Novels by Aliens : Weird Tales and the Twenty-First Century.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marshall, Kate.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Extraterrestrial beings in literature.

Fiction--21st century--History and criticism.

Fiction.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (226 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2023.

Summary:

A wide-ranging account of the twenty-first century's fascination with the weird. Twenty-first-century fiction and theory have taken a decidedly weird turn. They both show a marked interest in the nonhuman and in the preternatural moods that the nonhuman often evokes. Writers of fiction and criticism are avidly experimenting with strange, even alien perspectives and protagonists. Kate Marshall's Novels by Aliens explores this development broadly while focusing on problems of genre fiction. She identifies three key generic hybrids that harness a longing for the nonhuman: the old weird, an alternative tradition within naturalism and modernism for the twenty-first century's cowboys and aliens; cosmic realism, the reach for words legible only from space in otherwise terrestrial narratives; and pseudoscience fiction, which imagines speculative futures beyond human life on earth. Offering sharp and surprising insights about a breathtaking range of authors, from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Kazuo Ishiguro, Willa Cather to Maggie Nelson, Novels by Aliens tells the story of how genre became mood in the twenty-first century.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Introduction. Dispatches from the Extinguished World

1. The Old Weird

2. Cowboys and Aliens

3. Cosmic Realism

4. The Novel in Geological Time

5. Pseudoscience Fictions

6. After Extinction

Acknowledgments

Notes

Works Cited

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Marshall, Kate Novels by Aliens

ISBN:

0-226-82784-4

OCLC:

1393309867