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A series of provocative essays on how the fantastic genres evolve and grow In this wide-ranging series of essays, an award-winning science fiction critic explores how the related genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror evolve, merge, and finally "evaporate" into new and more dynamic forms. Beginning with a discussion of how literary readers "unlearned" how to read the fantastic during the heyday of realistic fiction, Gary K. Wolfe goes on to show how the fantastic reasserted itself in popular genre literature, and how these genres themselves grew increasingly unstable in terms of both narrative form and the worlds they portray. More detailed discussions of how specific contemporary writers have promoted this evolution are followed by a final essay examining how the competing discourses have led toward an emerging synthesis of critical approaches and vocabularies. The essays cover a vast range of authors and texts, and include substantial discussions of very current fiction published within the last few years.
A Companion to Science Fiction assembles essays by an international range of scholars which discuss the contexts, themes and methods used by science fiction writers. This Companion conveys the scale and variety of science fiction. Shows how science fiction has been used as a means of debating cultural issues. Essays by an international range of scholars discuss the contexts, themes and methods used by science fiction writers. Addresses general topics, such as the history and origins of the genre, its engagement with science and gender, and national variations of science fiction around the English-speaking world. Maps out connections between science fiction, television, the cinema, virtual reality technology, and other aspects of the culture. Includes a section focusing on major figures, such as H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ursula Le Guin. Offers close readings of particular novels, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
"The savvy critical essays in this provocative collection investigate the interface between science fiction and postmodern culture. . . . Highly recommended for readers at all levels."—Choice
This book examines the interrelationship between telecommunications and tourism in shaping the nature of space, place and the urban at the end of the twentieth century. They discuss how these agents are instrumental in the production of homogenous world-spaces, and how htese, in turn, presuppose new kinds of political and cultural identity.Virtual Geographies explores how new communication technologies are being used to produce new geographies and new types of space. Leading contributors from a wide range of disciplines including geography, sociology, philosophy and literatur.
Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction is a collection of engaging essays on some of the most significant figures who have shaped and defined the genre. Diverse groups within the science fiction community are represented, from novelists and film makers to comic book and television writers. Important and influential names discussed include: Octavia Butler George Lucas Robert Heinlein Gene Roddenberry Stan Lee Ursula K. Le Guin H.G. Wells This outstanding reference guide charts the rich and varied landscape of science fiction and includes helpful and up-to-date lists of further reading at the end of each entry. Available in an easy to use A-Z format, Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction will be of interest to students of Literature, Film Studies, and Cultural Studies.
Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) was one of the most influential southern writers, widely considered to rival his contemporary, William Faulkner-who believed Wolfe to be one of the greatest talents of their generation. His novels- including Look Homeward, Angel (1929); Of Time and the River (1935); and the posthumously published The Web and the Rock (1939) and You Can't Go Home Again (1940)-remain touchstones of U.S. literature. In Look Abroad, Angel, Jedidiah Evans uncovers the "global Wolfe," reconfiguring Wolfe's supposedly intractable homesickness for the American South as a form of longing that is instead indeterminate and expansive. Instead of promoting and reinforcing a narrow and cloistered formulation of the writer as merely southern or Appalachian, Evans places Wolfe in transnational contexts, examining Wolfe's impact and influence throughout Europe. In doing so, he de-territorializes the response to Wolfe's work, revealing the writer as a fundamentally global presence within American literature.
Science fiction, because of its links to science and technology, is the consummate literary vehicle for examining the perception and cultural impact of the modernization process in Brazil. Because of the centrality of the role played by the military dictatorship (1964-85) in imposing industrialization and economic development policies on Brazil, this book examines the genre in the periods before, during, and after the dictatorship, encompassing the years 1960-2000. The analysis shows that a reading of Brazilian science fiction based on its use of paradigms of Anglo-American science fiction and myths of Brazilian nationhood provides a unique look into Brazil's modern metamorphosis as it finds itself on the periphery of the globalized world.
Horror novelist Peter Straub creates highly personalized fiction with an allusiveness and ambiguity that deny the genre's explicit nature. For him, the Gothic style is to be created and recreated in a changing world--Faustian pacts, buried secrets, haunted places, ghosts, vampires and succubi take on strange new shapes and effects. Stephen King describes Straub's style as "a synthesis of horror and beauty." Drawing on interviews with Straub and featuring an exclusive interview with King, this study explores the work of the author who has been called "a writer of rare wit and intelligence in a field beset with cynical potboilers" (Douglas E. Winter, Washington Post, October 14, 1984).
When reality becomes fantastic, what literary effects will render it credible or comprehensible? To respond meaningfully to the surreality of the Holocaust, writers must produce works of moral and emotional complexity. One way they have achieved this is through elements of fantasy. Covering a range of theoretical perspectives, this collection of essays explores the use of fantastic story-telling in Holocaust literature and film. Writers such as Jane Yolen and Art Spiegelman are discussed, as well as the sci-fi television series V (1983), Stephen King's novella Apt Pupil (1982), Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and Martin Scorsese's dark thriller Shutter Island (2010).