Michael Bérubé explores the surprising insights of classic and contemporary works of SF that depict civilizational collapse and contemplate human extinction.

Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Learning to Die
1. The Augmentation of the Complexity and Intensity of the Field of Intelligent Life: The Potential Ex- Human of The Left Hand of Darkness
2. Desperate Measures: Justifiable Despair in The Three- Body Problem and Oryx and Crake
3. Inherit the Wasteland: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Cede the Planet to the Smart Machines
4. Better Children: Octavia Butler and Genetic Destiny
Epilogue: Just Kill Me Now
Notes
Index

Michael Bérubé is an Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University and a former president of the Modern Language Association. He is the author of twelve books, including Life as We Know It: A Father, a Family, and an Exceptional Child and What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and "Bias" in Higher Education.