Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction

Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction PDF Author: Gary Westfahl
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786430796
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
An examination of science fiction editor and author Hugo Gernsback's career, this critical study explores the many ways in which his work influenced the genre. It summarizes the science fiction theories of Gernsback and his successors, considers his efforts to define science fiction both verbally and visually, and for the first time offers detailed studies of his rarest periodicals, including Technocracy Review, Superworld Comics, and Science-Fiction Plus. An analysis of his ground-breaking novel, Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660, and its influences on a variety of science fiction novels, films and television programs is also offered.

Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction

Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction PDF Author: Gary Westfahl
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786430796
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book

Book Description
An examination of science fiction editor and author Hugo Gernsback's career, this critical study explores the many ways in which his work influenced the genre. It summarizes the science fiction theories of Gernsback and his successors, considers his efforts to define science fiction both verbally and visually, and for the first time offers detailed studies of his rarest periodicals, including Technocracy Review, Superworld Comics, and Science-Fiction Plus. An analysis of his ground-breaking novel, Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660, and its influences on a variety of science fiction novels, films and television programs is also offered.

Ralph 124C 41+

Ralph 124C 41+ PDF Author: Hugo Gernsback
Publisher: e-artnow
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
The eponymous protagonist saves the life of the heroine by directing energy remotely at an approaching avalanche. As the novel goes on, he describes the technological wonders of the modern world, frequently using the phrase "As you know..." The hero finally rescues the heroine by travelling into space on his own "space flyer" to rescue her from the villain's clutches.

The Perversity of Things

The Perversity of Things PDF Author: Hugo Gernsback
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452953147
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 735

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Book Description
In 1905, a young Jewish immigrant from Luxembourg founded an electrical supply shop in New York. This inventor, writer, and publisher Hugo Gernsback would later become famous for launching the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926. But while science fiction’s annual Hugo Awards were named in his honor, there has been surprisingly little understanding of how the genre began among a community of tinkerers all drawn to Gernsback’s vision of comprehending the future of media through making. In The Perversity of Things, Grant Wythoff makes available texts by Hugo Gernsback that were foundational both for science fiction and the emergence of media studies. Wythoff argues that Gernsback developed a means of describing and assessing the cultural impact of emerging media long before media studies became an academic discipline. From editorials and blueprints to media histories, critical essays, and short fiction, Wythoff has collected a wide range of Gernsback’s writings that have been out of print since their magazine debut in the early 1900s. These articles cover such topics as television; the regulation of wireless/radio; war and technology; speculative futures; media-archaeological curiosities like the dynamophone and hypnobioscope; and more. All together, this collection shows how Gernsback’s publications evolved from an electrical parts catalog to a full-fledged literary genre. The Perversity of Things aims to reverse the widespread misunderstanding of Gernsback within the history of science fiction criticism. Through painstaking research and extensive annotations and commentary, Wythoff reintroduces us to Gernsback and the origins of science fiction.

The Scientific Adventures of Baron Munchausen

The Scientific Adventures of Baron Munchausen PDF Author: Hugo Gernsback
Publisher: Collectors Guide Pub
ISBN: 9780973820355
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
In 1915 the father of modern science fiction contributed to the long list of adventures of the 18th century super-hero, Baron Münchausen. Hugo Gernsback used his magazine Electrical Experimenter as a proving ground for his theory that science fiction could be used to teach science. Never before published as a book, and complete with the original illustrations, this is early 20th century science fiction by the man who made science fiction famous. Hugo Gernsback is often called the father of science-fiction. In 1926 he created the worlds first regular science fiction periodical, Amazing Stories but long before that he tested the market for science fiction within the pages of his science magazines. Between 1912 and 1929 Gernsback was the unchallenged champion of fiction with a scientific edge. In the 1950s the highest award in science fiction was named after him.

The Mechanics of Wonder

The Mechanics of Wonder PDF Author: Gary Westfahl
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 9780853235637
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
This is a sustained argument about the idea of science fiction by a renowned critic. Overturning many received opinions, it is both controversial and stimulating Much of the controversy arises from Westfahl's resurrection of Hugo Gernsback - for decades a largely derided figure - as the true creator of science fiction. Following an initial demolition of earlier critics, Westfahl argues for Gernsback's importance. His argument is fully documented, showing a much greater familiarity with early American science fiction, particularly magazine fiction, than previous academic critics or historians. After his initial chapters on Gernsback, he examines the way in which the Gernsback tradition was adopted and modified by later magazine editors and early critics. This involves a re-evaluation of the importance of John W. Campbell to the history of science fiction as well as a very interesting critique of Robert Heinlein's Beyond the Horizon, one the seminal texts of American science fiction. In conclusion, Westfahl uses the theories of Gernsback and Campbell to develop a descriptive definition of science fiction and he explores the ramifications of that definition. The Mechanics of Wonder will arouse debate and force the questioning of presuppositions. No other book so closely examines the origins and development of the idea of science fiction, and it will stand among a small number of crucial texts with which every science fiction scholar or prospective science fiction scholar will have to read.

Golden Age and Beyond

Golden Age and Beyond PDF Author: John Hamilton
Publisher: ABDO Publishing Company
ISBN: 1617843555
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description
Introduces young readers to the world of science fiction.

Earth Abides

Earth Abides PDF Author: George R. Stewart
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0899683703
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description


Science-fiction

Science-fiction PDF Author: Everett Franklin Bleiler
Publisher: Kent State University Press
ISBN: 9780873386043
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 780

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Book Description
Complementing Science-Fiction: The Early Years, which surveys science-fiction published in book form from its beginnings through 1930, the present volume covers all the science-fiction printed in the genre magazines--Amazing, Astounding, and Wonder, along with offshoots and minor magazines--from 1926 through 1936. This is the first time this historically important literary phenomenon, which stands behind the enormous modern development of science-fiction, has been studied thoroughly and accurately. The heart of the book is a series of descriptions of all 1,835 stories published during this period, plus bibliographic information. Supplementing this are many useful features: detailed histories of each of the magazines, an issue by issue roster of contents, a technical analysis of the art work, brief authors' biographies, poetry and letter indexes, a theme and motif index of approximately 30,0000 entries, and general indexes. Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years is not only indispensable for reference librarians, collectors, readers, and scholars interested in science-fiction, it is also of importance to the study of popular culture during the Great Depression in the United States. Most of its data, which are largely based on rare and almost unobtainable sources, are not available elsewhere.

Publishing and the Science Fiction Canon

Publishing and the Science Fiction Canon PDF Author: Adam Roberts
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110857159X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
Science fiction was being written throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it underwent a rapid expansion of cultural dissemination and popularity at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. This Element explores the ways this explosion in interest in 'scientific romance', that informs today's global science fiction culture, manifests the specific historical exigences of the revolutions in publishing and distribution technology. H. G. Wells, Jules Verne and other science fiction writers embody in their art the advances in material culture that mobilize, reproduce and distribute with new rapidity, determining the cultural logic of twentieth-century science fiction in the process.

Science Fiction

Science Fiction PDF Author: Eric S. Rabkin
Publisher: Oxford [Oxfordshire] ; New York : Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195032727
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
Presents a chronological survey of this genre from the beginnings of modern science and technology to the present.