Science fiction
Subtitle: a literary history
By: edited by Roger Luckhurst
Publisher: British Library
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9780712356923
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: Science fiction; History and criticism
Description: Science fiction (SF) has existed as a popular genre for around 150 years. This book offers a survey of the genre from nineteenth-century pioneers to contemporary authors, introducing the plural versions of early SF across the world, before examining the emergence of the 'scientific romance' in the 1880s and 1890s. The 'Golden Age' of writers' expansive SF pulp was concentrated in the 1930s, consolidated by best-selling writers like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. The contributors to this volume also track the increasingly diverse forms SF took from the 1950s onwards. Leading international scholars, writing in an accessible style, consider SF as a 'world' literature, referencing works from diverse traditions in Latin America, Europe, Russia and the Far East. This book combines discussion of central figures of the tradition with a new global reach.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The Beginnings : Early Forms of Science Fiction  -- Arthur B. Evans; title: From Scientific Romance to Science Fiction, 1870-1914  -- Roger Luckhurst; title: Utopian Prospects, 1900-49  -- Caroline Edwards; title: Pulp SF and its Others, 1918-39  -- Mark Bould; title: After the War, 1945-65  -- Malisa Kurtz; title: The New Wave 'Revolution,' 1960-76  -- Rob Latham; title: From the New Wave into the Twenty-First Century  -- Sherryl Vint; title: New Paradigms, After 2001 -- Gerry Canavan.