Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction

by Mark Bould (Editor), China Mieville (Editor)

Overview

Science fiction and socialism have always had a close relationship. Many sf novelists and filmmakers are leftists. Others examine explicit or implicit Marxist concerns. As a genre, sf is ideally suited to critiquing the present through its explorations of the social and political possibilities of the future. This is the first collection to combine analyses of sf literature and films within a broader overview of Marxist theory and critical perspectives on the genre. Covering a rich variety of examples from Weimar cinema to mainstream Hollywood films, and novelists from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to Kim Stanley Robinson, Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross, this is an indespensible insight into how Marxism and science fiction go hand-in-hand.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745327303
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	09/20/2009
Series:	Marxism and Culture
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.32(w) x 8.46(h) x (d)

About the Author

Baruch Hirson was a prominent Trotskyist activist in South Africa for many years before his imprisonment in 1964. On his release in 1973 he emigrated to Britain, where he taught at Bradford and Middlesex Universities. He published widely on South African revolutionary politics. Baruch Hirson died in 1999._x000B_Arthur J. Knodel was a distinguished scholar at the University of Southern California, best known for his translations and criticism of Nobel Prize-winning poet Saint-John Perse. Knodel died in 2001._x000B_Gregor Benton is Professor of Chinese History at Cardiff University.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Rough Guide to a Lonely Planet, from Nemo to Neo, by Mark Bould
Part One: Things to come
1. The Anamorphic Estrangements of Science Fiction, by Matthew Beaumont
2. Art as 'The Basic Technique of Life': Utopian Art and Art in Utopia in The Dispossessed and Blue Mars, by William J. Burling
3. Marxism, Cinema and Some Dialectics of Science Fiction and Film Noir, by Carl Freedman
4. Spectacle, Technology and Colonialism in Sf Cinema: The Case of Wim Wenders's Until the End of the World, by John Rieder
Part Two: When worlds collide
5. The Singularity is Here, by Steven Shaviro
6. Species and Species Being: Alienated Subjectivity and the Commodification of Animals, by Sherryl Vint
7. Ken MacLeod's Permanent Revolution: Utopian Possible Worlds, History and the Augenblick in the Fall Revolution quartet, by Phillip Wegner
Part Three: Back to the future
8. 'Madonna in moon rocket with breeches': Weimar sf film criticism during the stabilisation period, by Iris Luppa
9. The Urban Question in New Wave Sf, by Rob Latham
10. Towards a Revolutionary Science Fiction: Althusser's Critique of Historicity, by Darren Jorgensen
11. Utopia and Science Fiction Revisited, by Andrew Milner
Afterword
Cognition as Ideology: A Dialectic of Sf Theory, by China Miéville
Appendices
Left Sf: Selected and annotated, if not always exactly recommended, works
Critical and theoretical works
About the contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

Neil Easterbrook

"Red Planets is a highly readable and interesting collection of essays. Many of the pieces have completely new things to tell us, and will be of interest even to those who are antagonistic toward politically inspired criticism."
— Neil Easterbrook, associate professor of critical theory, TCU

From the Publisher

"Red Planets is a highly readable and interesting collection of essays. Many of the pieces have completely new things to tell us, and will be of interest even to those who are antagonistic toward politically inspired criticism."—Neil Easterbrook, associate professor of critical theory, TCU

"Red Planets is a highly readable and interesting collection of essays. Many of the pieces have completely new things to tell us, and will be of interest even to those who are antagonistic toward politically inspired criticism."—Neil Easterbrook, associate professor of critical theory, TCU

Editorial Reviews

"Red Planets is that rare event, an entirely coherent collection where each contributor intervenes to conspire a shared 'problem,' ... (it) is an exemplary collection."—Darran Jorgensen, Science Fiction, Film, and Television

"Red Planets is a highly readable and interesting collection of essays. Many of the pieces have completely new things to tell us, and will be of interest even to those who are antagonistic toward politically inspired criticism."—Neil Easterbrook, associate professor of critical theory, TCU

"Red Planets is a highly readable and interesting collection of essays. Many of the pieces have completely new things to tell us, and will be of interest even to those who are antagonistic toward politically inspired criticism."—Neil Easterbrook, associate professor of critical theory, TCU

From the Publisher