How Science Shapes Science Fiction

How Science Shapes Science Fiction PDF Author: Charles L. Adler
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781629979472
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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How Science Shapes Science Fiction

How Science Shapes Science Fiction PDF Author: Charles L. Adler
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781629979472
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book

Book Description


Different Engines

Different Engines PDF Author: Mark Brake
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 0230553974
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Since its emergence in the seventeenth century, science fiction has been a sustained, coherent and subversive check on the promises and pitfalls of science. In their turn, invention and discovery have forced fiction writers to confront the nature and limits of reality. Different Engines explores how this fascinating symbiosis shapes what we see, do, and dream. From Johannes Kepler's Somnium to Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, science fiction has emerged as a mode of thinking, complementary to the scientific method. Science fiction's field of interest is the gap between the new worlds uncovered by experimentation and exploration, and the fantastic worlds of the imagination. Its proponents find drama in the tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Its readers, many of them scientists and politicians, find inspiration in the contrast between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Brake and Hook's Different Engines is a unique, provocative and compelling account of science fiction as the arbiter of progress.

Science Fiction

Science Fiction PDF Author: Sherryl Vint
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780262363631
Category : Science fiction
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"An overview of how science fiction has grappled with the ways that science and technology shape and change human lives, emphasizing the challenges of the 21st century"--

Ten Billion Tomorrows

Ten Billion Tomorrows PDF Author: Brian Clegg
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466861924
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Science fiction is a vital part of popular culture, influencing the way we all look at the world. TV shows like Star Trek and movies from Forbidden Planet to Inception have influenced scientists to enter the profession and have shaped our futures. Science fiction doesn't set out to predict what will happen - it's far more about how human beings react to "What if?..." - but it is fascinating to see how science fiction and reality sometimes converge, sometimes take extraordinarily different paths. Ten Billion Tomorrows brings to life a whole host of science fiction topics, from the virtual environment of The Matrix and the intelligent computer HAL in 2001, to force fields, ray guns and cyborgs. We discover how science fiction has excited us with possibilities, whether it is Star Trek's holodeck inspiring makers of iconic video games Doom and Quake to create the virtual interactive worlds that transformed gaming, or the strange physics that has made real cloaking devices possible. Mixing remarkable science with the imagination of our greatest science fiction writers, Ten Billion Tomorrows will delight science fiction lovers and popular science devotees alike.

Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System

Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System PDF Author: John Rieder
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819577170
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
A fresh approach to the history and shape of science fiction In Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System, John Rieder asks literary scholars to consider what shape literary history takes when based on a historical, rather than formalist, genre theory. Rieder starts from the premise that science fiction and the other genres usually associated with so-called genre fiction comprise a system of genres entirely distinct from the pre-existing classical and academic genre system that includes the epic, tragedy, comedy, satire, romance, the lyric, and so on. He proposes that the field of literary production and the project of literary studies cannot be adequately conceptualized without taking into account the tensions between these two genre systems that arise from their different modes of production, distribution, and reception. Although the careful reading of individual texts forms an important part of this study, the systemic approach offered by Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System provides a fundamental challenge to literary methodologies that foreground individual innovation.

The Science Fiction of H. G. Wells

The Science Fiction of H. G. Wells PDF Author: Frank D. McConnell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Treating Wells as a major literary figure, the book focuses equally on his brilliance as a storyteller and upon his treatment of themes that have remained crucial to science ficion.

SciFi in the Mind's Eye

SciFi in the Mind's Eye PDF Author: Margret Grebowicz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
From the Publisher: What does our favorite science fiction tell us about the culture of science? What do stories of cyborg women and genetic engineering show us about how science and values interact and how science and politics affect each other? In SciFi in the Mind's Eye, leading scholars look at the way science fiction informs and inspires contemporary research in science and technology, and how scientific breakthroughs spur authors on to yet more creative science fiction narratives. Alongside investigations into the meaning of science fiction, SciFi in the Mind's Eye gives us previously unpublished 'interventions' by acclaimed science fiction authors L. Timmel Duchamp, Nicola Griffith, Nancy Kress, Terry Bisson, and Stanislaw Lem.

Science Fiction

Science Fiction PDF Author: L. David Allen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background. The latest generation of titles in this series also feature glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format. In CliffsNotes on Science Fiction: an Introduction, you'll gain insight into the differing styles of science fiction, discover how true science shapes the genre, and see how science fiction serves as an important historical marker for society. You'll dive into works by some of the great masters of science fiction, including Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Ursula LeGuin, Frank Herbert, and more. This study guide carries you along on incredible journeys by providing detailed summaries and critical analyses on some of the most popular science fiction stories. You'll find analyses of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea The Time Machine I, Robot The Left Hand of Darkness Childhood's End Rite of Passage And more Classic literature or modern-day treasure - you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

Enlightenment Borders

Enlightenment Borders PDF Author: George Sebastian Rousseau
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719035067
Category : Civilization, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description


Science Fiction

Science Fiction PDF Author: George Slusser
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666905364
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
In what N. Katherine Hayles describes as "this enormously ambitious posthumous volume," renowned scholar George Slusser offers a definitive version of the argument about the history of science fiction that he developed throughout his career: that several important ideas and texts, routinely overlooked in other critical studies, made significant contributions to the creation of modern science fiction as it developed into a truly global literature. He explores how key thinkers like René Descartes, Benjamin Constant, Thomas DeQuincey, Guy du Maupassant, J.D. Bernal, and Ralph Waldo Emerson influenced and are reflected in twentieth-century science fiction stories from the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Poland, and Russia. The conclusion begins with Slusser’s overview of global science fiction in the twenty-first century and discusses recent developments in countries like China, Romania, and Israel. Hayles’s foreword provides a useful summation of the book’s contents, while science fiction writer Gregory Benford contributes an afterword providing a personal perspective on the life and thoughts of his longtime friend. The book was edited by Slusser’s former colleague Gary Westfahl, a distinguished scholar in his own right.