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What is the relationship between science fiction and social, political and sexual radicalism? Does science fiction open up margins for resistance and experimentation? What sort of discourse is science fiction? How can we best situate science fiction in terms of its historical context? Science Fiction, Critical Frontiers addresses these and other key current issues in science fiction studies. The collection includes the latest work by some of the major figures in contemporary science fiction criticism. It focuses on the major theoretical issues within science fiction as a genre, and provides examples of critical perspectives applied to specific texts. Many of these texts regularly appear on undergraduate science fiction courses.
List of contents
Notes on Contributors Introduction; J.Moore & K.Sayer PART ONE Novum Is As Novum Does; D.Suvin SF: Metaphor, Myth or Prophecy?; P.Parrinder Modernity as a Project and as Self-Criticism: The Historical Dialogue between Science Fiction and Utopia; G.Paschilidis On Science Fiction, Totality and Agency in the Nineties; T.Moylan PART TWO The Monsters of Botany and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein ; C.Seligo Contending Forces: Racial and Sexual Narratives in Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren ; J.A.Tucker The Death of the Author and the Power of Addiction in Naked Lunch and Blade Runner ; G.Pastorino The Informatic Jeremiad: Virtual Frontier and US Cyberculture; S.Proietti Doomsday Looms: Gudrun Pausewang's Anti-nuclear Novels; S.Tebutt In-Between Subjects: C.L. Moore's No Woman Born ; R.Baccolini (Re)Productive Fictions: Reproduction, Embodiment and Feminist Science in Marge Piercy's Science Fiction; J.Haran The Female State: Science Fiction Alternatives to the Patriarchy: Sheri Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country and Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series; L.Jowett Bibliography Index
About the author
KAREN SAYER is a lecturer in literary studies at the University of Luton. She published her first monograph
Women of the Fields: Representations of Rural Women in the Nineteenth Century in 1995. Her second monograph
A Cottage in the Country is due in 1999.
JOHN MOORE is senior lecturer in literary studies at the University of Luton. He is the author of numerous essays on science fiction and in 1997 was the recipient of the Science Fiction Research Association's Pioneer Award for the best critical essay in the field.
Summary
What is the relationship between science fiction and social, political and sexual radicalism? Science Fiction, Critical Frontiers addresses these and other key current issues in science fiction studies.
