Beschrijving
Few literary genres can expand the boundaries of our imagination as much as science fiction. The Science Fiction Handbook offers a comprehensive historical survey of literary works of science fiction and its most popular sub-genres.
Few literary genres can expand the boundaries of our imagination as much as science fiction. The Science Fiction Handbook offers a comprehensive historical survey of literary works of science fiction and its most popular sub-genres. Beginning with a broad overview of science fiction’s emergence as a literary genre, the Handbook goes on to provide detailed historical surveys of its distinct sub-genres, whose development often paralleled society’s technological advances. These include works of time-travel and alternative history narratives; alien-invasion narratives; space exploration and space opera; post-apocalyptic and post-disaster narratives; works of utopian and dystopian science fiction; feminism and gender themes in science fiction; science fiction as satire; cyberpunk and post-human science fiction; and multicultural science fiction. The authors also offer brief biographies of several noted science fiction writers along with extended critical analyses of 20 of the genre’s most significant works.
The Science Fiction Handbook offers a comprehensive and accessible survey of one of the literary world’s most fascinating genres.
- Includes separate historical surveys of key subgenres including time-travel narratives, post-apocalyptic and post-disaster narratives and works of utopian and dystopian science fiction
- Each subgenre survey includes an extensive list of relevant critical readings, recommended novels in the subgenre, and recommended films relevant to the subgenre
- Features entries on a number of key science fiction authors and extensive discussion of major science fiction novels or sequences
- Writers and works include Isaac Asimov; Margaret Atwood; George Orwell; Ursula K. Le Guin; The War of the Worlds (1898); Starship Troopers (1959); Mars Trilogy (1993-6); and many more
- A ‘Science Fiction Glossary’ completes this indispensable Handbook
