Science Fiction and Social Change

A Digital Exhibition

Culver Center of the Arts

June 5 - June 28, 2014

Science Fiction and Social Change: A Digital Exhibition imagines alternative futures vis-à-vis sustainability for University of California, Riverside and the City of Riverside. The work, in the form of digital posters, comic strips and representations of ephemera, was created by undergraduate freshmen at the UC Riverside campus. Their work evolved from a creative writing course on science fiction and sustainability taught by Nalo Hopkinson, Professor in Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. The students, most of them neither creative writing nor science majors, studied and practiced techniques of writing science fiction and conducted research into the future of sustainability based on visits from the Director of UCR'S Office of Sustainability and the of R'Space, UCR's student-initiated and student-run community garden. They also examined two science fiction novels of critically acclaimed author Kim Stanley Robinson that portray two different futures for Southern California based on different government and community actions and how they affect the ecosystem of the region. Robinson, based in Davis, California, visited and talked to the class, and gave a public reading on campus.

Science Fiction and Social Change: A Digital Exhibition is presented by UCR ARTSblock’s Culver Center of the Arts and has been organized by Nalo Hopkinson, Professor, Creative Writing University of California, Riverside. Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican-Canadian science fiction and fantasy writer and editor. Her novels (Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, The Salt Roads, The New Moon’s Arms, The Chaos, Sister Mine) and short stories such as those in her collection Skin Folk often draw on Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling.