Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

This is the Muslim tradition of sci-fi and speculative fiction

#1
C C Offline
https://aeon.co/ideas/think-sci-fi-doesn...hink-again

EXCERPT: Think invisible men, time travel, flying machines and journeys to other planets are the product of the European or ‘Western’ imagination? Open One Thousand and One Nights – a collection of folk tales compiled during the Islamic Golden Age, from the 8th to the 13th centuries CE – and you will find it stuffed full of these narratives, and more. Western readers often overlook the Muslim world’s speculative fiction. I use the term quite broadly, to capture any story that imagines the implications of real or imagined cultural or scientific advances. Some of the first forays into the genre were the utopias dreamt up during the cultural flowering of the Golden Age.

[...] As well as political philosophy, debates about the value of reason were a hallmark of Muslim writing at this time. The first Arabic novel, The Self-Taught Philosopher (Hayy ibn Yaqzan, literally Alive, Son of Awake), was composed by Ibn Tufail, a Muslim physician from 12th-century Spain. The plot is a kind of Arabic Robinson Crusoe, and can be read as a thought experiment in how a rational being might learn about the universe with no outside influence. [...] Many of the themes in the book – human nature, empiricism, the meaning of life, the role of the individual in society – echo the preoccupations of later Enlightenment-era philosophers, including John Locke and Immanuel Kant. We also have the Muslim world to thank for one of the first works of feminist science fiction....

MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/think-sci-fi-doesn...hink-again
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Sci-fi Short Film about First Contact and the Human Response Yazata 3 130 Apr 4, 2023 08:31 PM
Last Post: Magical Realist
  First Science Fiction Movie Filmed in Space Yazata 3 450 Jan 27, 2023 08:24 PM
Last Post: C C
Photo Collaborative fiction ~ Sci Fi ~ "Infestation" Quantum Quack 51 2,867 Aug 10, 2019 07:28 PM
Last Post: C C
  Science Fiction Short Films on Youtube Yazata 3 650 Mar 15, 2019 05:51 PM
Last Post: Yazata
  How science fiction feeds the fuel solutions of the future C C 0 410 Apr 3, 2018 07:21 PM
Last Post: C C
  Philosophers' Science Fiction Recommendations Yazata 1 418 Feb 28, 2018 10:57 PM
Last Post: Magical Realist
  2018 Science Fiction Movie Trailers Yazata 4 1,020 Dec 15, 2017 07:40 PM
Last Post: Syne
  The night science fiction was born C C 2 692 Jul 20, 2016 08:19 PM
Last Post: Ben the Donkey
  The curious dearth of Stalinist fiction C C 0 444 Apr 5, 2016 10:15 PM
Last Post: C C
  No Warp Drives, No Transporters: Science Fiction Authors Get Real C C 1 651 Dec 14, 2015 02:39 PM
Last Post: elte



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)