Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction

Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction
Author: Darren Harris-Fain
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2005
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781570035852

Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction: The Age of Maturity, 1970-2000 explores the major trends and developments during three decades that witnessed science fiction's most dramatic progression from subliterary escapist entertainment to a more sophisticated literature of ideas. Darren Harris-Fain suggests that to understand American science fiction fully, it is essential to realize that the current field with all its variety results from the proceeding decades of writings. In addition, he contends that although much science fiction of merit was written in America prior to 1970, the latter decades of the twentieth century witnessed a dramatic improvement in quality, even as the field fragmented into a variety of subgenres and as writers sought to transcend earlier critical dismissals. Harris-Fain discusses significant and representative works, most of which mainstream literary scholars and critics ignore, as he charts the historical and literary development of contemporary American science fiction. the internal divisions along both literary and political lines experienced during the Vietnam era; the influence of the feminist movement and other contemporary concerns; the increasing contributions of female, African American, and gay and lesbian writers; and the emergence of such significant trends as hard science fiction, cyberpunk, alternate history, and shared-world stories. Harris-Fain also considers literary science fiction's relationship to the mass media, the effects the popularity of fantasy has on the field, and academia's continued misprizing of the genre.

Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction

Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction
Author: Thomas D. Clareson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 320
Release: 1990
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

Discusses writers such as Poul Anderson, Brian W. Aldiss, Isaac Asimov, J.G. Ballard, Alfred Bester, James Blish, Anthony Boucher, Ray Bradbury, Algis Budrys, Edgar Rice Burroughs, John W. Campbell, Arthur C. Clarke, Hal Clement, Samuel R. Delany, Lester del Rey, Philip K. Dick, Gordon R. Dickson, Thomas Disch, Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, Randall Garrett, Robert A. Heinlein, Zenna Henderson, Frank Herbert, Damon Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, Ursula K. Le Guin, Murray Leinster, Anne McCaffrey, Judith Merril, A. Merritt, Walter M. Miller Jr., Michael Moorcock, Andre Norton, Alexei Panshin, H. Beam Piper, Frederik Pohl, Joanna Russ, Robert Silverberg, Clifford D. Simak, Cordwainer Smith, E.E. "Doc" Smith, Norman Spinrad, Theodore Sturgeon, Jack Vance, A.E. van Vogt, Kurt Vonnegut, Donald Wollheim, RogerZelazny, Jack Williamson, and others.

Contemporary American Science Fiction Film

Contemporary American Science Fiction Film
Author: Terence McSweeney
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2022-02-21
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1000540642

Contemporary American Science Fiction Film explores and interrogates a diverse variety of popular and culturally relevant American science fiction films made in the first two decades of the new millennium, offering a ground-breaking investigation of the impactful role of genre cinema in the modern era. Placing one of the most popular and culturally resonant American film genres broadly within its rich social, historical, industrial, and political context, the book interrogates some of the defining critical debates of the era via an in-depth analysis of a range of important films. An international team of authors draw on case studies from across the science fiction genre to examine what these films can tell us about the time period, how the films themselves connect to the social and political context, how the fears and anxieties they portray resonate beyond the screen, and how the genre responds to the shifting coordinates of the Hollywood film industry. Offering new insights and perspectives on the cinematic science fiction genre, this volume will appeal primarily to scholars and students of film, television, cultural and media studies, as well as anyone interested in science fiction and speculative film.

Across the Wounded Galaxies

Across the Wounded Galaxies
Author: Larry McCaffery
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1990
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780252061400

Ten writers whose works have a significant influence on the genre over the past quarter-century speak about their works, their backgrounds, and their aesthetic impulses, discussing New Wave, cyberpunk, hard vs. soft SF, and the viability of science fiction as a means of suggesting political, radical, and sexual agendas. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Understanding Philip K. Dick

Understanding Philip K. Dick
Author: Eric Carl Link
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2022-11-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1643363468

A guide to the fantastic world of a science fiction legend Author of more than forty novels and myriad short stories over a three-decade literary career, Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) single-handedly reshaped twentieth-century science fiction. His influence has only increased since his death with the release of numerous feature films and television series based on his work, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle. In Understanding Philip K. Dick, Eric Carl Link introduces readers to the life, career, and work of this groundbreaking, prolific, and immeasurably influential force in American literature, media culture, and contemporary science fiction. Dick was at times a postmodernist, a mainstream writer, a pulp fiction writer, and often all three simultaneously, but as Link illustrates, he was more than anything else a novelist of ideas. From this vantage point, Link surveys Dick's tragicomic biography, his craft and career, and the recurrent ideas and themes that give shape and significance to his fiction. Link finds across Dick's writing career an intellectual curiosity that transformed his science fiction novels from bizarre pulp extravaganzas into philosophically challenging explorations of the nature of reality, and it is this depth of vision that continues to garner new audiences and fresh approaches to Dick's genre-defining tales.

Contemporary American Fiction in the Embrace of the Digital Age

Contemporary American Fiction in the Embrace of the Digital Age
Author: Beatrice Pire
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2021-12-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 178284712X

This collection aims to examine the relationship between American fiction and innovations that marked the first decades of the 21st century: the Internet, social media, smart objects and environments, artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies, genetic engineering and other biotechnologies, transhumanism. These technological innovations redefine the way we live in and imagine our world, interact with each other and understand the human being in his or her ever closer relationship to the machine a human being no longer, as in the past, cared for or repaired, but now enhanced or replaced. What about our artistic and cultural practices? Are these recent advances changing language and literature? How is fiction transformed by technological progress and what representations of progress can it oppose? Can fiction offer a critique of the new media and the upheavals they precipitate? How does the temporality of literature respond to a technical time subjected to the imperative of efficiency, where the present is a slave to the future? Do virtual worlds challenge the primacy of literary fiction as a privileged mode of escape from daily life? In a context where software can generate literary works, can the force of poetical advent still oppose algorithmic logics? What becomes of the body in a world in which its technical extensions increase the externalization of its cognitive functions in media artifacts and digital networks? In order to explore these questions, scholars here investigate the American fiction of Russell Banks, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Lethem, Tao Lin, Richard Powers, Kenneth Goldsmith, Jennifer Egan or Jonathan Franzen as well as the Cyberpunk genre and the Neuronovel.

Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction

Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction
Author: Thomas D. Clareson
Publisher: Understanding Contemporary Ame
Total Pages: 300
Release: 1992
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780872498709

'One of the most knowledgeable scholars of American science fiction has produced an admirable study of the first major period of the field. Focusing on the elemental novels, Clareson argues that during this era most of the primary themes were developed. He supported this thesis with a breadth of knowledge, a clarity of writing, & a genuine affection for science fiction rare in scholars of the field. . .'--Booklist.