The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction

641 Pages·2014·39.383 MB·English

by  Rob Latham

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF
S C I E N C E F IC T IO N

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF
SCIENCE
FICTION
Edited by
ROB LATHAM
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction / edited by Rob Latham.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–983884–4 (hardcover : acid-free paper)—ISBN 978–0–19–983885–1 (ebook) 1. Science
fiction—History and criticism. I. Latham, Rob, 1959– editor of compilation.
PN3433.5.O94 2014
809.3′8762—dc23
2014004219
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
Contributors ix
Introduction 1
PART I. SCIENCE FICTION AS GENRE
1. Extrapolation and Speculation 23
Brooks Landon
2. Aesthetics 35
Peter Stockwell
3. Histories 47
Arthur B. Evans
4. Literary Movements 59
Gary K. Wolfe
5. Fandom 71
Farah Mendlesohn
6. The Marketplace 81
Gary Westfahl
7. Pulp Science Fiction 93
Jess Nevins
8. Literary Science Fiction 104
Joan Gordon
9. Slipstream 115
Victoria de Zwaan
10. The Fantastic 127
Brian Attebery
vi CONTENTS
11. Genre vs. Mode 139
Veronica Hollinger
PART II. SCIENCE FICTION AS MEDIUM
12. Film 155
Mark Bould
13. Radio and Television 169
J. P. Telotte
14. Animation 184
Paul Wells
15. Art and Illustration 196
Jerome Winter
16. Comics 212
Corey K. Creekmur
17. Video Games 226
Paweł Frelik
18. Digital Arts and Hypertext 239
James Tobias
19. Music 252
John Cline
20. Performance Art 263
Steve Dixon
21. Architecture 277
Nic Clear
22. Theme Parks 291
Leonie Cooper
PART III. SCIENCE FICTION AS CULTURE
23. The Culture of Science 305
Sherryl Vint
CONTENTS vii
24. Automation 317
Roger Luckhurst
25. Military Culture 329
Steffen Hantke
26. Atomic Culture and the Space Race 340
David Seed
27. UFOs, Scientology, and Other SF Religions 352
Gregory L. Reece
28. Advertising and Design 364
Jonathan M. Woodham
29. Countercultures 383
Rob Latham
30. Sexuality 395
Patricia Melzer
31. Body Modification 408
Ross Farnell
32. Cyberculture 421
Thomas Foster
33. Retrofuturism and Steampunk 434
Elizabeth Guffey and Kate C. Lemay
PART IV. SCIENCE FICTION AS WORLDVIEW
34. The Enlightenment 451
Adam Roberts
35. The Gothic 463
William Hughes
36. Darwinism 475
Patrick B. Sharp
37. Colonialism and Postcolonialism 486
John Rieder
viii CONTENTS
38. Pseudoscience 498
Anthony Enns
39. Futurology 513
Andrew M. Butler
40. Posthumanism 524
Colin Milburn
41. Feminism 537
Lisa Yaszek
42. Libertarianism and Anarchism 549
Neil Easterbrook
43. Afrofuturism 561
De Witt Douglas Kilgore
44. Utopianism 573
Phillip E. Wegner
Index 585
Contributors
Brian Attebery  alternates between scholarly projects in fantasy and science fiction,
with occasional forays into children’s literature and other areas of cultural study. His
latest books are Parabolas of Science Fiction, edited with Veronica Hollinger (Wesleyan,
2013), and Stories about Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth (Oxford, 2014).
Mark Bould  is reader in film and literature at the University of the West of England,
and co-editor of the journal Science Fiction Film and Television. His books include
Science Fiction: The Routledge Film Guidebook (2012), The Routledge Concise History
of Science Fiction (2011), The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction (2009), Fifty Key
Figures in Science Fiction (Routledge, 2009), and Red Planets: Marxism and Science
Fiction (Pluto/Wesleyan, 2009).
Andrew M. Butler  is the author of Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s (Liverpool,
2012) and Pocket Essentials volumes on Philip K. Dick, cyberpunk, Terry Pratchett,
film studies, and postmodernism. He is a winner of the SFRA Pioneer Award and an
editor of Extrapolation.
Nic Clear  is head of the Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the
University of Greenwich, where he also teaches a postgraduate design unit that special-
izes in the use of film and animation in the generation, development, and representa-
tion of speculative architectural spaces.
John Cline  received his Ph.D. in American studies from the University of Texas.
He is the co-editor of two collections of essays on film, From the Arthouse to the
Grindhouse: Highbrow and Lowbrow Transgression in Cinema’s First Century (Scarecrow,
2010) and Cinema Inferno: Celluloid Explosions from the Cultural Margins (Scarecrow,
2010), as well as numerous scholarly articles, including entries in the revised Grove
Dictionary of American Music. He contributes regularly to The Los Angeles Review of
Books and The Oxford American.
Leonie Cooper  is a lecturer in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, Monash
University. Her research field is screen cultures and the construction of new heuristic
tools to think through its epistemological and perceptual transitions. She has had essays
published in Stars in Our Eyes: The Star Phenomenon in the Contemporary Era (Praeger,
2002) and Star Voyager: Exploring Space on Screen (Hardie Grant, 2011). While having
addressed digital media and SF at international conferences, she is also concerned with
their relationship to the material practices and methods of creative research.