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Leili could not have imagined that arriving late to Islamic morals class would change the course of her life. But her arrival catches the eye of a young man, and a chance meeting soon draws Leili into a new circle of friends and artists. Gathering in the cafes of Tehran, these young college students come together to create an underground play that will wake up their generation. They play with fire, literally and figuratively, igniting a drama both personal and political to perform their play—just once. From the wealthy suburbs and chic coffee shops of Tehran to subterranean spaces teeming with drugs and prostitution to spiritual lodges and saints' tombs in the mountains high above the city, Last Scene Underground presents an Iran rarely seen. Young Tehranis navigate their way through politics, art, and the meaning of home and in the process learn hard lessons about censorship, creativity, and love. Their dangerous discoveries ultimately lead to finding themselves. Written in the hopeful wake of Iran's Green Movement and against the long shadow of the Iran-Iraq war, this unique novel deepens our understanding of an elusive country that is full of misunderstood contradictions and wonder.

\"An incisive critical work\" that looks at Octavia Butler's writing, the movies of the Matrix and Alien series—and more—through a feminist lens ( Femspec ). Feminist thinkers and writers are increasingly recognizing science fiction's potential to shatter patriarchal and heterosexual norms, while the creators of science fiction are bringing new depth and complexity to the genre by engaging with feminist thewories and politics. This book maps the intersection of feminism and science fiction through close readings of science fiction literature by Octavia E. Butler, Richard Calder, and Melissa Scott and the movies The Matrix and the Alien series. Patricia Melzer analyzes how these authors and films represent debates and concepts in three areas of feminist thought: identity and difference, feminist critiques of science and technology, and the relationship among gender identity, body, and desire, including the new gender politics of queer desires, transgender, and intersexed bodies and identities. She demonstrates that key political elements shape these debates, including global capitalism and exploitative class relations within a growing international system; the impact of computer, industrial, and medical technologies on women's lives and reproductive rights; and posthuman embodiment as expressed through biotechnologies, the body/machine interface, and the commodification of desire. Melzer's investigation makes it clear that feminist writings and readings of science fiction are part of a feminist critique of existing power relations—and that the alien constructions (cyborgs, clones, androids, aliens, and hybrids) that populate postmodern science fiction are as potentially empowering as they are threatening.

This book provides a critical survey of the gothic texts of late twentieth-century and contemporary Scottish women writers including Kate Atkinson, Ellen Galford, A.L. Kennedy, Ali Smith and Emma Tennant focusing on four themes: quests and other worlds, witches, doubles and ghosts.

Science fiction is at the intersection of numerous fields. It is a literature which draws on popular culture, and which engages in speculation about science, history, and all types of social relations. This volume brings together essays by scholars and practitioners of science fiction, which look at the genre from these different angles. After an introduction to the nature of science fiction, historical chapters trace science fiction from Thomas More to more recent years, including a chapter on film and television. The second section introduces four important critical approaches to science fiction drawing their theoretical inspiration from Marxism, postmodernism, feminism and queer theory. The final and largest section of the book looks at various themes and sub-genres of science fiction. A number of well-known science fiction writers contribute to this volume, including Gwyneth Jones, Ken MacLeod, Brian Stableford Andy Duncan, James Gunn, Joan Slonczewski, and Damien Broderick.

01 02 Postcolonialism and Science Fiction explores intersections and interactions between the genre of science fiction and the theory and practice of postcolonialism, concentrating primarily on contemporary science fiction from the 1950s to the present day. The book argues that several of the foundational myths of science fiction – the 'other', or the stranger, and the strange and foreign land – are shared at the heart of colonialism, and that postcolonial science fiction has developed unique and creative ways of overcoming and dispelling these myths. Using close readings and thematic studies, ranging from lively discussions of Japanese and Canadian science fiction to a thorough and incisive deconstruction of race and (post)colonialism in the online game World of Warcraft , Postcolonialism and Science Fiction is the first comprehensive study of the complex and developing relationship between the two areas. It will be of interest to fans, researchers, students and anyone else interested in science fiction, postcolonial studies, or both. 19 02 First full-length study to explore the relationship between postcolonialism and science fiction Lots of academic (and popular) interest in titles on science fiction Discusses wide range of sci-fi texts, including very recent titles Speaks to current and exciting debates within both science fiction and postcolonial studies Breadth of focus, both in terms of texts covered and geographical context 13 02 JESSICA LANGER received her PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2009. She has published widely on postcolonial theory and practice and science fiction literature, film, video games and other media; her work ranges across a variety of geographical contexts including Canada, Japan and India. She currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada. 31 02 Grounded in the latest scholarship and cultural production, this book explores intersections and interactions between the science fiction and the theory and practice of postcolonialism 02 02 Using close readings and thematic studies of contemporary science fiction and postcolonial theory, ranging from discussions of Japanese and Canadian science fiction to a deconstruction of race and (post)colonialism in World of Warcraft, This book is the first comprehensive study of the complex and developing relationship between the two areas. 04 02 Acknowledgements Introduction: Elephant-Shaped Holes A Question of History: Geographical/Historical Context Diaspora and Locality Race, Culture, Identity and Alien/Nation Hybridity, Nativism and Transgression Indigenous knowledge and Western science Conclusion: Filling Holes, Breaking Boundaries Bibliography Index 08 02 'Jessica Langer's crisp study performs timely and acute analyses of issues of racial identity, problems of diaspora and locality, the clash of indigenous and Western forms of knowledge, and the play of historical continuity and discontinuity at the conjuncture of science fiction, colonialism, and postcolonial studies. It should become a central reference in this growing field.' – Professor John Rieder, Department of English, UH M?noa, USA

After decades of centralized control of economic activity in space, NASA and US policymakers have begun to cede the direction of human activities in space to commercial companies. NASA garnered more than 0.7 percent of GDP in the mid-1960s, but is only around 0.1 percent of GDP today. Meanwhile, space has become big business, with $300 billion in annual revenue. The shift from public to private priorities in space is especially significant because a widely shared goal among commercial space's leaders is the achievement of a large-scale, largely self-sufficient, developed space economy. Jeff Bezos, has stated that the mission of his firm Blue Origin is “millions of people living and working in space.” Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, has laid out plans to build a city of a million people on Mars within the next century. Both Neil deGrasse Tyson and Peter Diamandis have been given credit for stating that Earth's first trillionaire will be an asteroid-miner. Such visions are clearly not going to become reality in the near future. But detailed roadmaps to them are being produced and recent progress in the required technologies has been dramatic. If such space-economy visions are even partially realized, the implications for society will be enormous. Though economists should treat the prospect of a developed space economy with healthy skepticism, it would be irresponsible to treat it as science fiction. In this article, I provide an analytical framework—based on classic economic analysis of the role of government in market economies—for understanding and managing the development of the space economy.

Mind Style and Cognitive Grammar advances our understanding of mind style: the experience of other minds, or worldviews, through language in literature. This book is the first to set out a detailed, unified framework for the analysis of mind style using the account of language and cognition set out in cognitive grammar. Drawing on insights from cognitive linguistics, Louise Nuttall aims to explain how character and narrator minds are created linguistically, with a focus on the strange minds encountered in the genre of speculative fiction. Previous analyses of mind style are reconsidered using cognitive grammar, alongside original analyses of four novels by Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, Richard Matheson and J.G. Ballard. Responses to the texts in online forums and literary critical studies ground the analyses in the experiences of readers, and support an investigation of this effect as an embodied experience cued by the language of a text. Mind Style and Cognitive Grammar advances both stylistics and cognitive linguistics, whilst offering new insights for research in speculative fiction.