Futurism in British Fiction

British speculative fiction as a lens on how societies imagine, fear, and rehearse their futures — Wells, Huxley, Orwell, and Lewis become case studies in how time travel, dystopia, and space voyages stage anxieties about science, politics, and human nature. Expect heavy weekly novel reading, in-class discussion of critical approaches to futurism, one midterm, and a take-home final that asks you to argue rather than summarize. It pairs well with the department's other 20th-century and theory courses, and earns its keep by giving you a vocabulary for extrapolation and dystopia that's surprisingly useful far beyond literature seminars.