Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep?  A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation
This is bold and spirited work.  Reversing the relation between realism and science fiction, Seo-Young Chu gives us a literary landscape as stunning as her analytic vocabulary. (Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University)Chu not only addresses the leading scholarship in the field, but also opens up and explores unexpected dimensions in the activity of literary representation itself. More than a detailed, insightful study of a specific genre, her book proves to be a deeply engaging, sophisticated, and elegant meditation on the "science-fictional" nature of the creative imagination itself…It conveys in vivid ways the tensions and dilemmas bound up with inhabiting a high-tech society that is growing ever more science-fictional. (Peter Y. Paik, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)Chu's definition of science fiction as everything is sure to provoke.  It turns out that all fiction, perhaps all writing (even the New York Times A-section) is, in a sense, science-fictional.  Her theory of science-fictional representation is going to change the way that literary thinkers think about the genre as such, and it will move science fiction closer towards the larger universe of literary discussion—where it surely belongs. (Stephen Burt, Harvard University)Chu has produced a volume that is clever, witty, erudite, impeccably thorough in its reference to both primary and secondary sources, and written in a refreshingly nonformulaic yet unmistakably scholarly tone. (D. C. MausChoice2011-07-01)