Summary

Most Anglophone curriculum scholars who participated in the reconceptualization of their field during and since the late 1960s are likely to acknowledge the generativity of Joseph Schwab’s landmark essay, “The practical: a language for curriculum,” in which he argues that effective curriculum decision-making requires the anticipatory generation of alternatives, reasoning that such decision-making neccesitates that there be available to practical deliberation the greatest possible number and fresh diversity of alternative solutions to problems. For this reason, the literature and media known generically as SF (an initialization that encompasses not only science fiction but also many other “sf” terms) are generative resources for the anticipatory generation of global curriculum visions. From its 19th-century archetypes in the works of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells, to its 20th- and 21st-century manifestations in multimedia franchises focused on space travel and exploration (Star Trek, Star Wars), genetic modification and mutation (X-Men, Spider Man) and artificial intelligence (AI, Ghost in the Shell), SF consistently demonstrates that imagined and material worlds are always already so entwined that they cannot be understood in isolation. In their exemplifications of the arts of anticipation, SF texts across a wide variety of media exercise the speculative imagination and exemplify conceptual tools for understanding and negotiating the global milieux of contemporary curriculum theorizing and decision-making.