This course examines works of Japanese science fiction across the 20th and 21st centuries through the prism of processes of modernization, imperialism, and globalization. At its heart is the examination of a range of critical issues arising from the imbrication of science fiction with a range of key topics of interest, the rise of a planetary consciousness in conjunction with imperial utopianism, the politics of the writing of alternate histories, constructions of race and gender in post-humanist discourse, translation and techno-orientalism, among others.