I often assign short fiction in my undergraduate philosophy classes. For the benefit of other instructors, below is a very abridged list of some of my favorite readings for use in the classroom, organized by topic.
In cases where the texts are freely available online, I have linked them directly.
Aesthetics
Effinger - “The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything” (aesthetic judgment)
Gilman - “Exile’s End” (the value of art)
Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind
Bisson - “They’re Made Out of Meat” (artificial intelligence, multiple realizability, cognition)
Chiang - “Understand” (intelligence, communication)
Egan - “Learning To Be Me” (personal identity)
Egan - “Reasons To Be Cheerful” (skepticism, authenticity of our emotions/preferences)
De Cruz - “Mathematical Revelations” (skepticism, simulation theory)
qntm - “I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God is a Big Responsibility” (skepticism, simulation theory)
qntm - “Lena” (personal identity, artificial intelligence, ethics of brain uploads)
Vonnegut - “EPICAC” (artificial intelligence, consciousness)
Ethics (Normative)
Card - “Kingsmeat” (consequentialism and other moral theories)
Le Guin - “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” (consequentialism and other moral theories)
Resnick - “Kirinyaga” (short story, published as first chapter of novel of same name) (cultural relativism)
Ethics (Applied)
Ackerman - “Applicants” (allocation, organ donation)
Butler - “Bloodchild” (bodily autonomy, colonialism, gender, pregnancy)
Butler - “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” (disability, eugenics, gender, free will)
Egan - “Blood Sisters” (medical research)
Godwin - “The Cold Equations” (allocation) (pairs well with Sakers’ “The Cold Solution”)
Hass - “Paschal Lamb” (collective action problems)
Huang - “As the Last I May Know” (philosophy of war, weapons of mass destruction)
Larson - “LOL, Said the Scorpion” (tourism, colonialism, inequality, perceptual filtering)
Liu - “Thoughts and Prayers” (deepfakes, perceptual filtering, trolling)
McIntosh - “Dancing with Death in the Land of Nod” (pandemic ethics, euthanasia)
Scalzi - “Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome” (pandemic ethics, medical research, disability)
Selzer - “Whither Thou Go’est” (organ donation)
Williams - “The Use of Force” (the principles of medical ethics)
Metaphysics
Bradbury - “A Sound of Thunder” (time travel)
Chiang - “What’s Expected of Us” (free will)
Egan - “The Hundred-Light-Year Diary” (causation, free will, time travel)
Heinlein - "All You Zombies—" (time travel)
Harrison - “The Secret of Stonehenge” (time travel, causation, causal loops)
Tiptree - “Love is the Plan the Plan is Death” (free will)
Philosophy of Religion
Chiang - “Hell is the Absence of God” (divine purpose, the problem of evil)
Clarke - “The Star” (divine purpose, the problem of evil)
Clarke - “The Nine Billion Names of God” (divine purpose, the meaning of life)
Peck - “A Short Stay in Hell” (divine purpose, the afterlife, Pascal’s wager, infinity, existentialism)
Feel free to reach out by e-mail with your own experiences teaching (or learning) philosophy through fiction.