Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Science Fiction & Fantasy

In a century that has taken us from the horse and buggy to the world wide web, science fiction has established itself as the literature to explore the ways in which technology transforms society while its counterpart, genre fantasy, insistently reminds us of the magical transformations of the individual in response to the demands of the social. So it should come as no surprise that the fans and producers of these genres come together to create the culture of the future around the ideal that tales of wonder about the future and the imaginary past can be shared as both symbolic communication...

Many readers drawn into the heroic tales of J. R. R. Tolkien's imaginary world of Middle-earth have given little conscious thought to the importance of the land itself in his stories or to the vital roles played by the flora and fauna of that land. As a result, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion are rarely considered to be works of environmental literature or mentioned together with such authors as John Muir, Rachel Carson, or Aldo Leopold. Tolkien's works do not express an activist agenda; instead, his environmentalism is expressed in the form of...

" J.R.R. Tolkien's zeal for medieval literary, religious, and cultural ideas deeply influenced his entire life and provided the seeds for his own fiction. In Tolkien's Art, Chance discusses not only such classics as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, but focuses on his minor works as well, outlining in detail the sources and influences--from pagan epic to Christian legend-that formed the foundation of Tolkien's masterpieces, his "mythology for England."

Science fiction films, from the original Frankenstein and The Fly to Blade Runner and The Terminator, traditionally have been filled with aliens, spaceships, androids, cyborgs, and all sorts of robotic creatures along with their various creators. The popular appeal of these characters is undeniable, but what is the meaning of this generation of creatures? What is the relationship of mad scientist to subject, of human to android, of creature to creator?

Androids, Humanoids, and Other Folklore Monsters is a profound investigation of this popular...

Since the end of the Second World War--and particularly over the last decade--Japanese science fiction has strongly influenced global popular culture. Unlike American and British science fiction, its most popular examples have been visual--from Gojira (Godzilla) and Astro Boy in the 1950s and 1960s to the anime masterpieces Akira and Ghost in the Shell of the 1980s and 1990s--while little attention has been paid to a vibrant tradition of prose science fiction in Japan.

Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams remedies this neglect with a rich exploration of the...

Dream Revisionaries charts the evolution of women's utopian
writing in Britain and the United States between 1869 and 1920. This period
saw the emergence of a new kind of utopian text--one that redefined
women's roles in society and questioned the very foundations of
the social order on both sides of the Atlantic. During the period under
study, more than one hundred remarkably diverse utopian narratives written
by women were published on both sides of the Atlantic: feminist and antifeminist,
socialist and capitalist; placed in Kentucky, in London, at the North...

Fascination with J. R. R. Tolkien s The Lord of the Rings is at an all-time high following the release of Peter Jackson s widely acclaimed film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring. A new generation of devotees is immersing itself in the fictive world of Middle-earth to find fantasy, wonder, and enchantment. And hobbits, elves, dwarves, and wizards once again people the imaginations of readers revisiting this classic story of sacrifice, loss, and redemption.

In One Ring to Bind Them All, Anne Petty shows that when viewed through the combined...

The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction is a lively account of the role of women and feminism in the development of American science fiction during its formative years, the mid-20th century. Beginning in 1926, with the publication of the first issue of Amazing Stories, Justine Larbalestier examines science fiction's engagement with questions of femininity, masculinity, sex and sexuality. She traces the debates over the place of women and feminism in science fiction as it emerged in stories, letters and articles in science...

Fueled by outrage at social conditions, Caesar's Column was the first major dystopian novel in the English language. Its author,...

Will novels and stories be relevant in the next millennium, when the boundaries between illusion and reality, and observer and observed, may dissipate in a whirl of images, signals and data? This essay collection divines the prospects of fiction in the information age by examining cyberpunk literature. A movement less than a decade old, cyberpunk is driven by deep concerns about society, ethics, and new technology and has been defined as the literature of the first generation of science-fiction writers actually to live in a science-fiction world.

These essays were first presented at the...