The Anticipation Novelists of 1950s French Science Fiction


Book Description

Following World War II, the Fleuve Noir publishing house published popular American genre fiction in translation for a French audience. Their imprint Anticipation specialized in science fiction, but mostly eschewed translations from English, preferring instead French work, thus making the imprint an important outlet for native French postwar ideas and aesthetics. This critical text examines in ideological terms eleven writers who published under the Anticipation imprint, revealing the way these writers criticized midcentury notions of progress while adapting and reworking American genre formats.




Science Fiction and Anticipation


Book Description

Science Fiction and Anticipation: Utopias, Dystopias and Time Travel presents ten chapters discussing themes related to time travel, utopias, and dystopias in science fiction novels published in America and Europe between the 18th and 20th century. These themes include social progress, freedom and human rights, technological advances, and the issues of ethics, racism, sexism, censorship, and slavery. The contributors analyze novels such as The Year 2440 published in 1771, Paris in the Twentieth Century written by Jules Verne, Blake; or, The Huts of America by Martin Robinson Delany, The Amphibian Man by Alexander Belyaev, Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, Ashes, Ashes by René Barjavel, The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster, Morel’s Invention by Adolfo Bioy Casares, and writers of Spanish, Argentinian, English, and French fictions such as George Orwell, Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg and Leopoldo Antonio Lugones Argüello. This book notably presents their sources and influence, the accuracy of their predictions, and their relevance in our very unstable world.




Tales of Futures Past


Book Description

Most studies of Chinese literature conflate the category of the future with notions of progress and nation building, and with the utopian visions broadcast by the Maoist and post-Mao developmental state. The future is thus understood as a preconceived endpoint that is propagated, at times even imposed, by a center of power. By contrast, Tales of Futures Past introduces "anticipation"—the expectations that permeate life as it unfolds—as a lens through which to reexamine the textual, institutional, and experiential aspects of Chinese literary culture from the 1950s to 2011. In doing so, Paola Iovene connects the emergence of new literary genres with changing visions of the future in contemporary China. This book provides a nuanced and dynamic account of the relationship between state discourses, market pressures, and individual writers and texts. It stresses authors' and editors' efforts to redefine what constitutes literature under changing political and economic circumstances. Engaging with questions of translation, temporality, formation of genres, and stylistic change, Iovene mines Chinese science fiction and popular science, puts forward a new interpretation of familiar Chinese avant-garde fiction, and offers close readings of texts that have not yet received any attention in English-language scholarship. Far-ranging in its chronological scope and impressive in its interdisciplinary approach, this book rethinks the legacies of socialism in postsocialist Chinese literary modernity.




Memory Boy


Book Description

Ash is still falling from the sky two years after a series of globally devastating volcanic eruptions. Sunlight is as scarce as food, and cities are becoming increasingly violent as people loot and kill in order to maintain their existence. Sixteen-year-old Miles Newell knows that the only chance his family has of surviving is to escape from their Minneapolis suburban home to their cabin in the woods, As the Newells travel the highways on Miles' supreme invention, the Ali Princess, they have high hopes for safety and peace. But as they venture deeper into the wilderness, they begin to realize that it's not only city folk who have changed for the worse.




Anticipation


Book Description

From the author of the “engrossing historical epic” (Booklist) The Scribe of Siena comes a thrilling tale set in the crumbling city of Mystras, Greece, in which a scientist’s vacation with her young son quickly turns into a fight for their lives after they cross paths with a man out of time. After the death of her beloved husband and becoming a single parent to her nine-year-old son Alexander, overworked scientist Helen desperately needs an escape. So when Alexander proposes a trip to Greece—somewhere he's always dreamed of visiting—Helen quickly agrees. After spending several days exploring the tourist-filled streets, they stumble upon the ancient city of Mystras and are instantly drawn to it. Its only resident is Elias, a mysterious tour guide living on the city’s edges…both physically and temporally. In 1237, Elias’s mother promised his eternal service to the Profitis Ilias in Mystras in exchange for surviving a terrible illness. But during his 800 years of labor, he’s had one common enemy: the noble Lusignan family. The Lusignan line is cursed by a deadly disease that worsens with each generation, and a prophecy hints that Elias’s blood is their only hope for a cure. He has managed to survive throughout the centuries, but the line has dwindled down to the last Lusignan and he is desperate to avert his family’s destiny. When Elias runs into Helen, he meets his match for the first time—but he unwittingly puts both her and her young son in danger as a result. With time running out and an enemy after them, Elias and Helen are forced to choose between the city they love, and each other. Blending the historical romance of Diana Gabaldon, the rich detail of Philippa Gregory’s novels, and Dan Brown’s fast-paced suspense, Anticipation is a thrilling and satisfying read like no other.




Citizen Science Fiction


Book Description

Citizen Science Fiction draws on an interdisciplinary swath of literature and media to make the case that the science fiction genre can help rethink the pedagogical use of citizen science as a tool to interrogate our collective civic engagement with science and the incorporation of science into a rigorous, exciting writing-based curriculum. The book revolves around recent developments in specific scientific disciplines, including biology, ecology, computer science, astronomy, and cognitive science. Winter closely studies a range of science-fiction texts and tropes -- such as aliens, robots, clones, mind uploads, galactic empires -- for what they have to contribute to the ongoing scholarly discussion on psychological mindset and mindful argument, reading for probing inquiry and productive uncertainty in the age of the Anthropocene, reading for voice with a view to our digitally dominated future, and reading for threshold concepts in a scientifically driven society.




Metamorphoses of Science Fiction


Book Description

Back in print for the first time since the 1980s, this book is a touchstone for literary and theoretical criticism of science fiction and related genres. Alongside the 1979 text, this edition contains three additional essays by Suvin that update and reconsider the terms of his original intervention, as well as a new introduction and preface.




A Logic Named Joe


Book Description

Three complete novels, one of them a Hugo Award finalist, with a number of short stories.




Speculations on Speculation


Book Description

Science fiction is a field of literature that has great interest and great controversy among its writers and critics. This book examines the roots, history, development, current status, and future directions of the field through articles contributed by well-respected science fiction writers, teachers, and critics. This book can be used as a textbook for courses in theory as well as courses in science fiction literature and science fiction writing.




Autonomous


Book Description

"When anything can be owned, how can we be free? Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, a pharmaceutical Robin Hood traversing the world in a submarine, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can't otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack leaves a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, repeating job tasks until they become insane. Hot on her trail, an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his partner, Paladin, a young indentured robot. As they race to stop information about the hacked drugs at their source, they form an uncommonly close relationship that neither of them fully understands, and Paladin begins to question their connection - and a society that profits from indentured robots" --