Fictions of Empire

At the height of its power, the British Empire "on which the sun never sets" (Christopher North, 1829) spanned across one fourth of the globe, making it the largest empire in history. We will begin our journey towards the end of this time period by exploring various fictions of empire across media, time, space and genres. Following several Victorian adventure novels from the late 19^th and early 20^th century, also known as imperial romances, we will turn our gaze to more current fictional negotiations and depictions of empire: We are not only going to take a look at Alan Moore’s intertextual superhero comic series but we will also explore the further development of the concept of empire, otherness and “space, the final frontier” in a science fiction context. Hence, we are going to join the starship Enterprise on “its continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before” (Captain Picard, Stardate 41153.7).