Visions and revisions : (re)constructing science fiction / Robert M. Philmus.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Philmus, Robert M., author.

Series:

Liverpool science fiction texts and studies.

Liverpool science fiction texts and studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science fiction--Authorship.

Science fiction.

Science fiction--History and criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 411 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Renowned science fiction scholar Robert M. Philmus offers in Visions and Revisions a fresh and provocative literary analysis of science fiction writing. He critically examines the works of some of the most prominent writers to have written in the genre-including Evgeny Zamiatin, Karel Capek, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, and Stanislaw Lem, along with English-language authors from H.G. Wells to Ursula Le Guin-and reveals how their works illustrate the fundamental elements of science fiction writing. The former editor of Science Fiction Studies, Philmus casts his expert eye on a diverse range of short stories and novels by the premier arbiters of the craft, with close readings that draw upon the theories of New Criticism as well as post-Modern. Featuring essays such as "Stanislaw Lem's Futurological Congress as a Metageneric Text," "Kurt Vonnegut: Historiographer of the Absurd: The Sirens of Titan," "Ursula K. Le Guin and Time's Dispossession," and "Time Out of Joint: The World(s) of Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle," the volume provides an in-depth textual examination that reveals why science fiction is a "revisionary genre." Visions and Revisions will be of immense value to scholars of literature and science fiction studies.

Contents:

Swift, Zamyatin, and Orwell, and the language of utopia

Generic configurations of A story of the days to come

Re-visions of The time machine

Stanislaw Lem's Futurological congress as a metageneric text

Karel Čapek's can(n)on of negation

Olaf Stapledon's tragi-cosmic vision

C.S. Lewis and the fictions of "scientism"

Kurt Vonnegut, historiographer of the absurd : The sirens of Titan

Jorge Luis Borges and the labyrinths of time

"Elsewhere elsewhen otherwise" : Italo Calvino's cosmicomic tales

Ursula K. Le Guin and time's dispossesion

Time out of joint : the world(s) of Philip K. Dick's The man in the high castle

A revisionary construction of genre, with particular reference to science fiction.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 11 Aug 2017).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print record.

ISBN:

1-78138-086-4

1-84631-437-2

OCLC:

476209849