Biopunk Worlds of Paolo Bacigalupi

This book explores literary techniques that allow science fiction literature to be a platform for activist interventions. The focus is on the body and food as storyworld existents in selected texts by Paolo Bacigalupi, whose writing is directed towards raising awareness of the environmental crisis. The book opens with a discussion of the position of science fiction as popular literature, genealogical debates, genre conventions of cyberpunk and biopunk, cognitive estrangement, metaphoric strategies and metonymic tactics. Then, it undertakes an analysis of Bacigalupi's texts (The Windup Girl, «Small Offerings», and «Fluted Girl», among others) in the context of such ecocritical concepts as hyperexuberance, Capitalocene, and the temporal dimension of the environmental catastrophe.

List of contents

Science fiction as popular culture - Bacigalupi's biopunk narratives - The body as a metonymy and metaphor - Food as Life

About the author

Aleksandra Mochocka, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics at Kazimierz Wielki University, Poland. She teaches and researches science fiction, transmedia narratives, and non-digital games.

Product details

• Authors: Aleksandra Mochocka
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.2019
• EAN: 9783631768518
• ISBN: 978-3-631-76851-8
• No. of pages: 192
• Dimensions: 151 mm x 215 mm x 18 mm
• Weight: 324 g
• Series: English Literature and Culture in Context
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics