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Science Fiction and the Prediction of the Future
Science fiction has always challenged readers with depictions of the future. Can the genre actually provide glimpses of the world of tomorrow? This collection of fifteen international and interdisciplinary essays examines the genre's predictions and breaks new ground by considering the prophetic functions of science fiction films as well as SF literature. Among the texts and topics examined are classic stories by Murray Leinster, C. L. Moore, and Cordwainer Smith; 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequels, Japanese anime and Hong Kong cinema; and electronic fiction.
The Sex Is Out of This World
"Science fiction" can be translated into "real unreality." More than a genre like fantasy, which creates entirely new realms of possibility, science fiction constructs its possibilities from what is real, from what is, indeed, possible, or conceivably so. This collection, then, looks to understand and explore the "unreal reality," to note ways in which our culture's continually changing and evolving mores of sex and sexuality are reflected in, dissected by, and deconstructed through the genre of science fiction. This book is a collection of new essays, with the general objective of filling a gap in the literature about sex and science fiction (although some work has gone before, none of it is recent). The essays herein explore the myriad ways in which authors--regardless of format (print, film, television, etc.)--envision very different beings expressing this most fundamental of human behaviors.
Jules Verne Lives!
This volume is a fresh examination of the works of Jules Verne, the pioneering and enduringly popular science fiction writer. Essays study Verne's various novels--including Around the World in Eighty Days, The Mysterious Island and The Adventures of Captain Hatteras. Included essays offer analyses of literary responses to Verne's work, assessments of film adaptations of his novels and discussions of steampunk, the Verne-inspired science fiction subgenre that has influenced writers like Philip Jose Farmer, Caleb Carr and Adam Roberts.
Science Fiction Double Feature
Edited collection examining the relationship between science fiction and the formation of cult cinema.
Girls Transforming
This book explores representations of girlhood and young womanhood in recent English language children's fantasy by focusing on two fantastic body transformation types: invisibility and age-shifting. Drawing on recent feminist and queer theory, the study discusses the tropes of invisibility and age-shifting as narrative devices representing gendered experiences. The transformations offer various perspectives on a girl's changing body and identity and provide links between real-life and fantastic discourses of gender, power, invisibility and aging. The main focus is on English-language fantasy published since the 1970s but the motifs of invisibility and age-shifting in earlier tales and children's books is reviewed; this is the first study of children's fantasy literature that considers these tropes at length. Novels discussed are from both critically acclaimed authors and the less well known. Most of the novels depicting invisible or age-shifting girls are neither thoroughly conventional nor radically subversive but present a range of styles. In terms of gender, children's fantasy novels can be more complex than they are often interpreted to be.
The Worlds of Farscape
Reversing a common science fiction cliche, Farscape follows the adventures of the human astronaut John Crichton after he is shot through a wormhole into another part of the universe. Here Crichton is the only human being, going from being a member of the most intelligent species on our planet to being frequently considered mentally deficient by the beings he encounters in his new environment. John Crichton befriends a group of beings from various species attempting to escape from imprisonment aboard a living spaceship. The series, which broke many of the so-called "rules" of science fiction, follows Crichton's attempts to survive in worlds that are often hostile to him and his friends. Their adventures center on each being's attempt to find a way home. The essays in this volume explore themes running throughout the series, such as good and evil, love and sex, and what it means to be a hero, as well as the various characters populating the series, including the villains and even the ship itself.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Lois McMaster Bujold has won a shelf full of awards--Hugos, Nebulas, and others--for both her science fiction and fantasy writing. She is one of the most respected names in the field, always delivering polished, thoughtful, and well-crafted writing. She consistently addresses great issues and problems on a human level, where they are faced by quirky, prickly, and very real characters, and her exploration of the theory of reader-response is an important critical contribution. Yet there has been a surprising dearth of serious critical writing about her output--in part because she resists neat and easy classification by genre, politics, or subject matter. This collection of fresh essays aims to correct that situation by presenting critical insights into many aspects of her writing. Attention is given to both her Miles Vorkosigan science fiction series and her Chalion and Sharing Knife fantasy series, as well as the books that fall outside these series.
A History of the Future
A wide-ranging survey of predictions about the future development and impact of science and technology through the twentieth century.
The Archive Incarnate
We live in an information economy, a vast archive of data ever at our fingertips. In the pages of science fiction, powerful entities--governments and corporations--attempt to use this archive to control society, enforce conformity or turn citizens into passive consumers. Opposing them are protagonists fighting to liberate the collective mind from those who would enforce top-down control. Archival technology and its depictions in science fiction have developed dramatically since the 1950s. Ray Bradbury discusses archives in terms of books and television media, and Margaret Atwood in terms of magazines and journaling. William Gibson focused on technofuturistic cyberspace and brain-to-computer prosthetics, Bruce Sterling on genetics and society as an archive of social practices. Neal Stephenson has imagined post-cyberpunk matrix space and interactive primers. As the archive is altered, so are the humans that interact with ever-advancing technology.
The Near Future in Twenty-First-Century Fiction
A growing awareness of climate change and looming planetary crisis has put unprecedented pressure on the near future, leading to an increasing amount of fiction being set there. But what do these disparate works have in common, other than their temporal setting? And what can the imagination of the near future tell us about where we live now? The Near Future in 21st Century Fiction ranges across novels and films to reveal how our contemporary near future splits between two divergent paths. One seeks to retreat from climate change and the disruption it threatens to affluent lifestyles; the other tries to imagine new forms of community, and radical change, but struggles to locate a genre adequate to the task. It in this struggle, however, that we begin to glimpse the outlines of an emergent near future form: a revolution fit for the Anthropocene.
