Edinburgh University Press Artificial Fiction: Imagining Literary Possibility Beyond the Human

Imagines great artificial fiction that represents the world in creatively nonhuman ways while challenging how we define and value fiction itself Speculates about the nature and future of fiction in a way that is rooted in creative possibility within a more-than-human world Imagines new realisms, new modernisms, and new genres that present nonhuman epistemologies, pleasures, and experiences Fosters a productive sense of non-human-centeredness in all aspects of fiction, from ideas about authorship and composition to those about reception, interpretation, and value Offers fresh readings of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Jazz, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Bohumil Hrabal’s All My Cats, Aesop’s fable, “The Lion and the Man Disputing,” Clarice Lispector’s short story, “The Fifth Story,” and Jean Paul’s The Life of the Cheerful Little Schoolmaster Maria Wutz Artificial Fiction: Imagining Literary Possibility Beyond the Human dreams boldly about literary possibility in this moment of AI’s technological and social immaturity. Through the wishful image of artificial fiction, this book explores the potential of new realisms, new modernisms and new genres that present new epistemologies, new ontologies and new pleasures and experiences for readers. While helping us to recognise and reimagine human-centredness in literary theory and practice, this book also 'looks back' at human fiction as a genre to consider what is distinctive and valuable about it, demonstrating that human fiction and artificial fiction have roles to play in imagining and learning to respect lives and experiences of every variety.