Never Story

With »Never Story« Dietmar Dath provides an introduction to his favourite subject: science fiction. His knowledgeable history of theory and personal exploration of the genre is an invitation to all to see speculative literature as highly relevant to our future - precisely because it tells of what will never happen. Whether as a series on Netflix, on the radio or as a comic or book, science fiction has experienced a revival, a boom, in recent years. Is it escapism in view of the imbalances in our present day or is it the hunger for possibilities to think the world differently? For Dietmar Dath, science fiction is part of his biography and far more than star destroyers and Perry Rhodan booklets. It is also form and method, a kind of knowledge production. He tells the story of the genre as a story of conquest that spans from Mary Shelley, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells to contemporary work outside Europe and North America, such as that of Benjanun Sriduangkaew. In return, he reads classics as well as lesser-known texts, opens up unknown spaces and new theses, and surprises with anecdotes as well as analyses. Learning to think the future requires understanding the history of visions of the future.