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Science fiction films and television programs about space travel have undergone a significant transformation since their inception. Contrasting the early depictions of small spaceship crews on exploratory missions, recent film…
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Gary Westfahl
This book provides high school and undergraduate students, and other interested readers, with a comprehensive survey of science fiction history and numerous essays addressing major science fiction topics, authors, works…
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The first comprehensive critical study of hard science fiction, this book reveals how the term hard science fiction originated, and how arguments about its range and nature have unfolded.
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Although the exploration of space has long preoccupied authors and filmmakers, the development of an actual space program, discoveries about the true nature of space, and critical reconsiderations of America’s…
This book examines representative works of science fiction, children’s literature, and popular culture to show how these works reflect the process of growing up in a technological world. The volume…
Offers a thorough examination of how science fiction evolved to its current state. Close critical attention is given to topics including art that has accompanied science fiction, the subgenres of…
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While students and general readers typically cannot relate to esoteric definitions of science fiction, they readily understand the genre as a literature that characteristically deals with subjects such as new…
Offers a fresh examination of the works of Jules Verne, the pioneering and enduringly popular science fiction writer. Included essays offer analyses of literary responses to Verne's work, and assessments…
A companion volume to the author’s Island in the Sky, this new book covers 975 science fiction novels, stories, films, and television programs dealing with space stations. Each entry includes…
Already renowned for his science fiction and scientific nonfiction, Arthur C. Clarke became the world’s most famous science fiction writer after the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He then…
Describes for the first time more than eighty virtually unknown Gibson publications from his early years, including articles, reviews, poems, cartoons, letters, and a collaborative story.
Filmmakers employ various images to suggest the strangeness of outer space, but protective spacesuits most powerfully communicate the dangers of space and the frailty and weakness of humans beyond the…
Pilgrim Award-winning critic Gary Westfahl here updates his classic study of the space station theme in science fiction, providing the most comprehensive examination of the topic ever written. From The…
This is a sustained argument about the idea of science fiction by a renowned critic. Overturning many received opinions and sacred cows, it is both controversial and stimulating.
Dr Gary Westfahl
This book, for the first time, makes available a body of my work that has long remained inaccessible and largely unknown to American readers: the thirty-seven bimonthly columns that I…
This book gathers together many of the illuminating essays on science fiction and fantasy film penned by a major critic in the SF field. The pieces are roughly organized in…
This volume offers a broad study of the history of medicine in science fiction and fantasy literature and film, as well as detailed examinations of some of the field’s greatest…
But despite the sentiments of these traditionalists, many works of science fiction engage recognized canonical texts, such as the Odyssey, and many traditionally canonical works contain elements of science fiction.
Contains essays that demonstrate how science fiction can serve as a bridge between science and the humanities. This book shows how early writers like Dante and Mary Shelley revealed a…
These nineteen original essays seek to recontextualize the subject of immortality, examining its influence as an ancient human aspiration while at the same time considering new scientific advances and their…
The works vary in critical approach from textual analyses to psychological, historical, and gender-and ethnicity-based interpretations and draw their subject matter from contemporary and classic literary and film pieces.
Thousands of memorable quotations from the best science fiction works of all time
If, in the broadest of strokes, fantasy concerns a past Golden Age, and science fiction a future that started out rosy and has now attained myriad hues, then the mere…
Despite the growing importance of economics in our lives, literary scholars have long been reluctant to consider economic issues as they examine key texts. This volume seeks to fill one…
A pioneering scholarly examination of the rich and fascinating fields of science fiction and fantasy art, this book stimulates scholarly interest in these areas by offering both surveys of the…
Examining science fiction author Hugo Gernsback’s career, this work explores the many ways in which his work influenced the genre. It summarizes the science fiction theories of Gernsback and his…
The J. Lloyd Eaton Conferences on Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature have been a leading influence in the study of science fiction and fantasy for 30 years.This collection brings together…
These essays discuss the theory and practice of science fictional eating; the dialectic, at the level of eating, between individual needs and collective forms; and the ways that eating habits…
Frank McConnell,Gary Westfahl
Recognizes science fiction as a modern expression of Gnosticism, rejecting bodily concerns for an exclusive emphasis on spirituality. This book covers such topics as HG Wells, science fiction in academia…
George Slusser
In this work, renowned scholar George Slusser analyzes science fiction’s history by focusing on important thinkers, overlooked by other critics, who made key contributions to the development of science fiction…
In this work, renowned scholar George Slusser analyzes science fiction's history by focusing on important thinkers, overlooked by other critics, who made key contributions to the development of science fiction…
This volume examines the modern marketplace of science fiction and the relationship between art, culture and commerce as reflected in works of science fiction. It includes discussion on American, British…
Eric S. Rabkin
This collection of 19 essays seeks to recontextualise the subject of immortality, examining its influence as an ancient human aspiration and considering new scientific advances and their impact on life…