Focusing on the contemporary period, this book brings together critical age studies and contemporary science fiction to establish the centrality of age and ageing in dystopian, speculative and science-fiction imaginaries. Analysing texts from Europe, North America and South Asia, as well as television programmes and films, the contributions range from essays which establish genre-based trends in the representation of age and ageing, to very focused studies of particular texts and concerns. As a whole, the volume probes the relationship between speculative/science fiction and our understanding of what it is to be a human in time: the time of our own lives and the times of both the past and the future.

Introduction: Intersections between Age Studies and Science and Speculative FictionMaricel Oró-Piqueras and Sarah FalcusChapter 1Remaking Ourselves: Age, Death and Techno-bodies in the Fiction of Transhumanist ImmortalityTeresa BotelhoChapter 2Ageing and Youthing: Portrayals of Progression and Regression in Science Fiction Film and TVPeter Goggin and Ulla KrieberneggChapter 3Ageing and Generation in Recent Narratives of LongevitySarah Falcus and Maricel Oró-PiquerasChapter 4Biological Slaves: Discardable Bodies in DystopiaMaria Aline FerreiraChapter 5Prejudice Against Our Feared Future Self: Contemporary Perspectives on Ageing in European Dystopian LiteratureAleksandra Pogonska-BaranowskaChapter 6Ageing and Age-Based Extinction in Twentieth- and Early-Twenty-First-Century Speculative and Science Fiction: William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's Logan's Run (1967) and Christopher Buckley's Boomsday (2007)Stella AchilleosChapter 7'Whatever comes after human progress': Transhumanism, Antihumanism, and theAbsence of Queer Ecology inLidia Yuknavitch's The Book of JoanSean SeegerChapter 8A Spectral Future: Dementia and the Nonhuman in Marjorie PrimeMichael HooperChapter 9A Cure for Ageing: Digital Cloning as Utopian End-of-life Care in the 'San Junipero' Episode of Black MirrorEszter UreczkyChapter 10Ageing, Anachronism and Perception in Dystopian Narrative: The Case of Margaret Atwood's 'Torching the Dusties'Susan WatkinsChapter 11Playing with Possibilities: Ursula Le Guin and Speculations on the Human Condition: An Anocritical ApproachRoberta Maierhofer