Have any science fiction stories been set in humanities departments?

April 21, 2024 1:23 AM

What science fiction stories, short form or novels, have been set in university humanities departments, excluding satires? I’ll settle for stories where some of the principal characters are scholars of the humanities.
posted by Kattullus to Media & Arts (25 answers total)

Best answer: Connie Willis' Blackout/All Clear
posted by penguinicity at 1:35 AM on April 21 [12 favorites]

Best answer: The first couple of books in that particular universe od Connie Willis's are Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of The Dog, which are both great.
posted by brookeb at 2:37 AM on April 21 [11 favorites]

I came here to suggest Connie Willis’s Bellwether, which is a shorter novel about the study of trends. Funny!
posted by Well I never at 2:46 AM on April 21 [8 favorites]

Lewis's space trilogy has Schmay Schmarr Schmarr Schmolkien as the hero, if you don't mind all the Jebus and all the "social science is literally Satanic."
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:26 AM on April 21

In the story “Story of your life” by Ted Chiang (movie “Arrival), the protagonist, Louise Banks, is a linguist.
posted by alchemist at 5:06 AM on April 21 [9 favorites]

It's not a great fit for your question, but one of the characters in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time is a Classicist, and not an oversized, super-intelligent spider.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 5:36 AM on April 21 [4 favorites]

Pamela Dean's fantasy novel Tam Lin is set at a fictionalized version of the liberal arts college Carleton (mostly in the Classics department) and Suzy McKee Charnas's horror novel The Vampire Tapestry takes place in a university setting with a vampire in the anthropology department.
posted by cgc373 at 5:40 AM on April 21 [6 favorites]

Two of the main characters from Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow/Children of God books are linguists. Several main characters (including one of the linguists) are also Jesuit priests - one non-linguist priest describes himself as a poet, and another is a musicologist.

Brief parts of the first novel take place in an academic setting, but not specifically a humanities setting.
posted by terretu at 6:23 AM on April 21 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Babel by R.F. Kuang fits the bill.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 6:48 AM on April 21 [4 favorites]

(also came in here to say connie willis' oxford time travel books, as well as bellwether)
posted by emmling at 7:07 AM on April 21

I wonder if Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair would be close enough. Not set in a university but they're definitely well acquainted with English literature. Jodi Taylor's Just One Damned Thing After Another similarly isn't quite what you're looking for but might scratch the same itch?
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:11 AM on April 21

The protagonist in Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris is a psychologist. And there are numerous descriptions of academic departments that anyone in a university will sympathize with.
posted by nickggully at 7:25 AM on April 21

Best answer: One of the protagonists in Malka Older's The Mimicking of Known Successes. and its follow up The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is a clasicist in a university in orbit around Jupiter, studying what little information they have left of old Earth in preparation for the possiblity that humanity might someday live there again.
posted by signal at 7:35 AM on April 21

People will argue that it’s not Science Fiction, but John Barth’s Giles Goat Boy is mind-bending in a SF kinda way…
posted by carterk at 7:50 AM on April 21 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (rip, recent post on the Blue) have some academic settings for their (really really enjoyable) Liaden Universe books.

Fledgling is set on a world-spanning university and the protagonist has professors for parents, one of whom is in the History of Education. Academic politics is a prime plot point.

In Local Custom, the protagonist is a professor of comparative linguistics and the first section of the novel is set on campus.
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:01 AM on April 21 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Timeline by Michael Crichton centers on history students trying to rescue their professor.
posted by sigmagalator at 9:10 AM on April 21

Fool On The Hill by Matt Ruff is more speculative fiction/fantasy, but it's about a writer at Cornell.
posted by Gorgik at 11:01 AM on April 21

I think Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers fulfills the brief.
posted by merriment at 2:27 PM on April 21 [2 favorites]

In Kim Stanley Robinson's The Gold Coast, the primary protagonist teaches writing at a community college and is an amateur historian.
posted by equalpants at 3:25 PM on April 21

I could have sworn that the meeting which constitutes Asimov's "Nightfall" included historians and archeologists just as surely as astronomers and physicists, but the fact that the thread has gotten this far with no one mentioning it makes me doubt my memory. For that matter, Foundation's Hari Seldon is a historian (of sorts).
posted by dick dale the vampire at 8:05 PM on April 21

There's an Asimov short story (can't remember the title) in which a time-traveling William Shakespeare visits the English Department at a modern university ...

@DDtV: my recollection supports yours.
posted by Logophiliac at 8:14 PM on April 21 [1 favorite]

You can read Nightfall here.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 10:03 PM on April 21 [1 favorite]

Oh, I just remembered Neal Stephenson's The Big U and his co-written novel The Cobweb.
posted by cgc373 at 2:51 AM on April 22

Response by poster: Thank you all for your answers! I’ve read Connie Willis, but it’s a good spur to read more, and many of these other books look really intriguing. I’ve reserved Malka Older's The Mimicking of Known Successes at my local library already.
posted by Kattullus at 4:05 AM on April 22

Best answer: In The Plot to Save Socrates by Paul Levinson, the main character is a classicist working on her dissertation. Time travel book.
posted by catquas at 9:31 AM on April 22