Science Fiction and Cultural Theory: A Reader

by Sherryl Vint (Editor)

Overview

Science Fiction and Cultural Theory: A Reader is an essential resource for literature students studying science fiction, science and popular culture, and contemporary theory. This book combines key theories that have become touchstones for work in the field with more recent thinking to showcase how theoretical paradigms central to science fiction such as posthumanism and mediation have become central to critical theory overall in the twenty-first century.

The book is divided into four parts:

• Gender, Technology and the Body
• The Science-Fictionalization of Everyday Life
• Media, Mediation, Science Fiction
• Posthumanisms

Each part will not only to outline the central critical trends in the study of science fiction across media but will also to show dialogue and exchange as these concepts are refined. Each section will conclude with a list of recommendations for further reading. In this volume Sherryl Vint brings together the most important critical essays and approaches to the study science fiction over the last 40 years to create an ideal resource for classrooms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138814981
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/26/2015
Series:	Routledge Literature Readers
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sherryl Vint is Professor of Science Fiction Media Studies at the University of California, Riverside, USA. She is the author of Bodies of Tomorrow (2007), Animal Alterity (2010), The Wire (2013), and Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed (2014). She is the coauthor of The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction (2011), and coeditor of The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction (2009), Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction (2009), and Beyond Cyberpunk (2010). She is an editor of the journals Science Fiction Studies and Science Fiction Film and Television and is a recipient of the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pioneer Award.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Semiotic Ghosts and Broken Dreams

Part 1: Gender, Technology and the Body

1. Bodies in Space: Film as Carnal Knowledge, Annette Michelson

2. Typewriter, Friedrich Kittler

3. Horror and the Monstrous Feminine, Barbara Creed

4. Scary Women: Cinema, Surgery and Special Effects, Vivian Sobchack

5. excerpts from Connected: What it Means to Live in Network Society, Steve Shaviro

6. Gendering the Technological Imagination, Anne Balsamo

Part 2: The Science-Fictionalization of Everyday Life

7. Bloodless Transfusions, Manuel De Landa

8. Transplant Medicine and Transformative Narrative, Susan Squier

9. Bioinformatic Bodies and the Problems of ‘Life Itself’, Eugene Thacker

10. A Monstrous Vision: Disney, Science Fiction and Cinemascope, Jay Telotte

11. Everyday Nanowars: Video Games and the Crises of the Digital Battlefield, Colin Milburn

12. Practicing Media Archaeology: Creative Metaphors for Remediation, Jussa Parikka

Part 3: Media, Mediation, Science Fiction

13. The Videology of Science Fiction, Garrett Stewart

14. The Cinema of Attractions, Tom Gunning

15. The Ecstasy of Communication, Jean Baudrillard

16. On a Clear Day You Can See the Horizon of Invisibility: Rethinking Science Fiction Film in the Age of Electronic (Re)Production, Brooks Landon

17. The Wonder Years and Beyond: 1989-1995, Michelle Pierson

18. The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence, Henry Jenkins

Part 4: Posthumanisms

19. The Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway

20. The Life Cycle of Cyborgs, N. Katherine Hayles

21. The Image Virus, Scott Butkatman

22. Meta(l)morphoses, Rosi Braidotti

23. The Transmolecularization of [Black] Folk: Space in the Place, Sun Ra, and Afrofuturism, Nabeel Zuberi

24. When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality and Terminal Identity in Neon Genesis: Evangelion and Serial Experiments: Lain, Susan Napier