Abstract

This collection of short stories explores many possible forms and uses of the genre of science fiction, ranging from explorations of the impact of science upon philosophical and religious issues and vice versa, to speculations about possible future understandings of identity rooted in ethnicity, culture, and even species. These stories range in setting and mood from a bizarre but humorous alternate history (á la Dickens) to a Buddhist-inhabited far-future dystopia, and employ a wide range of techniques and strategies. While these stories tend to use traditional (realist) narrative techniques, they use them strategically to immerse readers in performative examinations of many issues which are often addressed through formal experimentation--sometimes from perspectives that address these issues more forcefully than a formal experiment might succeed in doing. While thereby seeking to literally "hack" (in both senses of the word) readerly assumptions, these stories also argue performatively for a much wider range of imaginative possibilities and suitable topics of direct examination for SF than is often utilized by its practitioners or even acknowledged possible by its readers, both those of the street and those of the academy.