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Alien Constructions
\"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.
eBook
Strange divisions and alien territories : the sub-genres of science fiction
\"Strange Divisions and Alien Territories explores the sub-genres of science fiction from the perspectives of a range of top SF authors. Combining a critical viewpoint with the exploration of the challenges and opportunities facing authors working in the field, contributors include Michael Swanwick, Catherine Asaro and Paul di Filippo\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Silence : a novel of the SERRAted edge
\"Teenager Staci's father has just remarried and she now finds herself packed off to the run-down and dying Maine town of Silence and into the custody of her alcoholic mother. It gets worse. There is no cell phone service except at the very top of a bluff outside town, no internet except dialup, not one familiar franchise or business and her mom seems to have gotten worse since her last visit. But all is not as it seems in Silence. There are strange things moving beneath its shabby surface, terrible plots in play and Staci is about to find herself caught up in the middle of it all\"-- Provided by publisher.
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The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction
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.
eBook
Strange stars : David Bowie, pop music, and the decade sci-fi exploded
\"In [this book, the author] recasts sci-fi and pop music as parallel cultural forces that depended on one another to expand the horizons of books, music, and out-of-this-world imagery.
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Bodies of Tomorrow
Anxieties about embodiment and posthumanism have always found an outlet in the science fiction of the day. In Bodies of Tomorrow , Sherryl Vint argues for a new model of an ethical and embodied posthuman subject through close readings of the works of Gwyneth Jones, Octavia Butler, Iain M. Banks, William Gibson, and other science fiction authors. Vint’s discussion is firmly contextualized by discussions of contemporary technoscience, specifically genetics and information technology, and the implications of this technology for the way we consider human subjectivity.
Engaging with theorists such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Anne Balsamo, N. Katherine Hayles, and Douglas Kellner, Bodies of Tomorrow argues for the importance of challenging visions of humanity in the future that overlook our responsibility as embodied beings connected to a material world. If we are to understand the post-human subject, then we must acknowledge our embodied connection to the world around us and the value of our multiple subjective responses to it. Vint’s study thus encourages a move from the common liberal humanist approach to posthuman theory toward what she calls ‘embodied posthumanism.’ This timely work of science fiction criticism will prove fascinating to cultural theorists, philosophers, and literary scholars alike, as well as anyone concerned with the ethics of posthumanism.
eBook
1636 : Seas of Fortune
\"A cosmic catastrophe, the Ring of Fire strands the West Virginia town of Grantville in the middle of Europe during the Thirty Years War. By 1636, it's impact is felt across two great oceans. The United States of Europe seeks out resources (oil, rubber and even aluminum) to help it wage war against the foes of freedom. Daring pioneers cross the Atlantic and found a new colony in South Africa hoping with up-time knowledge to prosper in the tropics and avoid Indian and African Slavery. In the west, the wave of change has reached Japan and intrigued the Shogun. But learning what fate has in store for them, Japan pulls back from a policy of isolation to stake its own claim in the new world\"-- Provided by publisher.
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