While my title harks back to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, it refers more directly to the Aldous Huxley novel with which we shall begin our exploration of utopic and dystopic fantasies that imaginatively respond to the promises and perils of scientific ‘progress.’  Alongside fiction from the Renaissance to the twentieth century – including such authors as Bacon, Cavendish, Brecht, and H G Wells – we will delve into the work of writers such as Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, who have thought deeply about the implications of scientific and technological rationality.