1st Edition

Science Fiction and Cultural Theory: A Reader

Edited By Sherryl Vint Copyright 2016
    322 Pages
    by Routledge

    322 Pages
    by Routledge

    Science Fiction and Cultural Theory: A Reader is an essential resource for literature students studying science fiction, science and popular culture, and contemporary theory. This book combines key theories that have become touchstones for work in the field with more recent thinking to showcase how theoretical paradigms central to science fiction such as posthumanism and mediation have become central to critical theory overall in the twenty-first century.

    The book is divided into four parts:

    • Gender, Technology and the Body
    • The Science-Fictionalization of Everyday Life
    • Media, Mediation, Science Fiction
    • Posthumanisms

    Each part will not only to outline the central critical trends in the study of science fiction across media but will also to show dialogue and exchange as these concepts are refined. Each section will conclude with a list of recommendations for further reading. In this volume Sherryl Vint brings together the most important critical essays and approaches to the study science fiction over the last 40 years to create an ideal resource for classrooms.

    Introduction: Semiotic Ghosts and Broken Dreams

    Part 1: Gender, Technology and the Body

    1. Bodies in Space: Film as Carnal Knowledge, Annette Michelson

    2. Typewriter, Friedrich Kittler

    3. Horror and the Monstrous Feminine, Barbara Creed

    4. Scary Women: Cinema, Surgery and Special Effects, Vivian Sobchack

    5. excerpts from Connected: What it Means to Live in Network Society, Steve Shaviro

    6. Gendering the Technological Imagination, Anne Balsamo

    Part 2: The Science-Fictionalization of Everyday Life

    7. Bloodless Transfusions, Manuel De Landa

    8. Transplant Medicine and Transformative Narrative, Susan Squier

    9. Bioinformatic Bodies and the Problems of ‘Life Itself’, Eugene Thacker

    10. A Monstrous Vision: Disney, Science Fiction and Cinemascope, Jay Telotte

    11. Everyday Nanowars: Video Games and the Crises of the Digital Battlefield, Colin Milburn

    12. Practicing Media Archaeology: Creative Metaphors for Remediation, Jussa Parikka

    Part 3: Media, Mediation, Science Fiction

    13. The Videology of Science Fiction, Garrett Stewart

    14. The Cinema of Attractions, Tom Gunning

    15. The Ecstasy of Communication, Jean Baudrillard

    16. On a Clear Day You Can See the Horizon of Invisibility: Rethinking Science Fiction Film in the Age of Electronic (Re)Production, Brooks Landon

    17. The Wonder Years and Beyond: 1989-1995, Michelle Pierson

    18. The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence, Henry Jenkins

    Part 4: Posthumanisms

    19. The Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway

    20. The Life Cycle of Cyborgs, N. Katherine Hayles

    21. The Image Virus, Scott Butkatman

    22. Meta(l)morphoses, Rosi Braidotti

    23. The Transmolecularization of [Black] Folk: Space in the Place, Sun Ra, and Afrofuturism, Nabeel Zuberi

    24. When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality and Terminal Identity in Neon Genesis: Evangelion and Serial Experiments: Lain, Susan Napier

    Biography

    Sherryl Vint is Professor of Science Fiction Media Studies at the University of California, Riverside, USA. She is the author of Bodies of Tomorrow (2007), Animal Alterity (2010), The Wire (2013), and Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed (2014). She is the coauthor of The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction (2011), and coeditor of The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction (2009), Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction (2009), and Beyond Cyberpunk (2010). She is an editor of the journals Science Fiction Studies and Science Fiction Film and Television and is a recipient of the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pioneer Award.