Including more than 30 essential works of science fiction criticism in a single volume, this is a comprehensive introduction to the study of this enduringly popular genre. Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings covers such topics as:
·Definitions and boundaries of the genre
·The many forms of science fiction, from time travel to 'inner space'
·Ideology and identity: from utopian fantasy to feminist, queer and environmental readings
·The non-human: androids, aliens, cyborgs and animals
·Race and the legacy of colonialism
The volume also features annotated guides to further reading on these topics.
Author(s): Rob Latham
Edition: 1
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2017
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 591
Tags: Science Fiction: History And Criticism; Literary Studies: From c 1900 -; Literature: History & Criticism
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1 Definitions and boundaries
1 Editorial: A new sort of magazine • Hugo Gernsback
2 Preface to The Scientific Romances • H. G. Wells
3 On the writing of speculative fiction • Robert A. Heinlein
4 What do you mean: Science? Fiction? • Judith Merril
5 Preface to Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology • Bruce Sterling
6 Cybernetic deconstructions: Cyberpunk and postmodernism • Veronica Hollinger
7 The many deaths of science fiction: A polemic • Roger Luckhurst
8 On defining sf, or not: Genre theory, sf, and history • John Rieder
Recommended further reading
Part 2 Structure and form
9 Which way to inner space? • J. G. Ballard
10 About 5,750 words • Samuel R. Delany
11 On the poetics of the science fiction genre • Darko Suvin
12 The absent paradigm: An introduction to the semiotics of science fiction • Marc Angenot
13 Reading sf as a mega-text • Damien Broderick
14 Time travel and the mechanics of narrative • David Wittenberg
Recommended further reading
Part 3 Ideology and world view
15 Mutation or death! • John B. Michel
16 The imagination of disaster • Susan Sontag
17 The image of women in science fiction • Joanna Russ
18 Progress versus Utopia; or, can we imagine thefuture? • Fredric Jameson
19 Science fiction and critical theory • Carl Freedman
20 Alien cryptographies: The view from queer • Wendy Pearson
21 The women history doesn’t see: Recovering midcentury women’s sf as a literature of social critique • Lisa Yaszek
Recommended further reading
Part 4 The nonhuman
22 Author’s introduction to Frankenstein • Mary Shelley
23 The android and the human • Philip K. Dick
24 A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the late twentieth century • Donna Haraway
25 Virtual bodies and flickering signifiers • N. Katherine Hayles
26 The coming technological singularity: How to survive in a post-human era • Vernor Vinge
27 Aliens in the fourth dimension • Gwyneth Jones
28 Technofetishism and the uncanny desires of A.S.F.R. (alt.sex.fetish.robots) • Allison de Fren
29 Animal alterity: Science fiction and human-animal studies • Sherryl Vint
Recommended further reading
Part 5 Race and the legacy of colonialism
30 Science fiction and empire • Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.
31 Further considerations on Afrofuturism • Kodwo Eshun
32 Indigenous scientific literacies in Nalo Hopkinson’s ceremonial worlds • Grace L. Dillon
33 Biotic invasions: Ecological imperialism in new wave science fiction • Rob Latham
34 Alien/Asian: Imagining the racialized future • Stephen Hong Sohn
35 Report from planet midnight • Nalo Hopkinson
36 Future histories and cyborg labor: Reading borderlands science fiction after NAFTA • Lysa Rivera
Recommended further reading
List of contributors
Index
