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Author: Andreas Sofroniou
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0244934096
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 117
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Book Description
Science Fiction explores the probable consequences of some improbable or impossible transformation of the basic conditions of human (or intelligent non-human) existence. This transformation need not be a technological invention, but may be some mutation of known biological or physical reality: artificial or extraterrestrial life-forms and travel through time are favourite subjects. Science Fiction stories may involve Utopian political speculation, or satire, but most rely on the marvellous appeal of fantasy. The term Science Fiction was first given general currency by Hugo Gernsback, editor of the popular Amazing Stories magazine from 1926. Once uniformly dismissed as pulp trash, SF gained greater respect from the 1950s, as writers like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and John Wyndham expanded its range; themes of alien invasion and brain-washing became especially popular at the height of the Cold War.
Author: Andreas Sofroniou
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0244934096
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 117
Get Book Here
Book Description
Science Fiction explores the probable consequences of some improbable or impossible transformation of the basic conditions of human (or intelligent non-human) existence. This transformation need not be a technological invention, but may be some mutation of known biological or physical reality: artificial or extraterrestrial life-forms and travel through time are favourite subjects. Science Fiction stories may involve Utopian political speculation, or satire, but most rely on the marvellous appeal of fantasy. The term Science Fiction was first given general currency by Hugo Gernsback, editor of the popular Amazing Stories magazine from 1926. Once uniformly dismissed as pulp trash, SF gained greater respect from the 1950s, as writers like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and John Wyndham expanded its range; themes of alien invasion and brain-washing became especially popular at the height of the Cold War.
Author: Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385533977
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
A marvelous collection of wide-ranging essays from the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, exploring her lifelong relationship to science fiction—as a reader and as a writer The ebook edition of this title contains over thirty additional, illuminating ebook-exclusive illustrations by the author At a time when the borders between genres are increasingly porous, she maps the fertile crosscurrents of speculative and science fiction, utopias, dystopias, slipstream, and fantasy, musing on the age-old human impulse to imagine new worlds. She shares the evolution of her personal fascination with SF, from her childhood invention of a race of flying superhero rabbits to her graduate study of its Victorian antecedents to the creation of her own acclaimed novels. Studded with appreciations of such influential writers as Marge Piercy, Ursula K. LeGuin, Kazuo Ishiguro, H. Rider Haggard, Aldous Huxley, H. G. Wells, and Jonathan Swift, In Other Worlds is as humorous and charming as it is insightful and provocative.
Author: John Cheng
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812206673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402
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Book Description
When physicist Robert Goddard, whose career was inspired by H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds, published "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes," the response was electric. Newspaper headlines across the country announced, "Modern Jules Verne Invents Rocket to Reach Moon," while people from around the world, including two World War I pilots, volunteered as pioneers in space exploration. Though premature (Goddard's rocket, alas, was only imagined), the episode demonstrated not only science's general popularity but also its intersection with interwar popular and commercial culture. In that intersection, the stories that inspired Goddard and others became a recognizable genre: science fiction. Astounding Wonder explores science fiction's emergence in the era's "pulps," colorful magazines that shouted from the newsstands, attracting an extraordinarily loyal and active audience. Pulps invited readers not only to read science fiction but also to participate in it, joining writers and editors in celebrating a collective wonder for and investment in the potential of science. But in conjuring fantastic machines, travel across time and space, unexplored worlds, and alien foes, science fiction offered more than rousing adventure and romance. It also assuaged contemporary concerns about nation, gender, race, authority, ability, and progress—about the place of ordinary individuals within modern science and society—in the process freeing readers to debate scientific theories and implications separate from such concerns. Readers similarly sought to establish their worth and place outside the pulps. Organizing clubs and conventions and producing their own magazines, some expanded science fiction's community and created a fan subculture separate from the professional pulp industry. Others formed societies to launch and experiment with rockets. From debating relativity and the use of slang in the future to printing purple fanzines and calculating the speed of spaceships, fans' enthusiastic industry revealed the tensions between popular science and modern science. Even as it inspired readers' imagination and activities, science fiction's participatory ethos sparked debates about amateurs and professionals that divided the worlds of science fiction in the 1930s and after.
Author: Carl Abbott
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819576727
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
What science fiction can teach us about urban planning Carl Abbott, who has taught urban studies and urban planning in five decades, brings together urban studies and literary studies to examine how fictional cities in work by authors as different as E. M. Forster, Isaac Asimov, Kim Stanley Robinson, and China Miéville might help us to envision an urban future that is viable and resilient. Imagining Urban Futures is a remarkable treatise on what is best and strongest in urban theory and practice today, as refracted and intensely imagined in science fiction. As the human population grows, we can envision an increasingly urban society. Shifting weather patterns, rising sea levels, reduced access to resources, and a host of other issues will radically impact urban environments, while technology holds out the dream of cities beyond Earth. Abbott delivers a compelling critical discussion of science fiction cities found in literary works, television programs, and films of many eras from Metropolis to Blade Runner and Soylent Green to The Hunger Games, among many others.
Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1509865861
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 492
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Book Description
'My most anticipated book of the year' - Peter F. Hamilton, Britain's no.1 science fiction writer Children of Ruin follows Adrian Tchaikovsky's extraordinary Children of Time, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke award. It is set in the same universe, with new characters and a thrilling narrative. It has been waiting through the ages. Now it's time . . . Thousands of years ago, Earth’s terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life – but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth. Then humanity’s great empire fell, and the program’s decisions were lost to time. Aeons later, humanity and its new spider allies detected fragmentary radio signals between the stars. They dispatched an exploration vessel, hoping to find cousins from old Earth. But those ancient terraformers woke something on Nod better left undisturbed. And it’s been waiting for them. 'Books like this are why we read science fiction' - Ian McDonald, author of the Luna series All underpinned by great ideas. And it is crisply modern - but with the sensibility of classic science fiction' Stephen Baxter, author of the Long Earth series (with Terry Pratchett)
Author: Mike Ashley
Publisher: Mammoth
ISBN: 1472114868
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
The art of writing great science fiction is that it challenges the imagination, pushing it to extreme limits and in this anthology, selecting some of the best modern science fiction from the last fifty years, twenty leading authors of the genre ask the question 'What if...?' and then give their own very personal views of the changes and surprises which may befall humanity in the centuries to come. In Ulla, Ulla Eric Brown recounts the first manned Martian expedition and discovers that H. G. Wells may have been right after all. In The Infinite Assassin Greg Egan polices the dimensions, seeking those who are taking over their alternate selves. Geoffrey A. Landis takes us into the depths of a black hole in Approaching Perimelasma. Is the ultimate Utopia heaven or hell? Robert Sheckley finds out in the classic A Ticket to Tranai. These and other stories by James White, Eric Frank Russell, Robert Reed, H. Beam Piper and H. Chandler Elliot make this one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking science fiction anthologies in lightyears.
Author: Leigh Grossman
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
ISBN: 1434440354
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 7287
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Book Description
A survey of the last 100 years of science fiction, with representative stories and illuminating essays by the top writers, poets, and scholars, from Edgar Rice Burroughs and Samuel Butler to Robert A. Heinlein and and Jack Vance, from E.E. "Doc" Smith and Clifford D. Simak to Ted Chiang and Charles Stross-- and everyone in between. More than one million words of classic fiction and essays!
Author: Orty Ortwein
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476686300
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
The writer Ray Bradbury, science fiction expert Forry Ackerman, and special effects genius Ray Harryhausen are world-famous for their careers involving tales of the imagination. Before anyone had heard of them, they were friends as teens and college-aged boys enjoying all that 1930s L.A. had to offer: getting celebrity autographs, watching blockbuster movies, and haunting dozens of bookstores. As members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Science Fiction League, the three belonged to a tight-knit group that was involved in the earliest science fiction conventions and the birth of cosplay. This book follows the lives and careers of these three literary and film legends and tracks the origins of science fiction fandom. Each chapter builds a chronology of how their paths intertwined, and ultimately connected to, the beginnings of renowned fan conventions like Comic-Con. Devoted science fiction fans and new readers alike will learn how a young friendship launched three illustrious careers and changed the face of science fiction forever.
Author: Leonard Cassuto
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521899079
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 1271
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Book Description
An authoritative and lively account of the development of the genre, by leading experts in the field.
Author: Robert Crossley
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819571059
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
Mars in the human imagination from the invention of the telescope to the present For centuries, the planet Mars has captivated astronomers and inspired writers of all genres. Whether imagined as the symbol of the bloody god of war, the cradle of an alien species, or a possible new home for human civilization, our closest planetary neighbor has played a central role in how we think about ourselves in the universe. From Galileo to Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert Crossley traces the history of our fascination with the red planet as it has evolved in literature both fictional and scientific. Crossley focuses specifically on the interplay between scientific discovery and literary invention, exploring how writers throughout the ages have tried to assimilate or resist new planetary knowledge. Covering texts from the 1600s to the present, from the obscure to the classic, Crossley shows how writing about Mars has reflected the desires and social controversies of each era. This astute and elegant study is perfect for science fiction fans and readers of popular science.
