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| critiques of american society in science fiction: The Demolished Man Alfred Bester, 2018-01-08 #4 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written. The first Hugo Award winner for best novel in 1953. “One of the all-time classics of science fiction.”—Isaac Asimov “Bester's two superb books have stood the test of time. For nearly sixty years they’ve held their place on everybody’s list of the ten greatest sf novels” —Robert Silverberg In a world policed by telepaths, Ben Reich plans to commit a crime that hasn’t been heard of in 70 years: murder. That’s the only option left for Reich, whose company is losing a 10-year death struggle with rival D’Courtney Enterprises. Terrorized in his dreams by The Man With No Face and driven to the edge after D’Courtney refuses a merger offer, Reich murders his rival and bribes a high-ranking telepath to help him cover his tracks. But while police prefect Lincoln Powell knows Reich is guilty, his telepath's knowledge is a far cry from admissible evidence. Alfred Bester was among the first important authors of contemporary science fiction. His passionate novels of worldly adventure, high intellect, and tremendous verve, The Stars My Destination and the Hugo Award winning The Demolished Man, established Bester as a s.f. grandmaster, a reputation that was ratified by the Science Fiction Writers of America shortly before his death. Bester also was an acclaimed journalist for Holiday magazine, a reviewer for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and even a writer for Superman. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of Thomas M. Disch, 2000-07-05 A popular insider offers a fascinating history of science fiction filled with provocative critiques, tidbits, and insights that reveal much about our cultural and literary history. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Industrial Society and the Science Fiction Blockbuster Mark T. Decker, 2016-03-01 Can blockbuster films be socially relevant or are they just escapist diversions to entertain the masses and enrich the studios? Not every successful film contains thoughtful commentary, but some that are marketed as pure entertainment do seriously engage social issues. Popular science fiction films of the late 1970s and early 1980s--such as George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, Ridley Scott's Alien and Aliens, and James Cameron's Terminator films--present a critique of our engagement with technology in a way that resonates with 1960s counterculture. As challengers of the status quo's technological underpinnings, Luke Skywalker, Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor echo the once-popular social criticism of philosopher Herbert Marcuse and speak directly to the concerns of people living in a technologically complex society. The films of Lucas, Scott and Cameron made money but also made us think about the world we live in. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: The Black Imagination, Science Fiction and the Speculative Sandra Jackson, Julie Moody Freeman, 2013-10-18 This book expands the discourse as well as the nature of critical commentary on science fiction, speculative fiction and futurism – literary and cinematic by Black writers. The range of topics include the following: black superheroes; issues and themes in selected works by Octavia Butler; selected work of Nalo Hopkinson; the utopian and dystopian impulse in the work of W.E. B. Du Bois and George Schuyler; Derrick Bell’s Space Traders; the Star Trek Franchise; female protagonists through the lens of race and gender in the Alien and Predator film franchises; science fiction in the Caribbean Diaspora; commentary on select African films regarding near-future narratives; as well as a science fiction/speculative literature writer’s discussion of why she writes and how. This book was published as a special issue of African Identities: An International Journal. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: The Dream of the Great American Novel Lawrence Buell, 2014-02-10 The idea of the great American novel continues to thrive almost as vigorously as in its nineteenth-century heyday, defying 150 years of attempts to dismiss it as amateurish or obsolete. In this landmark book, the first in many years to take in the whole sweep of national fiction, Lawrence Buell reanimates this supposedly antiquated idea, demonstrating that its history is a key to the dynamics of national literature and national identity itself. The dream of the G.A.N., as Henry James nicknamed it, crystallized soon after the Civil War. In fresh, in-depth readings of selected contenders from the 1850s onward in conversation with hundreds of other novels, Buell delineates four scripts for G.A.N. candidates. One, illustrated by The Scarlet Letter, is the adaptation of the novel's story-line by later writers, often in ways that are contrary to the original author's own design. Other aspirants, including The Great Gatsby and Invisible Man, engage the American Dream of remarkable transformation from humble origins. A third script, seen in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Beloved, is the family saga that grapples with racial and other social divisions. Finally,mega-novels from Moby-Dick to Gravity's Rainbow feature assemblages of characters who dramatize in microcosm the promise and pitfalls of democracy. The canvas of the great American novel is in constant motion, reflecting revolutions in fictional fashion, the changing face of authorship, and the inseparability of high culture from popular. As Buell reveals, the elusive G.A.N. showcases the myth of the United States as a nation perpetually under construction. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: The Handicapper General Kurt Vonnegut, 1993 |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Octavia E. Butler Gerry Canavan, 2016-10-31 I began writing about power because I had so little, Octavia E. Butler once said. Butler's life as an African American woman--an alien in American society and among science fiction writers--informed the powerful works that earned her an ardent readership and acclaim both inside and outside science fiction. Gerry Canavan offers a critical and holistic consideration of Butler's career. Drawing on Butler's personal papers, Canavan tracks the false starts, abandoned drafts, tireless rewrites, and real-life obstacles that fed Butler's frustrations and launched her triumphs. Canavan departs from other studies to approach Butler first and foremost as a science fiction writer working within, responding to, and reacting against the genre's particular canon. The result is an illuminating study of how an essential SF figure shaped themes, unconventional ideas, and an unflagging creative urge into brilliant works of fiction. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Gale Researcher Guide for: Culture and the Cold War John Matthew Barlow, 2018-09-28 Gale Researcher Guide for: Culture and the Cold War is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Seveneves Neal Stephenson, 2015-05-19 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: American Science Fiction and the Cold War David Seed, 2013-10-31 American Science Fiction--in both literature and film--has played a key role in the portrayal of the fears inherent in the Cold War. The end of this era heralds the need for a reassessment of the literary output of the forty-year period since 1945. Working through a series of key texts, American Science Fiction and the Cold War investigates the political inflections put on American narratives in the post-war decades by Cold War cultural circumstances. Nuclear holocaust, Russian invasion, and the perceived rise of totalitarianism in American society are key elements in the author's exploration of science fiction narratives that include Fahrenheit 451, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Dr. Strangelove. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Gladiator-At-Law Frederik Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth, 2016-08-09 CAUTION! You are about to enter a world... where all engineering ingenuity has been employed for public spectacles of torture and death where the stock market operates with pari-mutuel machines where a court clerk transcribes testimony on punch cards, then feeds it to a jury machine where the dream real-estate development of today has become a cracked-concrete savage jungle In this world, young lawyer Charles Mundin battles a great combine of corporate interests—battles them in board meetings and in dark alleys—in a struggle that lays bare some brutal promises of the future...promises we are beginning to make right now. “...wholly admirable, in both thinking and execution.”—Galaxy “Reminiscent in vigor, bite and acumen to THE SPACE MERCHANTS”—Anthony Boucher. “...possessed of a bite and savage vigor which makes it one of the outstanding science fiction novels of the year.”—The New York Times “...a powerfully convincing story.”—New York Herald Tribune |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein, 2014-06-05 The original uncut edition of STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Hugo Award winner Robert A Heinlein - one of the most beloved, celebrated science-fiction novels of all time. Epic, ambitious and entertaining, STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND caused controversy and uproar when it was first published and is still topical and challenging today. Twenty-five years ago, the first manned mission to Mars was lost, and all hands presumed dead. But someone survived... Born on the doomed spaceship and raised by the Martians who saved his life, Valentine Michael Smith has never seen a human being until the day a second expedition to Mars discovers him. Upon his return to Earth, a young nurse named Jill Boardman sneaks into Smith's hospital room and shares a glass of water with him, a simple act for her but a sacred ritual on Mars. Now, connected by an incredible bond, Smith, Jill and a writer named Jubal must fight to protect a right we all take for granted: the right to love. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review Neil Barron, R. Reginald, Robert Reginald, 2009-11 Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review was founded in 1979 to provide comprehensive coverage of all the major and minor books being released in the genre at that time. This was the golden era of SF publishing, with a thousand titles (old and new) hitting the stands and the bookshelves each and every year. From the older classics to the newest speculative fiction, this was the period when the best and the brightest shined forth their talents. SF&FBR included reviews by writers in the field, by amateur critics, and by littérateurs and University professors. Over a thousand books were covered during the single year of publication, many of them having been reviewed no where else, before or since. The January 1980 issue includes a comprehensive index of all the works featured during the preceding year. This reprint will be a welcome addition to the literature of science fiction and fantasy criticism. Neil Barron is a retired bibliographer and literary critic, editor of the acclaimed Anatomy of Wonder series. Robert Reginald was the publisher for twenty-five years of Borgo Press, and has authored over 110 books of his own. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: The Six-Gun Tarot R. S. Belcher, 2013-01-22 Six-Gun Tarot is the first book in the twisted weird west world of the Golgotha series by R.S. Belcher. Nevada, 1869: Beyond the pitiless 40-Mile Desert lies Golgotha, a cattle town that hides more than its share of unnatural secrets. The sheriff bears the mark of the noose around his neck; some say he is a dead man whose time has not yet come. His half-human deputy is kin to coyotes. The mayor guards a hoard of mythical treasures. A banker's wife belongs to a secret order of assassins. And a shady saloon owner, whose fingers are in everyone's business, may know more about the town's true origins than he's letting on. A haven for the blessed and the damned, Golgotha has known many strange events, but nothing like the primordial darkness stirring in the abandoned silver mine overlooking the town. Bleeding midnight, an ancient evil is spilling into the world, and unless the sheriff and his posse can saddle up in time, Golgotha will have seen its last dawn...and so will all of Creation. R.S. Belcher's The Six-Gun Tarot is an astonishing blend of first-rate steampunk fantasy and Western adventure. (Library Journal, Starred Review) Other Books by R.S. Belcher: The Golgotha Series The Six-Gun Tarot The Shotgun Arcana Nightwise The Brotherhood of the Wheel At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Learning from Other Worlds Patrick Parrinder, 2001 A definite look at the state of science fiction studies today that surveys the field from Hugo Gernsbach to the present. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: A History of Virginia Literature Kevin J. Hayes, 2015-05-19 A History of Virginia Literature chronicles a story that has been more than four hundred years in the making. It looks at the development of literary culture in Virginia from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to the twenty-first century. Divided into four main parts, this History examines the literature of colonial Virginia, Jeffersonian Virginia, Civil War Virginia, and modern Virginia. Individual chapters survey such literary genres as diaries, histories, letters, novels, poetry, political writings, promotion literature, science fiction, and slave narratives. Leading scholars also devote special attention to several major authors, including William Byrd of Westover, Thomas Jefferson, Ellen Glasgow, Edgar Allan Poe, and William Styron. This book is of pivotal importance to the development of American literature and of American studies more generally. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain Matthew Jones, 2017-11-30 For the last sixty years discussion of 1950s science fiction cinema has been dominated by claims that the genre reflected US paranoia about Soviet brainwashing and the nuclear bomb. However, classic films, such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and It Came from Outer Space (1953), and less familiar productions, such as It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), were regularly exported to countries across the world. The histories of their encounters with foreign audiences have not yet been told. Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain begins this task by recounting the story of 1950s British cinema-goers and the aliens and monsters they watched on the silver screen. Drawing on extensive archival research, Matthew Jones makes an exciting and important intervention by locating American science fiction films alongside their domestic counterparts in their British contexts of release and reception. He offers a radical reassessment of the genre, demonstrating for the first time that in Britain, which was a significant market for and producer of science fiction, these films gave voice to different fears than they did in America. While Americans experienced an economic boom, low immigration and the conferring of statehood on Alaska and Hawaii, Britons worried about economic uncertainty, mass immigration and the dissolution of the Empire. Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain uses these and other differences between the British and American experiences of the 1950s to tell a new history of the decade's science fiction cinema, exploring for the first time the ways in which the genre came to mean something unique to Britons. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: A PAIL OF AIR FRITZ LEIBER, 2023-06-03 Pretty soon I was feeling my familiar way through the thirty or so blankets and rugs Pa has got hung around to slow down the escape of air from the Nest, and I wasn't quite so scared. I began to hear the tick-ticking of the clocks in the Nest and knew I was getting back into air, because there's no sound outside in the vacuum, of course. But my mind was still crawly and uneasy as I pushed through the last blankets — ..FROM THE BOOK.. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: American Science Fiction Various, 2012-09-27 Collects nine classic science fiction novels from 1953 to 1958. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Alternate Americas M. Keith Booker, 2006-02-28 For more than 50 years, science fiction films have been among the most important and successful products of American cinema, and are worthy of study for that reason alone. On a deeper level, the genre has reflected important themes, concerns and developments in American society, so that a history of science fiction film also serves as a cultural history of America over the past half century. M. Keith Booker has selected fifteen of the most successful and innovative science fiction films of all time, and examined each of them at length—from cultural, technical and cinematic perspectives—to see where they came from and what they meant for the future of cinema and for America at large. From Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Star Wars, from Blade Runner to The Matrix, these landmark films have expressed our fears and dreams, our abilities and our deficiencies. In this deep-seeking investigation, we can all find something of ourselves that we recognize, as well as something that we've never recognized before. The focus on a fairly small number of landmark films allows detailed attention to genuinely original movies, including: Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Blade Runner, The Terminator, Robocop, The Abyss, Independence Day, and The Matrix. This book is ideal for general readers interested in science fiction and film. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Empire of the Senseless Kathy Acker, 1988 Set in the near future, in a Paris devastated by revolution and disease, Empire of the Senseless is narrated by two terrorists and occasional lovers, Thivai, a pirate, and Abhor, part robot and part human. Together and apart, the two undertake an odyssey of carnage, a holocaust of the erotic. An elegy for the world of our fathers, as Kathy Acker calls it, where the terrorists and the wretched of the earth are in command, marching down a road charted by Genet to a Marseillaise composed by Sade. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories Tom Shippey, 2003-01 A collection of classic science fiction short stories features tales by H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clark, Frederik Pohl, Clifford Simak, Brian Aldiss, Ursala K. LeGuin, and many others. Edited by the author of The Road to Middle-Earth. 20,000 first printing. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Speculative Blackness André M. Carrington, 2016-02-29 In Speculative Blackness, André M. Carrington analyzes the highly racialized genre of speculative fiction—including science fiction, fantasy, and utopian works, along with their fan cultures—to illustrate the relationship between genre conventions in media and the meanings ascribed to blackness in the popular imagination. Carrington’s argument about authorship, fandom, and race in a genre that has been both marginalized and celebrated offers a black perspective on iconic works of science fiction. He examines the career of actor Nichelle Nichols, who portrayed the character Uhura in the original Star Trek television series and later became a recruiter for NASA, and the spin-off series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, set on a space station commanded by a black captain. He recovers a pivotal but overlooked moment in 1950s science fiction fandom in which readers and writers of fanzines confronted issues of race by dealing with a fictitious black fan writer and questioning the relevance of race to his ostensible contributions to the 'zines. Carrington mines the productions of Marvel comics and the black-owned comics publisher Milestone Media, particularly the representations of black sexuality in its flagship title, Icon. He also interrogates online fan fiction about black British women in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Harry Potter series. Throughout this nuanced analysis, Carrington theorizes the relationship between race and genre in cultural production, revealing new understandings of the significance of blackness in twentieth-century American literature and culture. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction John Rieder, 2013-01-01 This groundbreaking study explores science fiction's complex relationship with colonialism and imperialism. In the first full-length study of the subject, John Rieder argues that the history and ideology of colonialism are crucial components of science fiction's displaced references to history and its engagement in ideological production. With original scholarship and theoretical sophistication, he offers new and innovative readings of both acknowledged classics and rediscovered gems. Rider proposes that the basic texture of much science fiction—in particular its vacillation between fantasies of discovery and visions of disaster—is established by the profound ambivalence that pervades colonial accounts of the exotic “other.” Includes discussion of works by Edwin A. Abbott, Edward Bellamy, Edgar Rice Burroughs, John W. Campbell, George Tomkyns Chesney, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard, Edmond Hamilton, W. H. Hudson, Richard Jefferies, Henry Kuttner, Alun Llewellyn, Jack London, A. Merritt, Catherine L. Moore, William Morris, Garrett P. Serviss, Mary Shelley, Olaf Stapledon, and H. G. Wells. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: American Graffiti Peter Krämer, 2023-03-03 Combining a detailed film analysis with archival research and social science approaches, this book examines how American Graffiti (1973), a low-budget and star-less teen comedy by a filmmaker whose only previous feature had been a box office flop, became one of the highest grossing and most highly acclaimed films of all time in the United States, and one of the key expressions of the nostalgia wave washing over the country in the 1970s. American Graffiti: George Lucas, the New Hollywood and the Baby Boom Generation explores the origins and development of the film, its form and themes as well as its marketing, reception, audiences and impact. It does so by considering the life and career of the film’s co-writer and director George Lucas; the development and impact of the baby boom generation to which he, many of his collaborators and the vast majority of the film’s audience belonged; the transformation of the American film industry in the late 1960s and 1970s; and broader changes in American society which gave rise to an intense sense of crisis and growing pessimism across the population. This book is ideal for students, scholars and those with an interest in youth cinema, the New Hollywood and George Lucas as well as both Film and American Studies more broadly. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Science Fiction and Philosophy Susan Schneider, 2016-03-07 Featuring numerous updates and enhancements, Science Fiction and Philosophy, 2nd Edition, presents a collection of readings that utilize concepts developed from science fiction to explore a variety of classic and contemporary philosophical issues. Uses science fiction to address a series of classic and contemporary philosophical issues, including many raised by recent scientific developments Explores questions relating to transhumanism, brain enhancement, time travel, the nature of the self, and the ethics of artificial intelligence Features numerous updates to the popular and highly acclaimed first edition, including new chapters addressing the cutting-edge topic of the technological singularity Draws on a broad range of science fiction’s more familiar novels, films, and TV series, including I, Robot, The Hunger Games, The Matrix, Star Trek, Blade Runner, and Brave New World Provides a gateway into classic philosophical puzzles and topics informed by the latest technology |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Farewell, Earth's Bliss D G Compton, 2011-09-29 On board an obsolete ship, nine weeks out from home, the latest batch of colonists arrive at their destination. A grim penal settlement in a wilderness worlds away from the homes they will never see again. TASMANIA? BOTANY BAY? No. For this is tomorrow, not yesterday. The dumping ground for social outcasts and political deportees is Mars, barren, unproductive, but invaluable as a convict settlement. What kind of welcome will the twenty-four deportees receive when the reception party from the Settlement reaches their stranded ship? And how will they survive in a primitive environment, an alien system? |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: A Planet for Rent Yoss, 2014-09-30 The most successful and controversial Cuban Science Fiction writer of all time, Yoss (aka José Miguel Sánchez Gómez) is known for his acerbic portraits of the island under Communism. In his bestselling A Planet for Rent, Yoss pays homage to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and 334 by Thomas M. Disch. A critique of Cuba in the nineties, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, A Planet for Rent marks the debut in English of an astonishingly brave and imaginative Latin American voice. Praise for Yoss “One of the most prestigious science fiction authors of the island.” —On Cuba Magazine A gifted and daring writer. —David Iaconangelo José Miguel Sánchez [Yoss] is Cuba’s most decorated science fiction author, who has cultivated the most prestige for this genre in the mainstream, and the only person of all the Island’s residents who lives by his pen.” —Cuenta Regresiva Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David Award in the science fiction category for Timshel. Together with his peculiar pseudonym, the author's aesthetic of an impentinent rocker has allowed him to stand out amongst his fellow Cuban writers. Earning a degree in Biology in 1991, he went on to graduate from the first ever course on Narrative Techniques at the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Center of Literary Training, in the year 1999. Today, Yoss writes both realistic and science fiction works. Alongside these novels, the author produces essays, Praise for, and compilations, and actively promotes the Cuban science fiction literary workshops, Espiral and Espacio Abierto. When he isn’t translating, David Frye teaches Latin American culture and society at the University of Michigan. Translations include First New Chronicle and Good Government by Guaman Poma de Ayala (Peru, 1615); The Mangy Parrot by José Joaquín Fernandez de Lizardi (Mexico, 1816), for which he received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; Writing across Cultures: Narrative Transculturation in Latin America by Ángel Rama (Uruguay, 1982), and several Cuban and Spanish novels and poems. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: The Ministry for the Future Kim Stanley Robinson, 2020-10-06 ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR “The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. —Ezra Klein (Vox) The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis. One hopes that this book is read widely—that Robinson’s audience, already large, grows by an order of magnitude. Because the point of his books is to fire the imagination.―New York Review of Books If there’s any book that hit me hard this year, it was Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, a sweeping epic about climate change and humanity’s efforts to try and turn the tide before it’s too late. ―Polygon (Best of the Year) Masterly. —New Yorker [The Ministry for the Future] struck like a mallet hitting a gong, reverberating through the year ... it’s terrifying, unrelenting, but ultimately hopeful. Robinson is the SF writer of my lifetime, and this stands as some of his best work. It’s my book of the year. —Locus Science-fiction visionary Kim Stanley Robinson makes the case for quantitative easing our way out of planetary doom. ―Bloomberg Green |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction Darren Harris-Fain, 2005 Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction: The Age of Maturity, 1970-2000 explores the major trends and developments during three decades that witnessed science fiction's most dramatic progression from subliterary escapist entertainment to a more sophisticated literature of ideas. Darren Harris-Fain suggests that to understand American science fiction fully, it is essential to realize that the current field with all its variety results from the proceeding decades of writings. In addition, he contends that although much science fiction of merit was written in America prior to 1970, the latter decades of the twentieth century witnessed a dramatic improvement in quality, even as the field fragmented into a variety of subgenres and as writers sought to transcend earlier critical dismissals. Harris-Fain discusses significant and representative works, most of which mainstream literary scholars and critics ignore, as he charts the historical and literary development of contemporary American science fiction. the internal divisions along both literary and political lines experienced during the Vietnam era; the influence of the feminist movement and other contemporary concerns; the increasing contributions of female, African American, and gay and lesbian writers; and the emergence of such significant trends as hard science fiction, cyberpunk, alternate history, and shared-world stories. Harris-Fain also considers literary science fiction's relationship to the mass media, the effects the popularity of fantasy has on the field, and academia's continued misprizing of the genre. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Octavia's Brood Walidah Imarisha, adrienne maree brown, 2015-03-23 Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision, and try to create, such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought twenty of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. The visionary tales of Octavia’s Brood span genres—sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism—but all are united by an attempt to inject a healthy dose of imagination and innovation into our political practice and to try on new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around us, and all the selves and worlds that could be. The collection is rounded off with essays by Tananarive Due and Mumia Abu-Jamal, and a preface by Sheree Renée Thomas. PRAISE FOR OCTAVIA'S BROOD: Those concerned with justice and liberation must always persuade the mass of people that a better world is possible. Our job begins with speculative fictions that fire society's imagination and its desire for change. In adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha's visionary conception, and by its activist-artists' often stunning acts of creative inception, Octavia's Brood makes for great thinking and damn good reading. The rest will be up to us. —Jeff Chang, author of Who We Be: The Colorization of America “Conventional exclamatory phrases don’t come close to capturing the essence of what we have here in Octavia’s Brood. One part sacred text, one part social movement manual, one part diary of our future selves telling us, ‘It’s going to be okay, keep working, keep loving.’ Our radical imaginations are under siege and this text is the rescue mission. It is the new cornerstone of every class I teach on inequality, justice, and social change....This is the text we’ve been waiting for.” —Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier Octavia once told me that two things worried her about the future of humanity: The tendency to think hierarchically, and the tendency to place ourselves higher on the hierarchy than others. I think she would be humbled beyond words that the fine, thoughtful writers in this volume have honored her with their hearts and minds. And that in calling for us to consider that hierarchical structure, they are not walking in her shadow, nor standing on her shoulders, but marching at her side. —Steven Barnes, author of Lion’s Blood “Never has one book so thoroughly realized the dream of its namesake. Octavia's Brood is the progeny of two lovers of Octavia Butler and their belief in her dream that science fiction is for everybody.... Butler could not wish for better evidence of her touch changing our literary and living landscapes. Play with these children, read these works, and find the children in you waiting to take root under the stars!” —Moya Bailey and Ayana Jamieson, Octavia E. Butler Legacy “Like [Octavia] Butler's fiction, this collection is cartography, a map to freedom.” —dream hampton, filmmaker and Visiting Artist at Stanford University’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts Walidah Imarisha is a writer, organizer, educator, and spoken word artist. She is the author of the poetry collectionScars/Stars and facilitates writing workshops at schools, community centers, youth detention facilities, and women's prisons. adrienne maree brown is a 2013 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow writing science fiction in Detroit, Michigan. She received a 2013 Detroit Knight Arts Challenge Award to run a series of Octavia Butler–based writing workshops. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Horror and Science Fiction Cinema and Society Martin Harris, 2024-09-02 Examining how horror and science fiction films from the 1950s to the present invent and explore fictional “us-versus-them” scenarios, this book analyzes the different ways such films employ allegory and/or satire to interrogate the causes and consequences of increasing polarization in American politics and society. Starting with the killer ants film with an anti-communist subtext Them! (1954) and concluding with Jordan Peele’s social horror film with revenge-seeking homicidal doppelgängers Us (2019), Martin Harris highlights social and political contexts, contemporary reviews and responses, and retrospective evaluations to show how American horror and science fiction films reflect and respond to contemporary conflicts marking various periods in U.S. history from post-WWII to the present, including those concerning race, gender, class, faith, political ideology, national identity, and other elements of American society. Horror and Science Fiction Cinema and Society draws upon cinematic sociology to provide a resourceful approach to American horror and science fiction films that integrates discussion of plot construction and character development with analyses of the thematic uses of conflict, guiding readers’ understanding of how filmmakers create otherworldly confrontations to deliver real-world social and political commentary. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Galactic Suburbia Lisa Yaszek, 2008 In this groundbreaking cultural history, Lisa Yaszek recovers a lost tradition of women's science fiction that flourished after 1945. This new kind of science fiction was set in a place called galactic suburbia, a literary frontier that was home to nearly 300 women writers. These authors explored how women's lives, loves, and work were being transformed by new sciences and technologies, thus establishing women's place in the American future imaginary.Yaszek shows how the authors of galactic suburbia rewrote midcentury culture's assumptions about women's domestic, political, and scientific lives. Her case studies of luminaries such as Judith Merril, Carol Emshwiller, and Anne McCaffrey and lesser-known authors such as Alice Eleanor Jones, Mildred Clingerman, and Doris Pitkin Buck demonstrate how galactic suburbia is the world's first literary tradition to explore the changing relations of gender, science, and society.Galactic Suburbia challenges conventional literary histories that posit men as the progenitors of modern science fiction and women as followers who turned to the genre only after the advent of the women's liberation movement. AsYaszek demonstrates, stories written by women about women in galactic suburbia anticipated the development of both feminist science fiction and domestic science fiction written by men. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: The Peace War Vernor Vinge, 2007-04-01 First in a quintessential hard-science fiction adventure, Hugo Award-winning author Vernor Vinge's The Peace War follows a scientist determined to put an end to the militarization of his greatest invention--and of the government behind it. The Peace Authority conquered the world with a weapon that never should have been a weapon--the bobble, a spherical force-field impenetrable by any force known to mankind. Encasing governmental installations and military bases in bobbles, the Authority becomes virtually omnipotent. But they've never caught Paul Hoehler, the maverick who invented the technology, and who has been working quietly for decades to develop a way to defeat the Authority. With the help of an underground network of determined, independent scientists and a teenager who may be the apprentice genius he's needed for so long, he will shake the world. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Cinema M. Keith Booker, 2020-06-15 In the years since Georges Méliès’s Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) was released in 1902, more than 1000 science fiction films have been made by filmmakers around the world. The versatility of science fiction cinema has allowed it to expand into a variety of different markets, appealing to age groups from small children to adults. The technical advances in filmmaking technology have enabled a new sophistication in visual effects. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Cinema contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, films, companies, techniques, themes, and subgenres. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about science fiction cinema. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: American Silent Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy Feature Films, 1913-1929 John T. Soister, Henry Nicolella, Steve Joyce, 2014-01-10 During the Silent Era, when most films dealt with dramatic or comedic takes on the boy meets girl, boy loses girl theme, other motion pictures dared to tackle such topics as rejuvenation, revivication, mesmerism, the supernatural and the grotesque. A Daughter of the Gods (1916), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Magician (1926) and Seven Footprints to Satan (1929) were among the unusual and startling films containing story elements that went far beyond the realm of highly unlikely. Using surviving documentation and their combined expertise, the authors catalog and discuss these departures from the norm in this encyclopedic guide to American horror, science fiction and fantasy in the years from 1913 through 1929. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: The Centauri Device M. John Harrison, 2010-12-30 John Truck was to outward appearances just another lowlife spaceship captain. But he was also the last of the Centaurans, or at least half of him was, which meant that he was the only person who could operate the Centauri Device, a sentient bomb which might hold the key to settling a vicious space war. M. John Harrison's classic novel turns the conventions of space opera on their head, and is written with the precision and brilliance for which is famed. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Contemporary American Science Fiction Film Terence McSweeney, Stuart Joy, 2022-02-21 Contemporary American Science Fiction Film explores and interrogates a diverse variety of popular and culturally relevant American science fiction films made in the first two decades of the new millennium, offering a ground-breaking investigation of the impactful role of genre cinema in the modern era. Placing one of the most popular and culturally resonant American film genres broadly within its rich social, historical, industrial, and political context, the book interrogates some of the defining critical debates of the era via an in-depth analysis of a range of important films. An international team of authors draw on case studies from across the science fiction genre to examine what these films can tell us about the time period, how the films themselves connect to the social and political context, how the fears and anxieties they portray resonate beyond the screen, and how the genre responds to the shifting coordinates of the Hollywood film industry. Offering new insights and perspectives on the cinematic science fiction genre, this volume will appeal primarily to scholars and students of film, television, cultural and media studies, as well as anyone interested in science fiction and speculative film. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature Vol 2 R. Reginald, Mary A. Burgess, Douglas Menville, 2010-09-01 Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, A Checklist, 1700-1974, Volume Two of Two, contains Contemporary Science Fiction Authors II. |
| critiques of american society in science fiction: The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction Eric Carl Link, Gerry Canavan, 2015-01-26 This Companion explores the relationship between the ideas and themes of American science fiction and their roots in the American cultural experience. |
The Popular Tradition of Science Fiction Criticism, 1926-1980
Gernsback defined the basic characteristics of science fiction, described several different purposes in and different audiences for science fiction, argued for the unique importance of …
A Defense of the Science Fiction Literary Genre:
Apr 18, 2020 · American Society during the Cold War Science fiction (sci-fi) is an immensely popular form of literature in today’s world; in fact, as of 2017, it was tied with fantasy as the …
American Science Fiction and Contemporary Criticism - JSTOR
Yet, not unexpectedly perhaps, science fiction criticism's American Science growth has led also to its fragmentation. Early science fiction criti Fiction, Sharon DeGraw. cism had a singular …
Critiques Of American Society In Science Fiction (book)
Jason Haslam,2015-05-08 This book focuses on the interplay of gender race and their representation in American science fiction from the nineteenth century through to the twenty …
SDSU Template, Version 11.1
Literary science fiction analyzes and contextualizes American culture in different eras. It examines contemporaneous cultural issues and critiques the futures that a society envisions.
Occupy the future: A rhetorical analysis of dystopian film and …
critiques. Notably, speculative fiction that depicts dystopian societies—visions of a futuristic world gone wrong—often functions as a predictive warning of the dangers of the existing socio …
A SOCIO-POLITICAL ANALYSIS OF SCIENCE FICTION …
cteristics of dystopian and utopian societies in speculative narratives, and how these narratives reflect and critique contemporary society. We will also explore the role of sci.
Science Fiction and Utopia in the Anthropocene - Marquette …
These texts are used to identify patterns of thought that have become habitual in the cultural moment of the Anthropocene, and they are explored as critiques of, alternatives to, and lines of …
Critiques Of American Society In Science Fiction Full PDF
Critiques Of American Society In Science Fiction: gratitude journal i love you to the moon and back gratitude journal - Sep 04 2023 web gratitude journal i love you to the moon and back …
Science Fiction is a Humanism: The “Open Universe” Ethics of …
The specific link between science fiction and existentialism is found in the way that both approaches emphasize the fact that our greatest human creations are born of the unknown.
EXPLORING DYSTOPIAN REALITIES AND UTOPIAN VISIONS …
also offer critiques of contemporary society. Science fiction specifically is a genre that serves to critique the stifling vision of reality imposed by exploi ative global capitalism [5]. It is a mode of …
Surveillance Society in Dystopian Novels and Contemporary …
More precisely, according to American professor Keith Booker, for a work to be deemed dystopian, it needs to foreground the oppressive society in which it is set as a way to critique …
Science-Fiction Critiques of the American Space Program, …
Space travel had been the most prominent feature of science fiction since long before the war, but even within the science-fiction community there was doubt that men would ever really blast …
Microsoft Word - Shack, Social Science Fiction Syllabus …
Responding to the social and political upheavals they were experiencing, each of our authors leverages particular sub-genres of science fiction to provide a pointed critique of their …
Examining Ray Bradbury s Dystopian Vision: A Philosophical …
Through the analysis of two opposing articles that reference selective works, it explores Bradbury’s impact on ongoing philosophical discussions, specifically centering on themes such …
Contemporary Trends in Science Fiction Criticism, 1980-1999
Thomas D. Clareson's Some Kind of Paradise: The Emergence of American Science Fiction (1985), a companion volume to his annotated bibliography, Science Fiction in America, 1870s …
Eco-criticism, Techno-Capitalism, and Speculative Fiction: An …
umanitarian and conservationist themes, as a critique of Bradbury’s capitalist American society that wishes to conquer all. “Simply defined, ecocriticism is the st dy of the relationship between …
Critiques Of American Society In Science Fiction (2024)
Critical Theory and Science Fiction Carl Freedman,Carl Freedom,2013-09-01 Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year This innovative cultural critique offers valuable …
The Popular Tradition of Science Fiction Criticism, 1926 …
Gernsback defined the basic characteristics of science fiction, described several different purposes in and different audiences for science fiction, argued for the unique importance of …
A Defense of the Science Fiction Literary Genre:
Apr 18, 2020 · American Society during the Cold War Science fiction (sci-fi) is an immensely popular form of literature in today’s world; in fact, as of 2017, it was tied with fantasy as the …
American Science Fiction and Contemporary Criticism - JSTOR
Yet, not unexpectedly perhaps, science fiction criticism's American Science growth has led also to its fragmentation. Early science fiction criti Fiction, Sharon DeGraw. cism had a singular …
The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction
of history across the so-called American century. The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction explores the relationship between the ideas, themes, and conventions of …
Critiques Of American Society In Science Fiction (book)
Jason Haslam,2015-05-08 This book focuses on the interplay of gender race and their representation in American science fiction from the nineteenth century through to the twenty …
SDSU Template, Version 11.1
Literary science fiction analyzes and contextualizes American culture in different eras. It examines contemporaneous cultural issues and critiques the futures that a society envisions.
Occupy the future: A rhetorical analysis of dystopian film and …
critiques. Notably, speculative fiction that depicts dystopian societies—visions of a futuristic world gone wrong—often functions as a predictive warning of the dangers of the existing socio …
A SOCIO-POLITICAL ANALYSIS OF SCIENCE FICTION …
cteristics of dystopian and utopian societies in speculative narratives, and how these narratives reflect and critique contemporary society. We will also explore the role of sci.
Science Fiction and Utopia in the Anthropocene
These texts are used to identify patterns of thought that have become habitual in the cultural moment of the Anthropocene, and they are explored as critiques of, alternatives to, and lines …
Critiques Of American Society In Science Fiction Full PDF
Critiques Of American Society In Science Fiction: gratitude journal i love you to the moon and back gratitude journal - Sep 04 2023 web gratitude journal i love you to the moon and back …
Science Fiction is a Humanism: The “Open Universe” Ethics of …
The specific link between science fiction and existentialism is found in the way that both approaches emphasize the fact that our greatest human creations are born of the unknown.
EXPLORING DYSTOPIAN REALITIES AND UTOPIAN VISIONS IN …
also offer critiques of contemporary society. Science fiction specifically is a genre that serves to critique the stifling vision of reality imposed by exploi ative global capitalism [5]. It is a mode of …
Surveillance Society in Dystopian Novels and Contemporary …
More precisely, according to American professor Keith Booker, for a work to be deemed dystopian, it needs to foreground the oppressive society in which it is set as a way to critique …
Science-Fiction Critiques of the American Space Program, …
Space travel had been the most prominent feature of science fiction since long before the war, but even within the science-fiction community there was doubt that men would ever really blast …
Critiques Of American Society In Science Fiction (PDF)
Critical Theory and Science Fiction Carl Freedman,Carl Freedom,2013-09-01 Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year This innovative cultural critique offers valuable …
Microsoft Word - Shack, Social Science Fiction Syllabus …
Responding to the social and political upheavals they were experiencing, each of our authors leverages particular sub-genres of science fiction to provide a pointed critique of their …
Examining Ray Bradbury s Dystopian Vision: A Philosophical …
Through the analysis of two opposing articles that reference selective works, it explores Bradbury’s impact on ongoing philosophical discussions, specifically centering on themes such …
Contemporary Trends in Science Fiction Criticism, 1980 …
Thomas D. Clareson's Some Kind of Paradise: The Emergence of American Science Fiction (1985), a companion volume to his annotated bibliography, Science Fiction in America, 1870s …
Eco-criticism, Techno-Capitalism, and Speculative Fiction: An …
umanitarian and conservationist themes, as a critique of Bradbury’s capitalist American society that wishes to conquer all. “Simply defined, ecocriticism is the st dy of the relationship between …
