Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition and the Politics of Science Fiction (Liverpool Science Fiction Texts & Studies)

This is a collection of new essays on science fiction and utopian literature honouring the work of Darko Suvin, the scholar and literary theorist who co-founded the journal "Science-Fiction Studies" in 1973. The title of this volume attempts to convey the essence of cognitive estrangement' in relation to SF and utopia: that by imagining strange worlds we learn to see our own world in a new perspective. The contributors have all been influenced by Darko Suvin's belief that the double movement of estrangement and cognition reflects deep structures of human storytelling. Learning from otherness is as natural and inevitable a process as the instinct for imitation and representation that Aristotle described in his "Poetics". Though written from varying perspectives, the essays in "Learning from Other Worlds" pay tribute to the intellectual and personal inspiration of Darko Suvin to whom the essays are dedicated. Title Page......Page 4 Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgements......Page 7 Contributors......Page 8 Introduction: Learning from Other Worlds......Page 10 Part One: Science Fiction and Utopia: Theory and Politics......Page 26 Before the Novum: The Prehistory of Science Fiction Criticism......Page 28 Revisiting Suvin’s Poetics of Science Fiction......Page 45 ‘Look into the dark’: On Dystopia and the Novum......Page 60 Science Fiction and Utopia: A Historico-Philosophical Overview......Page 81 Society After the Revolution: The Blueprints for the Forthcoming Socialist Society published by the Leaders of the Second International......Page 107 Part Two: Science fiction in its Social, Cultural and Philosophical Contexts......Page 126 From the Images of Science to Science Fiction......Page 128 Estranged Invaders: The War of the Worlds......Page 136 ‘A part of the ... family [?]’: John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos as Estranged Autobiography......Page 155 Labyrinth, Double and Mask in the Science Fiction of Stanislaw Lem......Page 187 ‘We’re at the start of a new ball game and that’s why we’re all real nervous’: Or, Cloning-Technological Cognition Reflects Estrangement from Women......Page 202 ‘If I find one good city I will spare the man’: Realism and Utopia in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy......Page 217 Afterword: With Sober, Estranged Eyes......Page 242 Darko Suvin: Checklist of Printed Items that Concern Science Fiction (with Utopian Fiction or Utopianism, and a few Bordering Items)......Page 281 Bibliography......Page 300 Index......Page 316 "A collection of new essays on science fiction and utopian literature honouring the work of Darko Suvin, the scholar and literary theorist who co-founded the journal Science-Fiction Studies in 1973. The title of this volume attempts to convey the essence of 'cognitive estrangement' in relation to SF and utopia: that by imagining strange worlds we learn to see our own world in a new perspective. The contributors have all been influenced by Darko Suvin's belief that the double movement of estrangement and cognition reflects deep structures of human storytelling. Learning from otherness is as natural and inevitable a process as the instinct for imitation and representation that Aristotle described in his Poetics. Though written from varying perspectives, the essays in Learning from Other Worlds pay tribute to the intellectual and personal inspiration of Darko Suvin to whom the essays are dedicated." -- Provided by publisher Edited By Patrick Parrinder. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.