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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. Westfahl shows that hard science fiction is generally characterized by the author's extreme concern for scientific accuracy and logic. Identifying two characteristic forms of hard science fiction, Westfahl closely examines several representative works: Arthur C. Clarke's "A Fall of Moondust," Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity," and Charles Sheffield's "Between the Strokes of Midnight." This book offers...

In a constantly changing world, individuals are forever growing to meet the challenges and developments that emerge around them. In contemporary society, technology is at the heart of change. Literature, too, reflects the evolution of culture and increasingly represents and considers technology. And as children become young adults, their reading helps shape their understanding of the world. 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...

With our lives firmly controlled by the steady pace of time, humans have yearned for ways to escape its constraints, and authors have responded with narratives about traveling far into the past or future, reversing the flow of time, or creating alternate universes where Napoleon was triumphant at Waterloo or the South won the Civil War. Writers ranging from Dante and Lewis Carroll to Philip K. Dick and Martin Amis have probed into the workings of time, and an overwhelming desire to master time reverberates throughout popular culture. This book considers how imaginative works involving time...

Speculations about new medical advances have been a crucial aspect of science fiction since its origins in the 19th century, when such novels as Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau provided powerful mythic images of doctors with godlike abilities to create and transform human life. This book is the first full-length study of the speculative literature of medicine, with contributions by two science fiction novelists and several noted scholars. Chapters examine how science fiction stories have commented on and influenced the medical establishments of the past and present....

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 frontier experiences have challenged and complicated conventional portrayals of humans in space. This volume reexamines the themes of space and the frontier in science fiction in light of recent scientific and literary developments. From this new perspective, we discern previously unnoticed commentaries from older authors, while newer writers either remain within a reassuring but...

Child characters are surprisingly common in horror, fantasy, and science fiction literature and films. Children represent innocence and virtue and symbolize the classic question of fantastic literature: What is the future of the human race, and how will science and society improve or impair that future? This collection of essays explores the roles of children in the literature and film of the fantastic. 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...