding Courage in a Hopeless Situation; Mickey Gjerris and Maud M. L. Eriksen.