Science Fiction
Cultural History of Literature
1. Auflage März 2005
224 Seiten, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
In this new and timely cultural history of science fiction, Roger
Luckhurst examines the genre from its origins in the late
nineteenth century to its latest manifestations. The book
introduces and explicates major works of science fiction literature
by placing them in a series of contexts, using the history of
science and technology, political and economic history, and
cultural theory to develop the means for understanding the unique
qualities of the genre.
Luckhurst reads science fiction as a literature of modernity.
His astute analysis examines how the genre provides a constantly
modulating record of how human embodiment is transformed by
scientific and technological change and how the very sense of self
is imaginatively recomposed in popular fictions that range from
utopian possibility to Gothic terror. This highly readable study
charts the overlapping yet distinct histories of British and
American science fiction, with commentary on the central authors,
magazines, movements and texts from 1880 to the present day. It
will be an invaluable guide and resource for all students taking
courses on science fiction, technoculture and popular literature,
but will equally be fascinating for anyone who has ever enjoyed a
science fiction book.
Introduction.
PART I. EMERGENCE, 1880-1945.
1. Conditions of Emergence.
2. Britain: The Scientific Romance and the Evolutionary
Paradigm.
3. America: Pulp Fictions and the Engineer Paradigm.
PART II. ELABORATION, 1945-1959.
4. 1945: The Technocultural Conjuncture.
5. From Atomjocks to Cultural Critique: American SF,
1939-1959.
6. 'All that Age, Horribly Dislocated': England
After 1945.
PART III. DECADE STUDIES.
7. The 1960s.
8. The 1970s.
9. The 1980s.
10. The 1990s.
Notes.
Selected Bibliography.
Index.
interesting literature out there. Roger Luckhurst does an excellent
job of embedding SF in history."
China Miéville, author of Perdido Street Station
and Iron Council
"This is a well-conceived, impressively researched and
eloquently argued study of Anglo-American science fiction.
Combining a sweeping command of cultural-historical contexts with
incisive close readings of individual texts, Roger Luckhurst
illuminates over a century's worth of print and mass-media SF.
Whether discussing popular concerns about the pervasive power of
"Mechanism" in the nineteenth century or avant-gardist critiques of
the media-saturated "Society of the Spectacle" in the 1960s,
Luckhurst's consistent emphasis on how SF registers the impact of
techno-scientific change gives his study a remarkable coherence. In
sum, this is an essential and timely volume"
Rob Latham, University of Iowa
"This is a refreshing and lively survey of a very broad field.
It usefully situates science fiction in its relevant cultural
context and makes a valuable contribution to the history of the
genre."
David Seed, Liverpool University
