The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction (Oxford Handbooks)

The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction attempts to descry the historical and cultural contours of SF in the wake of technoculture studies. Rather than treating the genre as an isolated aesthetic formation, it examines SF's many lines of cross-pollination with technocultural realities since itsinception in the nineteenth century, showing how SF's unique history and subcultural identity has been constructed in ongoing dialogue with popular discourses of science and technology.The volume consists of four broadly themed sections, each divided into eleven chapters. Section I, "Science Fiction as Genre," considers the internal history of SF literature, examining its characteristic aesthetic and ideological modalities, its animating social and commercial institutions, and itsrelationship to other fantastic genres. Section II, "Science Fiction as Medium," presents a more diverse and ramified understanding of what constitutes the field as a mode of artistic and pop-cultural expression, canvassing extra-literary manifestations of SF ranging from film and television tovideogames and hypertext to music and theme parks. Section III, "Science Fiction as Culture," examines the genre in relation to cultural issues and contexts that have influenced it and been influenced by it in turn, the goal being to see how SF has helped to constitute and define important(sub)cultural groupings, social movements, and historical developments during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Finally, Section IV, "Science Fiction as Worldview," explores SF as a mode of thought and its intersection with other philosophies and large-scale perspectives on theworld, from the Enlightenment to the present day. The excitement of possible futures found in science fiction has long fired the human imagination, but the genre's acceptance by academe is relatively recent. No longer marginalized and fighting for respectability, science-fictional works are now studied alongside more traditional art forms. Tracing the capacious genre's birth, evolution, and impact across nations, time periods, subgenres, and media, The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction offers an in-depth, comprehensive assessment of this robust area of scholarly inquiry and considers the future directions that will dictate the terms of the scholarly discourse. The Handbook begins with a focus on questions of genre, covering topics such as critical history, keywords, narrative, the fantastic, and fandom. A subsequent section on media engages with film, television, comics, architecture, music, video games, and more. The genre's role in the convergence of art and everyday life animates a third section, which addresses topics such as UFOs, the Atomic Era, the Space Race between the US and USSR, organized religion, automation, the military, sexuality, steampunk, and retrofuturism. The final section on worldviews features perspectives on SF's relationship to the gothic, evolution, colonialism, feminism, afrofuturism, utopianism, and posthumanism. Along the way, the Handbook's forty-four original essays cover novels by the likes of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Philip K. Dick, and Octavia Butler; horror-tinged pulp magazines like Weird Tales; B-movies and classic films that include 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Star Wars; mind-bending TV shows like The Twilight Zone and Dr. Who; and popular video games such as Eve Online "The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction attempts to descry the historical and cultural contours of SF in the wake of technoculture studies. Rather than treating the genre as an isolated aesthetic formation, it examines SF's many lines of cross-pollination with technocultural realities since its inception in the nineteenth century, showing how SF's unique history and subcultural identity have been constructed in ongoing dialogue with popular discourses of science and technology. The volume consists of four broadly themed parts, each divided into eleven chapters. Part I, "Science Fiction as Genre" considers the internal history of SF literature, examining its characteristic aesthetic and ideological modalities, its animating social and commercial institutions, and its relationship to other fantastic genres. Part II, "Science Fiction as Medium" presents a more diverse and ramified understanding of what constitutes the field as a mode of artistic and pop-cultural expression, canvassing extra-literary manifestations of SF ranging from film and television to video games and hypertext to music and theme parks. Part III, "Science Fiction as Culture", examines the genre in relation to cultural issues and contexts that have influenced it and been influenced by it in turn, the goal being to see how SF has helped to constitute and define important (sub)cultural groupings, social movements, and historical developments during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Finally, Part IV, "Science Fiction as Worldview" explores SF as a mode of thought and its intersection with other philosophies and large-scale perspectives on the world, from the Enlightenment to the present day" Cover The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction Copyright Contents Contributors Introduction Part I Science Fiction as Genre 1 Extrapolation and Speculation 2 Aesthetics 3 Histories 4 Literary Movements 5 Fandom 6 The Marketplace 7 Pulp Science Fiction 8 Literary Science Fiction 9 Slipstream 10 The Fantastic 11 Genre vs. Mode Part II Science Fiction as Medium 12 Film 13 Radio and Television 14 Animation 15 Art and Illustration 16 Comics 17 Video Games 18 Digital Arts and Hypertext 19 Music 20 Performance Art 21 Architecture 22 Theme Parks Part III Science Fiction as Culture 23 The Culture of Science 24 Automation 25 Military Culture 26 Atomic Culture and the Space Race 27 UFOs, Scientology, and Other SF Religions 28 Advertising and Design 29 Countercultures 30 Sexuality 31 Body Modification 32 Cyberculture 33 Retrofuturism and Steampunk Part IV Science Fiction as Worldview 34 The Enlightenment 35 The Gothic 36 Darwinism 37 Colonialism and Postcolonialism 38 Pseudoscience 39 Futurology 40 Posthumanism 41 Feminism 42 Libertarianism and Anarchism 43 Afrofuturism 44 Utopianism Index "The Handbook begins with a focus on questions of genre, covering topics such as critical history, keywords, narrative, the fantastic, and fandom. A subsequent section on media engages with film, television, comics, architecture, music, video games, and more. The genre's role in the convergence of art and everyday life animates a third section, which addresses topics such as UFOs, the Atomic Era, the Space Race between the US and USSR, organized religion, automation, the military, sexuality, steampunk, and retrofuturism. The final section on worldviews features perspectives on science fiction's relationship to the gothic, evolution, colonialism, feminism, afrofuturism, utopianism, and posthumanism."--Inside jacket Showing how science fiction's unique history and subcultural identity have been constructed in ongoing dialogue with popular discourses of science and technology, The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction acknowledges the full range of texts and modalities that make science fiction today less a genre than a way of being in the world