Twenty-First Century Science Fiction

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction
Author: David G. Hartwell
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 574
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429988746

One of Publishers Weekly's Best Science Fiction Books of 2013 Twenty-First Century Science Fiction is an enormous anthology of short stories—close to 250,000 words—edited by two of the most prestigious and award-winning editors in the SF field and featuring recent stories from some of science fiction's greatest up-and-coming authors. David Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden have long been recognized as two of the most skilled and trusted arbiters of the field, but Twenty-First Century Science Fiction presents fans' first opportunities to see what their considerable talents come up with together, and also to get a unique perspective on what's coming next in the science fiction field. The anthology includes authors ranging from bestselling and established favorites to incandescent new talents including Paolo Bacigalupi, Cory Doctorow, Catherynne M. Valente, John Scalzi, Jo Walton, Charles Stross, Elizabeth Bear, and Peter Watts, and the stories selected include winners and nominees of all of the science fiction field's major awards. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Reincarnated Giant

The Reincarnated Giant
Author: Mingwei Song
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 453
Release: 2018-09-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0231542542

A new wave of Chinese science fiction is here. This golden age has not only resurrected the genre but also subverted its own conventions. Going beyond political utopianism and technological optimism, contemporary Chinese writers conjure glittering visions and subversive experiments—ranging from space opera to cyberpunk, utopianism to the posthuman, and parodies of China’s rise to deconstructions of the myth of national development. This anthology showcases the best of contemporary science fiction from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the People’s Republic of China. In fifteen short stories and novel excerpts, The Reincarnated Giant opens a doorway into imaginary realms alongside our own world and the history of the future. Authors such as Lo Yi-chin, Dung Kai-cheung, Han Song, Chen Qiufan, and the Hugo winner Liu Cixin—some alive during the Cultural Revolution, others born in the 1980s—blur the boundaries between realism and surrealism, between politics and technology. They tell tales of intergalactic war; decoding the last message sent from an extinct human race; the use of dreams as tools to differentiate cyborgs and humans; poets’ strange afterlife inside a supercomputer; cannibalism aboard an airplane; and unchecked development that leads to uncontrollable catastrophe. At a time when the Chinese government promotes the “Chinese dream,” the dark side of the new wave shows a nightmarish unconscious. The Reincarnated Giant is an essential read for anyone interested in the future of the genre.

Representations of Science in Twenty-First-Century Fiction

Representations of Science in Twenty-First-Century Fiction
Author: Nina Engelhardt
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2019-06-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030194906

This collection of essays explores current thematic and aesthetic directions in fictional science narratives in different genres, predominantly novels, but also poetry, film, and drama. The ten case studies, covering a range of British and American texts from the late twentieth to the twenty-first centuries, reflect the diversity of representations of science in contemporary fiction, including psychopharmacology and neuropathology, quantum physics and mathematics, biotechnology, genetics, and chemical weaponry. This collection considers how texts engage with science and technology to explore relations between bodies and minds, how such connectivities shape conceptions and narrations of the human, and how the speculative view of science fiction features alongside realist engagements with the Victorian period and modernism. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, contributors offer new insights into narrative engagement with science and its place in life today, in times past, and in times to come.

Ready Player One

Ready Player One
Author: Ernest Cline
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2011-08-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307887456

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. “Enchanting . . . Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.”—USA Today • “As one adventure leads expertly to the next, time simply evaporates.”—Entertainment Weekly A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready? In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself. Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Village Voice • Chicago Sun-Times • iO9 • The AV Club “Delightful . . . the grown-up’s Harry Potter.”—HuffPost “An addictive read . . . part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart.”—CNN “A most excellent ride . . . Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader.”—Boston Globe “Ridiculously fun and large-hearted . . . Cline is that rare writer who can translate his own dorky enthusiasms into prose that’s both hilarious and compassionate.”—NPR “[A] fantastic page-turner . . . starts out like a simple bit of fun and winds up feeling like a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.”—iO9

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
Author: Kim Fu
Publisher: Tin House Books
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2022-02-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1953534066

"The strange and wonderful define Kim Fu’s story collection, where the line between fantasy and reality fades in and out, elusive and beckoning." —The New York Times Book Review A LitHub, ALTA, and PureWow Best Book of the Month A BuzzFeed and WIRED Pick for a Book You Need to Read This Winter In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us. Mesmerizing, electric, and wholly original, Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century blurs the boundaries of the real and fantastic, offering intricate and surprising insights into human nature.

Firestar

Firestar
Author: Michael F. Flynn
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 910
Release: 1997-03-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780812530063

In the 21st Century, a woman philanthropist launches a private space program aimed at developing new technologies to improve life on Earth. But as with every innovation, this one steps on some people's toes and they resort to violence to stop her. A work of imagination in space technologies.

Women's Space

Women's Space
Author: Melanie A. Marotta
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2020-01-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476636729

From the Star Wars expanded universe to Westworld, the science fiction western has captivated audiences for more than fifty years. These twelve new essays concentrate on the female characters in the contemporary science fiction western, addressing themes of power, agency, intersectionality and the body. Discussing popular works such as Fringe, Guardians of the Galaxy and Mass Effect, the essayists shed new light on the gender dynamics of these beloved franchises, emphasizing inclusion and diversity with their critical perspectives.

The Palgrave Handbook of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature and Science

The Palgrave Handbook of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature and Science
Author: Neel Ahuja
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 688
Release: 2020-11-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030482448

This handbook illustrates the evolution of literature and science, in collaboration and contestation, across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The essays it gathers question the charged rhetoric that pits science against the humanities while also demonstrating the ways in which the convergence of literary and scientific approaches strengthens cultural analyses of colonialism, race, sex, labor, state formation, and environmental destruction. The broad scope of this collection explores the shifting relations between literature and science that have shaped our own cultural moment, sometimes in ways that create a problematic hierarchy of knowledge and other times in ways that encourage fruitful interdisciplinary investigations, innovative modes of knowledge production, and politically charged calls for social justice. Across units focused on epistemologies, techniques and methods, ethics and politics, and forms and genres, the chapters address problems ranging across epidemiology and global health, genomics and biotechnology, environmental and energy sciences, behaviorism and psychology, physics, and computational and surveillance technologies. Chapter 19 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.