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Shadows of the Future
H. G. Wells—the inventor of the concept of the time machine and the phrase "the Shape of Things to Come"—described his life's work as one of "critical anticipation." Shadows of the Future identifies the attempt to imagine possible futures as the unifying principle behind Wells's diverse and sometimes wayward literary career. The book unravels the complex layers of meaning in The Time Machine, and shows how throughout his life he sought to exploit the potential of literary and cultural prophecy in new ways. Described by John Middleton Murry as "the last prophet of bourgeois Europe," he was also its first futurologist. In Shadows of the Future Wells's assumption of the prophet's role is re...
Labyrinths
Forty short stories and essays have been selected as representative of the Argentine writer's metaphysical narratives.
The Early Evolutionary Imagination
Darwinian evolution is an imaginative problem that has been passed down to us unsolved. It is our most powerful explanation of humanity’s place in nature, but it is also more cognitively demanding and less emotionally satisfying than any myth. From the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, evolution has pushed our capacity for storytelling into overdrive, sparking fairy tales, adventure stories, political allegories, utopias, dystopias, social realist novels, and existential meditations. Though this influence on literature has been widely studied, it has not been explained psychologically. This book argues for the adaptive function of storytelling, integrates traditional humanist scholarship with current knowledge about the evolved and adapted human mind, and calls for literary scholars to reframe their interpretation of the first authors who responded to Darwin.
Worlds Apart
"[Malmgren] succeeds in formulating a typology of science fiction that will become a standard reference for some years to come." —Choice " . . . the most intelligently organized and effectively argued general study of SF that I have ever read." —Rob Latham, SFRA Review " . . . required reading for its evenhanded overview of so much of the previous critical/theoretical material devoted to science fiction." —American Book Review Worlds Apart provides a comprehensive theoretical model for science fiction by examining the worlds of science fiction and the discourse which inscribes them. Malmgren identifies the basic science fiction types, including alien encounters, alternate societies and worlds, and fantasy, and examines the role of the reader in concretizing and interpreting these science fiction worlds.
The Evolutionary Imagination in Late-Victorian Novels
Dominated by Darwinism and the numerous guises it assumed, evolutionary theory was a source of opportunities and difficulties for late Victorian novelists. Texts produced by Wells, Hardy, Stoker, and Conrad are exemplary in reflecting and participating in these challenges. Not only do they contend with evolutionary complications, John Glendening argues, but the complexities and entanglements of evolutionary theory, interacting with multiple cultural influences, thoroughly permeate the narrative, descriptive, and thematic fabric of each. All the books Glendening examines, from The Island of Doctor Moreau and Dracula to Heart of Darkness, address the interrelationship between order and chaos revealed and promoted by evolutionary thinking of the period. Glendening's particular focus is on how Darwinism informs novels in relation to a late Victorian culture that encouraged authors to stress, not objective truths illuminated by Darwinism, but rather the contingencies, uncertainties, and confusions generated by it and other forms of evolutionary theory.
The Island of Doctor Moreau
A classic of science fiction and a dark meditation on Darwinian thought in the late Victorian period, The Island of Doctor Moreau explores the possibility of civilization as a constraint imposed on savage human nature. The protagonist, Edward Prendick, finds himself stranded on an island with the notorious Doctor Moreau, whose experiments on the island’s humans and animals result in unspeakable horrors. The critical introduction to this Broadview Edition gives particular emphasis to Wells’s hostility towards religion as well as his thorough knowledge of the Darwinian thought of his time. Appendices provide passages from Darwin and Huxley related to Wells’s early writing; in addition, excerpts from other writers illustrate late-nineteenth-century anxieties about social degeneration.
Polpop
This book discusses various components of popular culture and the effects they have on politics. Some of the areas of mass culture which are discussed are: popular dramas, folk heritage, the Western myth, sports, religion, media, propaganda, and show business.
Modern Science Fiction: A Critical Analysis
James Gunn--one of the founding figures of science fiction scholarship and teaching--wrote in 1951 what is likely the first master's thesis on modern science fiction. Portions were in the short-lived pulp magazine Dynamic but it has otherwise remained unavailable. Here in its first full publication, the thesis explores many of the classic Golden Age stories of the 1940s and the critical perspective that informed Gunn's essential genre history Alternate Worlds and his anthology series The Road to Science Fiction. The editor's introduction and commentary show the historical significance of Gunn's work and its relevance to today's science fiction studies.
Human Prehistory in Fiction
What was the world like for people thousands of years ago? How can we know? Through fiction? This is a work of literary criticism, and more. It begins with a discussion of the problem of authenticity and then considers twelve pieces of fiction that depict human prehistory: H.G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau, Pierre Boulle's The Planet of the Apes, Jules Verne's The Village in the Treetops, Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot, the struggle for legitimacy in Wells' "The Grisly Folk," the Tasmanian analogue in Lester Del Rey's "The Day Is Done," William Golding's The Inheritors, "the promise of humanity" in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the theme of "a god among the heathen" in Wells' "The Lord of the Dynamos" and other works, Jean Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear, J.H. Rosny-Aine's Quest for Fire, and Wells' The Time Machine: An Invention. A final chapter considers the paleoanthropologist as literary critic.
