An exciting and accessible study of the genre of fantasy. One of the dominant modes of storytelling in the twenty-first century, fantasy can mirror contemporary experiences and convey our anxieties and longings better than any representation of the merely real. It is the lie that speaks truth. This book addresses two central questions about fantastic storytelling: first, how can it be meaningful if it doesn't claim to represent things as they are, and second, what kind of change can it make in the world? How can a form of storytelling that alters physical laws and denies facts about the past be at the same time a source of insight into human nature and the workings of the world? What kind of social, political, cultural, intellectual work does fantasy perform in the world--the world of the reader, that is, not that of the characters? Focusing on various aspects of fantastic world-building and story creation in classic and contemporary fantasy, from the use of symbolic structures to the way new stories incorporate bits of significance from earlier texts, this book shows how fantasy allows writers such as Michael Cunningham, Hans Christian Anderson, Helene Wecker, C. S. Lewis, Ursula K. Le Guin, Nnedi Okorafor, Nalo Hopkinson, George MacDonald, Aliette deBodard, and Patricia Wrightson to test new modes of understanding and interaction and thus to rethink political institutions, social practices, and models of reality.
The first comprehensive study of fantasy's uses of myth, this book offers insights into the genre's popularity and cultural importance. Combining history, folklore, and narrative theory, Attebery's study explores familiar and forgotten fantasies and shows how the genre is also an arena for negotiating new relationships with traditional tales.
From Frankenstein to futuristic feminist utopias, Decoding Gender in Science Fiction examines the ways science fiction writers have incorporated, explored, and revised conventional notions of sexual difference. Attebery traces a fascinating history of men's and women's writing that covertly or overtly investigates conceptions of gender, suggesting new perspectives on the genre.
Library of America gathers for the first time the entire body of work set in the imaginary central European nation of Orsinia—the enchanting, richly imagined historical fiction series written by Hugo, Nebula, and National Book Award winner Ursula K. Le Guin. In a career spanning half a century, Ursula K. Le Guin has produced a body of work that testifies to her abiding faith in the power and art of words. She is perhaps best known for imagining future intergalactic worlds in brilliant books that challenge our ideas of what is natural and inevitable in human relations—and that celebrate courage, endurance, risk-taking, and above all, freedom in the face of the psychological and social forces that lead to authoritarianism and fanaticism. It is less well known that she first developed these themes in the richly imagined historical fiction collected in this volume, which inaugurates the Library of America edition of her works. Written before Ursula K. Le Guin turned to science fiction, the novel Malafrena is a tale of love and duty set in the central European country of Orsinia in the early nineteenth century, when it is ruled by the Austrian empire. The stories originally published in Orsinian Tales (1976) offer brilliantly rendered episodes of personal drama set against a history that spans Orsinia’s emergence as an independent kingdom in the twelfth century to its absorption by the eastern Bloc after World War II. The volume is rounded out by two additional stories that bring the history of Orsinia up to 1989, the poem “Folksong from the Montayna Province,” Le Guin’s first published work, and two never-before-published songs in the Orisinian language. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
This short fiction anthology offers a more precise and extensive treatment of narrative technique than other books of its kind. Targeting the needs and interests of today's readers, the author uses down-to-earth language and builds on readers' familiarity with narrative devices in film, television, and other popular media to teach this new approach to literary analysis. While offering more technical depth, Chatman never overwhelms. He provides unusually clear and exact definitions of such terms as "characterization" and "point-of- view", along with many illustrations of how these techniques actually operate in short stories. His explanations and examples enable readers to read narratives with a new awareness of how they are constructed.
From Frankenstein to futuristic feminist utopias, Decoding Gender in Science Fiction examines the ways science fiction writers have incorporated, explored, and revised conventional notions of sexual difference. Attebery traces a fascinating history of men's and women's writing that covertly or overtly investigates conceptions of gender, suggesting new perspectives on the genre.
The first comprehensive study of fantasy's uses of myth, this book offers insights into the genre's popularity and cultural importance. Combining history, folklore, and narrative theory, Attebery's study explores familiar and forgotten fantasies and shows how the genre is also an arena for negotiating new relationships with traditional tales.
An exciting and accessible study of the genre of fantasy. One of the dominant modes of storytelling in the twenty-first century, fantasy can mirror contemporary experiences and convey our anxieties and longings better than any representation of the merely real. It is the lie that speaks truth. This book addresses two central questions about fantastic storytelling: first, how can it be meaningful if it doesn't claim to represent things as they are, and second, what kind of change can it make in the world? How can a form of storytelling that alters physical laws and denies facts about the past be at the same time a source of insight into human nature and the workings of the world? What kind of social, political, cultural, intellectual work does fantasy perform in the world--the world of the reader, that is, not that of the characters? Focusing on various aspects of fantastic world-building and story creation in classic and contemporary fantasy, from the use of symbolic structures to the way new stories incorporate bits of significance from earlier texts, this book shows how fantasy allows writers such as Michael Cunningham, Hans Christian Anderson, Helene Wecker, C. S. Lewis, Ursula K. Le Guin, Nnedi Okorafor, Nalo Hopkinson, George MacDonald, Aliette deBodard, and Patricia Wrightson to test new modes of understanding and interaction and thus to rethink political institutions, social practices, and models of reality.
Once upon a time all literature was fantasy, set in a mythical past when magic existed, animals talked, and the gods took an active hand in earthly affairs. As the mythical past was displaced in Western estimation by the historical past and novelists became increasingly preoccupied with the present, fantasy was temporarily marginalized until the late 20th century, when it enjoyed a spectacular resurgence in every stratum of the literary marketplace. Stableford provides an invaluable guide to this sequence of events and to the current state of the field. The chronology tracks the evolution of fantasy from the origins of literature to the 21st century. The introduction explains the nature of the impulses creating and shaping fantasy literature, the problems of its definition and the reasons for its changing historical fortunes. The dictionary includes cross-referenced entries on more than 700 authors, ranging across the entire historical spectrum, while more than 200 other entries describe the fantasy subgenres, key images in fantasy literature, technical terms used in fantasy criticism, and the intimately convoluted relationship between literary fantasies, scholarly fantasies, and lifestyle fantasies. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography that ranges from general textbooks and specialized accounts of the history and scholarship of fantasy literature, through bibliographies and accounts of the fantasy literature of different nations, to individual author studies and useful websites.
In this trenchant and lively study Brian McHale undertakes to construct a version of postmodernist fiction which encompasses forms as wide-ranging as North American metafiction, Latin American magic realism, the French New New Novel, concrete prose and science fiction. Considering a variety of theoretical approaches including those of Ingarden, Eco, Dolezel, Pavel, and Hrushovski, McHale shows that the common denominator is postmodernist fiction's ability to thrust its own ontological status into the foreground and to raise questions about the world (or worlds) in which we live. Exploiting various theoretical approaches to literary ontology - those of Ingarden, Eco, Dolezel, Pavel, Hrushovski and others - and ranging widely over contemporary world literature, McHale assembles a comprehensive repertoire of postmodernist fiction's strategies of world-making and -unmaking.
This Guide summarises the main critical trends and developments surrounding the popular genre of science fiction. Brian Baker reviews the attempts to formulate a critical history, connects the major developments with the rise of theoretical paradigms such as feminism and postmodernism, and introduces key critical texts and major critics.
After serving in the Vietnam War, S. Brian Willson became a radical, nonviolent peace protester and pacifist, and this memoir details the drastic governmental and social change he has spent his life fighting for. Chronicling his personal struggle with a government he believes to be unjust, Willson sheds light on the various incarnations of his protests of the U.S. government, including the refusal to pay taxes, public fasting, and, most famously, public obstruction. On September 1, 1987, Willson was run over by a U.S. government munitions train during a nonviolent blocking action in which he expected to be removed from the tracks. Providing a full look into the tragic event, Willson, who lost his legs in the incident, discusses how the subsequent publicity propelled his cause toward the national consciousness. Now, 23 years later, Willson tells his story of social injustice, nonviolent struggle, and the so-called American way of life.
This new collection of critical essays on science fiction and fantasy literature and media features the following pieces: "The Last Chocolate Bar and the Majesty of Truth: Reflections on the Concept of 'Hardness' in Science Fiction," "How Should a Science Fiction Story End?," "The Third Generation of Genre Science Fiction," "Deus ex Machina; or, How to Achieve a Perfect Science-Fictional Climax," "Biotechnology and Utopia," "Far Futures," "How Should a Science Fiction Story Begin?," and "The Discovery of Secondary Worlds: Notes on the Aesthetics and Methodology of Heterocosmic Creativity." Brian Stableford is the bestselling writer of 50 books and hundreds of essays, including science fiction, fantasy, literary criticism, and popular nonfiction. He lives and works in Reading, England. I. O. Evans Studies In the Philosophy and Criticism of Literature No. 39.
This new collection gathers together 45 of Stableford's best critical reviews on works of science fiction, fantasy, horror, decadent literature, and nonfiction books about these topics. His comments are witty, intelligent, and full of insight. Complete with comprehensive index.
Offering an interdisciplinary qualitative approach, this book examines and evaluates the role and benefits of a Learning Community (LC), a high-impact practice for student retention in higher education. Grounded in in-depth case studies and first-person student experiences, the authors studied four student cohorts (sophomore, junior, senior, and graduate students) who participated in a full immersion LC experience at an urban public four-year college in New York. Focusing on the maturity students develop as they progress toward their degrees, the authors evaluate the impact of the learning community on the students’ experiences, perceptions, successes and obstacles. A powerful demonstration of the effects of connection and comradery on learning, this account explores how the LC helps the decision-making of those in higher education administration regarding high impact student interventions.
This reference tracks the development of speculative fiction influenced by the advancement of science and the idea of progress from the eighteenth century to the present day. The major authors and publications of the genre and significant subgenres are covered. Additionally there are entries on fields of science and technology which have been particularly prolific in provoking such speculation. The list of acronyms and abbreviations, the chronology covering the literature from the 1700s through the present, the introductory essay, and the dictionary entries provide science fiction novices and enthusiasts as well as serious writers and critics with a wonderful foundation for understanding the realm of science fiction literature. The extensive bibliography that includes books, journals, fanzines, and websites demonstrates that science fiction literature commands a massive following.
Thirty-four review essays of science fiction, fantasy, and horror authors and musical groups, including works by the following: Poul Anderson, Kim Antieau, Jackie Askew, Ataraxia, Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, David Britton, Philip George Chadwick, Hal Clement, Kathryn Cramer, Avram Davidson, Grania Davis, Stephen Dedman, Marcus Donnelly, Greg Egan, Michael Flynn, Forkbeard Fantasy, Neil Gaiman, Glenn Grant, Charles L. Harness, David G. Hartwell, Alexander Jablokov, John Kessel, Sophia Kingshill, Nancy Kress, Manuela Dunn Mascetti, Paul McAuley, Tim Powers, Albert Robida, Mary Doria Russell, William Moy Russell, Sharon Shinn, Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble of Shadows, Emile Souvestre, Michel de Spiegeleire, Allen Steele, Michael Swanwick, Judith Tarr, Thee Vampire Guild, Jeff VanderMeer, Freda Warrington, John D. Wilson, Terri Windling, and Ronald Wright.
“Electric, surprising, and tightly plotted . . . A compelling writer to watch.” —Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire “A gripping, big-hearted thriller . . . whip-smart and surprisingly funny.” —Harlan Coben The Nightworkers is an electrifying debut crime novel from Brian Selfon about a Brooklyn family of money launderers thrown into chaos when a runner ends up dead and a bag of dirty money goes missing. Shecky Keenan’s family is under fire—or at least it feels that way. Bank accounts have closed unexpectedly, a strange car has been parked near the house at odd hours, and Emil Scott, an enigmatic artist and the family’s new runner, is missing—along with the $250,000 of dirty money he was carrying. Shecky lives in old Brooklyn with his niece Kerasha and nephew Henry, and while his deepest desire is to keep his little makeshift family safe, that doesn’t stop him from taking advantage of their talents. Shecky moves money for an array of unsavory clients, and Henry, volatile and violent but tenderhearted, is his bagman. Kerasha, the famed former child-thief of Bushwick, is still learning the family trade, but her quick mind and quicker fingers are already being put to use. They love one another, but trust is thin when secrets are the family trade. And someone will be coming for that missing money—soon. Inspired by a career that has included corruption cases and wiretaps as an investigative analyst for New York law enforcement, Brian Selfon unspools a tale of crime and consequence through shifting perspectives across the streets, alleys, bodegas, and art studios of Brooklyn. The Nightworkers is an evocative blend of genres: a literary crime thriller with a mystery at the center of its big beating heart: What really happened to Emil Scott, and what can the future possibly hold for a family when crime is what keeps them together?
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.