Metamorphoses of Science Fiction
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Description
Returning to print for the first time since the 1980s, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction is the origin point for decades of literary and theoretical criticism of science fiction and related genres. Darko Suvin’s paradigm-setting definition of SF as «the literature of cognitive estrangement» established a robust theory of the genre that continues to spark fierce debate, as well as inspiring myriad intellectual descendants and disciples. Suvin’s centuries-spanning history of the genre links SF to a long tradition of utopian and satirical literatures crying out for a better world than this one, showing how SF and the imagination of utopia are now forever intertwined. In addition to the 1979 text of the book, this edition contains three additional essays from Suvin that update, expand and reconsider the terms of his original intervention, as well as a new introduction and preface that situate the book in the context of the decades of SF studies that have followed in its wake.
ISBN
9783034319485
Publication Date
2016
Publisher
Peter Lang Publishing
Disciplines
English Language and Literature
Comments
Table of Contents
Estrangement and Cognition
SF and the Genological Jungle
Defining the Literary Genre of Utopia: Some Historical Semantics, Some Genology, a Proposal, and a Plea
SF and the Novum
The Alternative Island
The Shift to Anticipation: Radical Rhapsody and Romantic Recoil
Liberalism Mutes the Anticipation: The Space-Binding Machines
Anticipating the Sunburst: Dream, Vision - or Nightmare?
Wells as the Turning Point of the SF Tradition
The Time Machine versus Utopia as Structural Models for SF
Russian SF and Its Utopian Tradition
Karel Capek, or the Aliens Amongst Us
Science Fiction, Metaphor, Parable, and Chronotope (with the Bad Conscience of Reaganism)
Considering the Sense of "Fantasy" or "Fantastic Fiction": An Effusion*
Circumstances and Stances: A Retrospect.