Notes Toward a Super Fiction

Notes Toward a Super Fiction PDF Author: David Hyman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781243763495
Category : Ethics in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
Notes Toward a Super Fiction argues for the recognition of the superhero as a distinct narrative genre that offers provocative ways of conceptualizing the process of revision. This recognition involves an exploration of the idiosyncratic narrative temporality of the genre, as well as the manner in which perpetual revision has evolved as a negotiation of that temporality. Particular emphasis is placed on the parallels to issues concerning revision within the field of composition studies. Chapter One situates the superhero within the emerging discourse of comics studies by examining the contested definitions and histories of three key terms: comics; comic book; and superhero. Chapter Two explores how shifting ideas of the nature and purpose of revision have emerged from and contributed to the temporal ambiguity characteristic of the superhero genre throughout its history, a narrative condition that Eco describes as oneiric. Chapter Three links these shifts to historical transformations regarding revision within composition studies, emphasizing the recent tendency of the field to view revision as embedded in the politics of cultural and institutional authority rather than the practice of textual production. Chapter Four explores potential alternative paradigms of revision as a textual practice through close readings of three superhero narratives that can be described as metarevisionary: Kurt Busiek's "The Nearness of You;" Warren Ellis Planetary; and Alan Moore's Supreme: The Story of the Year. The dissertation concludes by suggesting parallels between the revision strategies explored in the previous chapter and Fredric Jameson's framing of the utopian as irreducible multiplicity, which in turn echoes Deleuze's reading of Nietzschean difference as an alternative to Hegelian dialectics.

Notes Toward a Super Fiction

Notes Toward a Super Fiction PDF Author: David Hyman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781243763495
Category : Ethics in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 142

Get Book Here

Book Description
Notes Toward a Super Fiction argues for the recognition of the superhero as a distinct narrative genre that offers provocative ways of conceptualizing the process of revision. This recognition involves an exploration of the idiosyncratic narrative temporality of the genre, as well as the manner in which perpetual revision has evolved as a negotiation of that temporality. Particular emphasis is placed on the parallels to issues concerning revision within the field of composition studies. Chapter One situates the superhero within the emerging discourse of comics studies by examining the contested definitions and histories of three key terms: comics; comic book; and superhero. Chapter Two explores how shifting ideas of the nature and purpose of revision have emerged from and contributed to the temporal ambiguity characteristic of the superhero genre throughout its history, a narrative condition that Eco describes as oneiric. Chapter Three links these shifts to historical transformations regarding revision within composition studies, emphasizing the recent tendency of the field to view revision as embedded in the politics of cultural and institutional authority rather than the practice of textual production. Chapter Four explores potential alternative paradigms of revision as a textual practice through close readings of three superhero narratives that can be described as metarevisionary: Kurt Busiek's "The Nearness of You;" Warren Ellis Planetary; and Alan Moore's Supreme: The Story of the Year. The dissertation concludes by suggesting parallels between the revision strategies explored in the previous chapter and Fredric Jameson's framing of the utopian as irreducible multiplicity, which in turn echoes Deleuze's reading of Nietzschean difference as an alternative to Hegelian dialectics.

Toward Other Worlds

Toward Other Worlds PDF Author: Michael R. Collings
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
ISBN: 1434457923
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
This collection of 25 essays of literary criticism includes pieces on British poet John Milton, British fantasy writer C. S. Lewis, American horror writer Stephen King, American SF and fantasy writer Orson Scott Card, British horror writer Clive Barker, and several others. Complete with bibliography and index.

Seveneves

Seveneves PDF Author: Neal Stephenson
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062190415
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
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.

Revision and the Superhero Genre

Revision and the Superhero Genre PDF Author: David Hyman
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319647598
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 93

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Book Description
This book argues that superhero revision offers new perspectives on the theory and practice of revision in broader contexts, in particular composition studies. Key developments in the history of superhero and composition revision reveal that both are deeply embedded in questions of narrative temporality. The book looks at three unorthodox revision strategies: sideshadowing, in which traditional tropes of superhero narratives are told with “new” characters that clearly evoke traditional ones; excavation, the reintegration and reinterpretation of elements and influences from earlier texts that have been de-emphasized or written out of continuity; and homodoxy, the narrative coexistence of inconsistent elements culled from different versions of a character’s textual history. The ensuing cross-disciplinary exploration helps correct a distorted stereotype of revision as a neutral mechanical process, revealing it instead as a potent force operating across a spectrum that ranges from restrictive adherence to orthodoxies, to radical resistance against the primacy of tradition.

Science Fiction

Science Fiction PDF Author: Sherryl Vint
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262539993
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
How science fiction has been a tool for understanding and living through rapid technological change. The world today seems to be slipping into a science fiction future. We have phones that speak to us, cars that drive themselves, and connected devices that communicate with each other in languages we don't understand. Depending the news of the day, we inhabit either a technological utopia or Brave New World nightmare. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge surveys the uses of science fiction. It focuses on what is at the core of all definitions of science fiction: a vision of the world made otherwise and what possibilities might flow from such otherness.

The Cambridge Companion to American Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945

The Cambridge Companion to American Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945 PDF Author: Sherryl Vint
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009188216
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Providing a comprehensive overview of American thought in the period following World War II, after which the US became a global military and economic leader, this book explores the origins of American utopianism and provides a trenchant critique from the point of view of those left out of the hegemonic ideal. Centring the voices of those oppressed by or omitted from the consumerist American Dream, this book celebrates alternative ways of thinking about how to create a better world through daily practices of generosity, justice, and care. The chapters collected here emphasize utopianism as a practice of social transformation, not as a literary genre depicting a putatively perfect society, and urgently make the case for why we need utopian thought today. With chapters on climate change, economic justice, technology, and more, alongside chapters exploring utopian traditions outside Western frameworks, this book opens a new discussion in utopian thought and theory.

The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction

The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction PDF Author: Istvan Csicsery-Ronay
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819571520
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This major critical work from one of the preeminent voices in science fiction scholarship reframes the genre as a way of understanding today’s world. As the application of technoscience increasingly transforms every aspect of life, science fiction has become an essential mode of imagining the horizons of possibility. Though the broad scope of science fiction may vary in artistic quality and sophistication, it shares a desire to imagine a collective future for the human species and the world. A strikingly high proportion of today’s films, commercial art, popular music, video games, and non-genre fiction are what Csicsery-Ronay calls “science fictional” —stimulating science-fictional habits of mind. We no longer treat science fiction as merely a genre-engine producing formulaic effects, but as a mode of awareness, which frames experiences as if they were aspects of science fiction. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction describes science fiction as a constellation of seven diverse cognitive attractions that are particularly formative of science-fictionality. These are the “seven beauties” of the title: fictive neology, fictive novums, future history, imaginary science, the science-fictional sublime, the science-fictional grotesque, and the Technologiade, or the epic of technoscience’s development into a global regime.

Science Fiction

Science Fiction PDF Author: Patrick Parrinder
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136493409
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
First Published in 2002. This volume is about Science Fiction, its criticisms and teaching and covers the rise of science-fiction as a study and genre, looking at the work of H.G Wells, and the themes of epic, fable, language, cultures, its sociology, as a romance, and of a working daydream.

Science Fiction Criticism

Science Fiction Criticism PDF Author: Rob Latham
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474248632
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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Book Description
Including more than 30 essential works of science fiction criticism in a single volume, this is a comprehensive introduction to the study of this enduringly popular genre. Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings covers such topics as: ·Definitions and boundaries of the genre ·The many forms of science fiction, from time travel to 'inner space' ·Ideology and identity: from utopian fantasy to feminist, queer and environmental readings ·The non-human: androids, aliens, cyborgs and animals ·Race and the legacy of colonialism The volume also features annotated guides to further reading on these topics. Includes writings by: Marc Angenot, J.G. Ballard, Damien Broderick, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Samuel R. Delany, Philip K. Dick, Grace Dillon, Kodwo Eshun, Carl Freedman, Allison de Fren, Hugo Gernsback, Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Robert A. Heinlein, Nalo Hopkinson, Veronica Hollinger, Fredric Jameson, Gwyneth Jones, Rob Latham, Roger Luckhurst, Judith Merril, John B. Michel, Wendy Pearson, John Rieder, Lysa Rivera, Joanna Russ, Mary Shelley, Stephen Hong Sohn, Susan Sontag, Bruce Sterling, Darko Suvin, Vernor Vinge, Sherryl Vint, H.G. Wells, David Wittenberg and Lisa Yaszek

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.