The Science Fiction of Freedom
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this literature and philosophy seminar pairing science fiction with philosophical thought experiments about freedom. The course asks what it means to be free: a state of mind, an inherent property of the self, or the absence of coercive structures, and traces how writers use imagined worlds to test those ideas. Materials include a full syllabus, weekly reading assignments drawn from major science fiction works alongside philosophical texts, and writing assignments that ask students to analyze how speculative fiction stages questions of autonomy, coercion, and selfhood. As with all MIT OCW offerings, the course is free to access with no certificate attached, built from an actual MIT undergraduate syllabus rather than a condensed summary. It suits readers interested in how narrative fiction can function as philosophical argument.