Impossibility Fiction: Alternativity, Extrapolation, SpeculationDerek Littlewood, Peter Stockwell Impossibility fiction is an 'intergenre' that has recently been the resort of many writers searching for new ways of understanding and expressing the real world of the imagination, making use of fantasy, alternative history and science fiction. Coping with ideas that are both impossible and realistically constructed is the ultimate contemporary challenge of our technology. The chapters of this book move towards establishing appropriate readings that allow contemporary readers to negotiate unreality, a skill that the end of the millennium is making inevitably necessary. Such strategies have long been the preserve of literary and cultural study, and here a number of well-regarded scholars and some new to the field make their contribution to an area that has become increasingly important in recent years. From Mary Shelley to Philip K. Dick, Iain M. Banks to J.G. Ballard, taking in African-American science fiction, Jurassic Park, and Kurt Vonnegut, and exploring issues of alternative history and ideology, feminism, the holocaust, characterisation, and impossible geography, this collection is an important source-book for all those interested in the literature, culture and philosophy of realistic impossible worlds. |
Contents
| 3 | |
| 11 | |
T H White Arnold Bax and the Alternative History of Britain | 25 |
Feminist Science Fiction And | 37 |
The Case of Philip | 45 |
Extrapolation | 57 |
Silence and Awkwardness in Representations of the Jewish | 75 |
George S Schuyler and the Fate of Early AfricanAmerican | 87 |
On the Subversion of Character in the Literature of Identity | 107 |
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African-American alien argue Atrocity Exhibition attempt audience Bakhtin becomes Billennium Black Empire Blade Runner Brian Aldiss century characters chronotope claims Concentration City constructed contemporary create critics Crystal World Culture cyberpunk cyberspace dialogue Dick discourse discussion Drowned World elements existence experience exploration extrapolation fantastic feminist SF Fevvers film future genre Gibson's grotesque Gurgeh Helliconia Holocaust human Ibid idea identity ideological Idirans imagination impossibility fiction individual inner space J.G. Ballard Jurassic Park Kayser's Kerans landscape language Levinas literary literature London Lucius machine Margarita Mary Shelley Mary Shelley's meaning metaphor myth narrative narrator novel Omegarus and Syderia op.cit paradox planet Player Piano poem postmodern protagonist Proteus psychological race rational readers reading reality relationship Scanner Darkly Schuyler Science Fiction Studies science-fiction scientific sense Shelley social society speculative story strategies T.H. White technophobia textual theme theory transformation University Press utopia Verney Vonnegut writing
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References to this book
Virtual Geographies: Cyberpunk at the Intersection of the Postmodern and ... Sabine Heuser No preview available - 2003 |