Wiley-Blackwell is publishing the latest installment in its Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy: Knowledge Here Begins Out There. According to W-B’s Bethany Carland-Adams, the book “serves to entice, fascinate, and allow fans to delve deeper into the show’s themes, long after the series has ended.
“What’s the point of living after your world has been destroyed? This is one of many questions raised by the Sci-Fi Channel’s critically acclaimed series Battlestar Galactica. More than just an action-packed ‘space opera’, each episode offers a dramatic character study of the human survivors and their Cylon pursuers as they confront existential, moral, metaphysical, theological, and political crises.
“This volume addresses some of the key questions to which the Colonials won’t find easy answers, even when they reach Earth: Are Cylons persons? Is Baltar’s scientific worldview superior to Six’s religious faith? Can Starbuck be free if she has a special destiny? Is it ethical to cut one’s losses and leave people behind? Is collaboration with the enemy ever the right move? Is humanity a ‘flawed creation’? Should we share the Cylon goal of ‘transhumanism’? Is it really a big deal that Starbuck’s a woman?”
Editor Jason Eberl says “The Cylons and the humans are all just playing their roles in a cosmic story that repeats again and again. There are polytheists, monotheists, atheists, those who believe in the cyclical nature of time and destiny—all those different viewpoints are represented. You get to see things through different perspectives. It takes the best of what’s been done in the past and then expands and twists it.”
The table of contents of the 288-page, $17.95 trade paperback includes:
Part I “Opening the Ancient Scrolls: Classic Philosophers as Colonial Prophets”
“How to be Happy After the End of the World” by Erik D. Baldwin
“When Machines Get Souls: Nietzsche on the Cylon Uprising” by Robert Sharp
“‘What a Strange Little Man’: Baltar the Tyrant?” by J. Robert Loftis
“The Politics of Crisis: Machiavelli in the Colonial Fleet” by Jason P. Blahuta
Part II “I, Cylon: Are Toasters People, Too?”
“‘And They Have a Plan’: Cylons as Persons” by Robert Arp and Tracie Mahaffey
“‘I’m Sharon, but I’m a Different Sharon’: The Identity of Cylons” by Amy Kind
“Embracing the ‘Children of Humanity’: How to Prevent the Next Cylon War” by Jerold J. Abrams
“When the Non-Human Knows Its Own Death” by Brian Willems
Part III “Worthy of Survival: Moral Issues for Colonials and Cylons”
“The Search for Starbuck: The Needs of the Many vs. the Few” by Randall M. Jensen
“Resistance vs. Collaboration on New Caprica: What Would You Do?” by Andrew Terjesen
“Being Boomer: Identity, Alienation, and Evil” by George A. Dunn
“Cylons in the Original Position: Limits of Posthuman Justice” by David Roden
Part IV “The Arrow, the Eye, and Earth: The Search for a (Divine?) Home”
“‘I Am an Instrument of God’: Religious Belief, Atheism, and Meaning” by Jason T. Eberl and Jennifer A. Vines
“God Against the Gods: Faith and the Exodus of the Twelve Colonies” by Taneli Kukkonen
“‘A Story That Is Told Again, and Again, and Again’: Recurrence, Providence, and Freedom” by David Kyle Johnson
“Adama’s True Lie: Earth and the Problem of Knowledge” by Eric J. Silverman
Part V “Sagittarons, Capricans, and Gemenese: Different Worlds, Different Perspectives”
“Zen and the Art of Cylon Maintenance” by James McRae
“‘Let It Be Earth’: The Pragmatic Virtue of Hope” by Elizabeth F. Cooke
“Is Starbuck a Woman?” by Sarah Conly
“Gaius Baltar and the Transhuman Temptation” by David Koepsell
Editor Jason T. Eberl is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, where he directs a graduate program in bioethics. He also teaches medieval philosophy and metaphysics. He’s the co-editor (with Kevin Decker) of Star Wars and Philosophy (2005) and Star Trek and Philosophy (2008). He has contributed to similar books on Stanley Kubrick, Harry Potter, and Metallica.