This course looks at how science fiction mediates a changing Asian subject, racialized notions of economic expansion, and lingering images of “the Orient” in the US literary and cultural imagination. Why are Asian characters represented as cyborgs across fiction and film? How do the tropes and narrative parameters of science fiction interact with “yellow peril” fears and fantasies? What does science fictionality say about Asian immigrants in scientific and technical fields? Our readings will consider the Asian future anxiously conceived in wartime and other periods of renewed racist nationalism. We will follow the development of Asian American literary production as it responds to such attitudes by taking up science fiction as a critical framework. Possible texts include Eugene Lim’s Dear Cyborgs, Ling Ma’s Severance, Larissa Lai’s Automaton Biographies; short fiction by Jack London, Ken Liu, Charles Yu, Juliana Wang, and Ted Chiang; and the film Blade Runner.