The End of Science Fiction

In Lisel Mueller’s poem, “The End of Science Fiction,” the speaker references parts of the human body both directly and figuratively. Hands, the back, and the head are all body parts that have multiple meanings in the context of the poem.

The “hands [that] are stopped at noon” (Line 7) presumably represent the hands of time or the hands of a clock, but the phrase also suggests human hands that have been tied. The image calls to mind a prisoner whose hands have been tied above their heads, or hands raised above one’s head in a gesture of alarm or self-defense. This use of the image of hands enhances the darkly otherworldly tone of the second stanza.

The back appears twice in the poem. The first time, in the second stanza, numbers appear on the backs of humans who now “live forever” (Line 8). The numbers are “stamped” (Line 10), implying that the recipient of the numbers have no choice in the matter and the numbers likely function as a way to identify the unit. The back appears again later in the poem, this time in the fourth and last stanza, in the form of “a woman who refuses to turn / her back on the past” (Lines 29-30).