Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Science Fiction & Fantasy

A philologist and medieval scholar, J. R. R. Tolkien never intended to write immensely popular literature that would challenge traditional ideas about the nature of great literature and that was worthy of study in colleges across the world. He set out only to write a good story, the kind of story he and his friends would enjoy reading. In The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien created an entire world informed by his vast knowledge of mythology, languages, and medieval literature. In the 1960s, his books unexpectedly gained cult status with a new generation of young,...

In this new book, Noga Applebaum surveys science fiction novels published for children and young adults from 1980 to the present, exposing the anti-technological bias existing within a genre often associated with the celebration of technology. Applebaum argues that perceptions of technology as a corrupting force, particularly in relation to its use by young people, are a manifestation of the enduring allure of the myth of childhood innocence and result in young-adult fiction that endorses a technophobic agenda. This agenda is a form of resistance to the changing face of childhood and...

Introducing Deep Ends: The J.G. Ballard Anthology 2014, a 200-page, full-size, full-colour collection of work by and about J.G. Ballard. Deep Ends features an ultra-rare 1980 prose-poem by JGB called Crystal of the Sea, discovered as the Foreword to an obscure Japanese photo book, plus previously-unpublished articles by Bea Ballard and Iain Sinclair, plus a long and extraordinary interview with Fay Ballard by David Pringle. But wait, there's more The book's contents include: -...

A philologist and medieval scholar, J. R. R. Tolkien never intended to write immensely popular literature that would challenge traditional ideas about the nature of great literature and that was worthy of study in colleges across the world. He set out only to write a good story, the kind of story he and his friends would enjoy reading. In The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien created an entire world informed by his vast knowledge of mythology, languages, and medieval literature. In the 1960s, his books unexpectedly gained cult status with a new generation of young,...

In Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction, Quentin Meillassoux addresses the problem of chaos and of the constancy of natural laws in the context of literature. With his usual argumentative rigor, he elucidates the distinction between science fiction, a genre in which science remains possible in spite of all the upheavals that may attend the world in which the tale takes place, and fiction outside-science, the literary concept he fashions in this book, a fiction in which science becomes impossible. With its investigations of the philosophies of Hume, Kant, and Popper, Science...