This book explores contemporary existential science fiction media, including film, television, and video games, and their influence on society’s conceptions of memory, identity, and humanity. Most poignantly, Ryan Lizardi argues, are the ways in which a recent cluster of science fiction media, including Gravity (2013), Interstellar (2014), Legion (2017-2019), Westworld (2016-present), Soma (2015), and Death Standing (2019), among others, present a vision of the future that is inextricably tied to an exploration of humanity that is more contemplative and comparative than traditional science fiction. The combination of the existential nature of this current trend in science fiction with the genre’s ability to manifest these abstract concepts in a generic environment that is historically focused on new frontiers and ideas creates a powerful set of media texts that ask audiences to contemplate what it means to exist, think, and connect as human beings. Scholars of media studies, film studies, television studies, genre studies, and philosophy will find this book particularly useful.

A young man uses hallucinogenic drugs to escape what he believes is a simulated reality. Two wildlife biologists discover video evidence of Bigfoot on a trail cam. A tree posits the origin of the Universe and the meaning of life. From cyber dramas about population decline and AI art to a planetary invasion by giant monsters shaped like an ancient religious symbol, There's Something Weird Going On offers ten tales of empathy for thinking beings in a rapidly changing world. Emanating from the heartfelt fiction of Ted Chiang and Greg Egan, and fueled by the existential angst of the modern era, this collection weaves morality and metaphysics, consciousness and conservation, and love and loss into visions of haunting optimism, offering an ember of solace to all souls who call this strange reality home.

The psychologist may appear in science fiction as the herald of utopia or dystopia; literary studies have used psychoanalytic theories to interpret science fiction; and psychology has employed science fiction as an educational medium. Science Fiction and Psychology goes beyond such incidental observations and engagements to offer an in-depth exploration of science fiction literature's varied use of psychological discourses, beginning at the birth of modern psychology in the late nineteenth century and concluding with the ascendance of neuroscience in the late twentieth century. Rather than dwelling on psychoanalytic readings, this literary investigation combines with history of psychology to offer attentive textual readings that explore five key psychological schools: evolutionary psychology, psychoanalysis, behaviourism, existential-humanism, and cognitivism. The varied functions of psychological discourses in science fiction are explored, whether to popularise and prophesy, to imagine utopia or dystopia, to estrange our everyday reality, to comment on science fiction itself, or to abet (or resist) the spread of psychological wisdom. Science Fiction and Psychology also considers how psychology itself has made use of science fiction in order to teach, to secure legitimacy as a discipline, and to comment on the present.

In space, everything is trying to kill you.Arturus Lang thought he understood life in space: the boredom, the depression, the routine of collecting junk from space battles to leave credits to heirs he'll never see on Earth. But then, something odd started to happen. His crew began to change in front of him, change from individuals to replicas created by an alien force beyond his understanding. As Lang struggles to escape and make sense, his mind and very soul are challenged to defend the value of human life.

H. G. Wells's novel "Star Begotten," tells the story of a group of men who speculate on the possibility of Martians genetically modifying the human race to replace their dying planet. The story's protagonist, Joseph Davis, a popular history author, is overcome with fear that he and his family have already been exposed and are beginning to change.

Gothic Science Fiction explores the fascinating world of gothic influenced science fiction. From Frankenstein to Doctor Who and from H. G Wells to Stephen King, the book charts the rise of a genre and follows the descent into darkness that consumes it.