Galactic Suburbia

Galactic Suburbia
Author: Lisa Yaszek
Publisher:
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2008
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

In this groundbreaking cultural history, Lisa Yaszek recovers a lost tradition of women's science fiction that flourished after 1945. This new kind of science fiction was set in a place called galactic suburbia, a literary frontier that was home to nearly 300 women writers. These authors explored how women's lives, loves, and work were being transformed by new sciences and technologies, thus establishing women's place in the American future imaginary.Yaszek shows how the authors of galactic suburbia rewrote midcentury culture's assumptions about women's domestic, political, and scientific lives. Her case studies of luminaries such as Judith Merril, Carol Emshwiller, and Anne McCaffrey and lesser-known authors such as Alice Eleanor Jones, Mildred Clingerman, and Doris Pitkin Buck demonstrate how galactic suburbia is the world's first literary tradition to explore the changing relations of gender, science, and society.Galactic Suburbia challenges conventional literary histories that posit men as the progenitors of modern science fiction and women as followers who turned to the genre only after the advent of the women's liberation movement. AsYaszek demonstrates, stories written by women about women in galactic suburbia anticipated the development of both feminist science fiction and domestic science fiction written by men.

Cold War Space and Culture in the 1960s and 1980s

Cold War Space and Culture in the 1960s and 1980s
Author: David L. Pike
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-11-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192661299

Cold War Space and Culture in the 1960s and 1980s: The Bunkered Decades studies the two periods in which Americans were actively encouraged to excavate their own backyards while governments the world over exhausted their budgets on fortified super-shelters and megaton bombs. The dreams and nightmares inspired by the spectre of nuclear destruction were expressed in images and forms from comics, movies, and pulp paperbacks to policy documents, protest movements, and survivalist tracts. Illustrated with photographs, artwork, and movie and television stills of real and imagined fallout shelters and other bunker fantasies, award-winning author David L. Pike's continues his decades-long exploration of the meanings of modern undergrounds. Ranging widely across disciplines, this volume finds unexpected connections between cultural icons and forgotten texts, plumbs the bunker's stratifications of class, region, race, and gender, and traces the often unrecognized through-lines leading from the 1960s and the less-studied 1980s into the present. Although the Cold War ended over 30 years ago, its legacy looms large in anxieties around security, borders, and all manners of imminent apocalypse. Treating the bunker in its concrete presence and in its flightiest fantasies while attending equally to its uniquely American desires and pathologies and to its global impact, Cold War Space and Culture in the 1960s and 1980s proposes a new way to understand the outsized afterlife of the bunkered decades.

Building Suburbia

Building Suburbia
Author: Dolores Hayden
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2009-11-04
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0307515265

A lively and provocative history of the contested landscapes where the majority of Americans now live. From rustic cottages reached by steamboat to big box stores at the exit ramps of eight-lane highways, Dolores Hayden defines seven eras of suburban development since 1820. An urban historian and architect, she portrays housewives and politicians as well as designers and builders making the decisions that have generated America’s diverse suburbs. Residents have sought home, nature, and community in suburbia. Developers have cherished different dreams, seeking profit from economies of scale and increased suburban densities, while lobbying local and federal government to reduce the risk of real estate speculation. Encompassing environmental controversies as well as the complexities of race, gender, and class, Hayden’s fascinating account will forever alter how we think about the communities we build and inhabit.

Battlestar Suburbia

Battlestar Suburbia
Author: Chris McCrudden
Publisher: Prelude Books
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2018-09-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1788421019

In space, no one can hear you clean... When Darren’s charge-cart gets knocked off the Earth-to-Mars highway and lost in space forever, he thinks his day can’t get any worse. When Kelly sees Darren accidentally short-circuit a talking lamppost, and its camera captures her face as it expires, she thinks her day can’t get any worse. When Pamasonic Teffal, a sentient breadmaker, is sent on a top-secret mission into the depths of the internet and betrayed by her boss, a power-crazed smartphone, she knows this is only the beginning of a day that isn’t going to get any better. Join Darren, Kelly and Pam in an anarchic comic adventure that takes them from the shining skyscrapers of Singulopolis to the sewers of the Dolestar Discovery, and find out what happens when a person puts down their mop and bucket and says ‘No.’ Battlestar Suburbia will be loved by fans of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde, as well as anyone who’s ever wondered just how long someone can stay under one of those old-fashioned hairdryers.* *The answer is: a really very, very long time. What readers are saying: “I loved this book. I legit laughed through the entire novel and I am excited that there will be a sequel.” Terra C “A brilliant mix of sci-fi, humor, and those hundreds of little things that make a memorable story. McCrudden is destined to become synonymous with great sci-fi humor.” Christopher H “A deliciously hilarious romp which skirts the realms of credibility but provides a wild ride which kept me very much entertained throughout. It's bonkers, it's mad and .... so exaggerated to almost be genius in its execution.” Kath B “Featuring a kindly bread-maker, ancient nana-cyborgs, a moving hairdressers and a chance to avert a nuclear bomb, it's both great fun and very clever.” Ruth M “Battlestar Suburbia highlights the absurdity of life, and the adaptability of individuals in unusual situations. McCrudden’s novel will appeal to fans of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, or anyone looking for an escape only loosely connected to reality.” Stephenie S “This was a trip! Some great one-lines & puns help create this future world where the machines have taken over. With evil smartphones, anti-hero humans, & a motherly bread maker pushed to the edge...” Caroline F “Chris McCrudden has created a new division of SF: Science Flotsam. His sprawling space epic is what you get if you cross Dr Who with an unhealthy fascination for household appliances. Forget alien invasion; in this explosive future you won’t be able to trust your spin dryer.” Christopher Fowler “McCrudden’s debut is festooned with cunning punnery, sharp turns of phrase, and jokes about emojis and the internet, making this very much a comic novel of our times.” James Lovegrove, Financial Times “an amusing and mind-bending read... different, a little geeky, and lots of fun.” LoveReading

Invisible Suburbs

Invisible Suburbs
Author: Josh Lukin
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781934110874

"Were the 1950s an oppressive or a liberating time? Some scholars argue that the Red Scare, newly institutionalized discrimination against gays, and a public discourse saturated with sexism left wounds in American society. Others trace the origins of sixties liberation movements to the fifties and celebrate America's postwar prosperity or argue that such new phenomena as rock 'n' roll, teenage consumerism, and Beat poetry gave Americans a new sense of freedom and identity." "Invisible Suburbs advances a new synthesis of both views from the perspective of literary scholarship. Essayists ask how overlooked literature in the 1950s addressed or anticipated the struggles of disenfranchised groups to receive rights and recognition. Scholars analyze the many ways in which the decade's culture stigmatized women, minorities, and the poor. They uncover work that illustrates how groups and individuals challenged or resisted that oppression, fiction by authors who sometimes found roots in earlier liberation movements and anticipated later struggles."--BOOK JACKET.

Teaching Science Fiction

Teaching Science Fiction
Author: A. Sawyer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2011-03-24
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0230300391

Teaching Science Fiction is the first text in thirty years to explore the pedagogic potential of that most intellectually stimulating and provocative form of popular literature: science fiction. Innovative and academically lively, it offers valuable insights into how SF can be taught historically, culturally and practically at university level.

The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction

The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction
Author: Rob Latham
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2014-09-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0199838852

The excitement of possible futures found in science fiction has long fired the human imagination, but the genre's acceptance by academe is relatively recent. No longer marginalized and fighting for respectability, science-fictional works are now studied alongside more traditional art forms. Tracing the capacious genre's birth, evolution, and impact across nations, time periods, subgenres, and media, The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction offers an in-depth, comprehensive assessment of this robust area of scholarly inquiry and considers the future directions that will dictate the terms of the scholarly discourse. The Handbook begins with a focus on questions of genre, covering topics such as critical history, keywords, narrative, the fantastic, and fandom. A subsequent section on media engages with film, television, comics, architecture, music, video games, and more. The genre's role in the convergence of art and everyday life animates a third section, which addresses topics such as UFOs,

Women of Futures Past

Women of Futures Past
Author: Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Publisher: Baen Books
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2016-09-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 162579522X

Meet the Women of Futures Past: from Grand Master Andre Norton and the beloved Anne McCaffrey to some of the most popular SF writers today, such as Lois McMaster Bujold and CJ Cherryh. The most influential writers of multiple generations are found in these pages, delivering lost classics and foundational touchstones that shaped the field. You'll find Northwest Smith, C.L. Moore’s famous smuggler who predates (and maybe inspired) Han Solo by four decades. Read Leigh Brackett’s fiction and see why George Lucas chose her to write The Empire Strikes Back. Adventure tales, post-apocalyptic visions, space opera, aliens-among-us, time travel—these women have delivered all this and more, some of the best science fiction ever written! Includes stories by Leigh Brackett, Lois McMaster Bujold, Pat Cadigan, CJ Cherryh, Zenna Henderson, Nancy Kress, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, C.L. Moore, Andre Norton, James Tiptree, Jr., and Connie Willis. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy [2 volumes]

Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy [2 volumes]
Author: Robin Anne Reid
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 789
Release: 2008-12-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0313054746

Works of science fiction and fantasy increasingly explore gender issues, feature women as central characters, and are written by women writers. This book examines women's contributions to science fiction and fantasy across a range of media and genres, such as fiction, nonfiction, film, television, art, comics, graphic novels, and music. The first volume offers survey essays on major topics, such as sexual identities, fandom, women's writing groups, and feminist spirituality; the second provides alphabetically arranged entries on more specific subjects, such as Hindu mythology, Toni Morrison, magical realism, and Margaret Atwood. Entries are written by expert contributors and cite works for further reading, and the set closes with a selected, general bibliography. Students and general readers love science fiction and fantasy. And science fiction and fantasy works increasingly explore gender issues, feature women as central characters, and are written by women writers. Older works demonstrate attitudes toward women in times past, while more recent works grapple with contemporary social issues. This book helps students use science fiction and fantasy to understand the contributions of women writers, the representation of women in the media, and the experiences of women in society.