The Influence of Imagination: Essays on Science Fiction and Fantasy as Agents of Social Change

by Lee Easton (Editor), Randy Schroeder (Editor)

Overview

This collection of essays examines the potential connections between speculative fiction and actual social change. Through a variety of approaches, the contributors explore whether consumers of science fiction and fantasy narratives can experience a real shift in their worldviews as a result of that consumption. Topics include the utopian vision of California in Ursula K. LeGuin's Always Coming Home, the changing role of women in science fiction pulp magazines, and the representation of progress and social change in popular graphic novels.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786432301
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	01/23/2008
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.47(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lee Easton is an English professor at Mount Royal College in Alberta, Canada. Randy Schroeder, an active writer of fantasy and speculative poetry, is an English professor at Mount Royal College.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     
Preface: From Future Visions to Critical Singularities     
Introduction: Polarities at the Singularity (Randy Schroeder)     

1. The Continuum of Meaning: A Reflection on Speculative Fiction and Society (Marie Jakober)     
2. Peter Jackson and the Deforestation of Middle Earth (David Hyttenrauch)     
3. Seeking Stories: Possible Worlds Semantics in Greer Ilene Gilman’s Moonwise (Christine Mains)     
4. “Dancing on the Edge of the World”: California and Utopia in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home (Ken Simpson)     
5. Passing Genes in GATTACA, or, Straight Genes for the Queer Guy (Lee Easton)     
6. The Changing Role of Women in Science Fiction: Weird Tales, 1925–1940 (Mary Hemmings)     
7. Storytelling and Folktales: A Graphic Exploration (Gail de Vos)     
8. The Graphic Novel as New Testament: On Narrative Progress, Cultural Change and the Heroic Story (Richard Harrison)     
9. Science Fiction, Religion, and Social Change (Steven Engler)     
10. Science and Science Fiction (Todd C. Nickle)     
11. Olaf Stapledon’s Americanized Planet (Robert Boschman)     
12. Nalo Hopkinson’s Colonial and Dystopic Worlds in Midnight Robber (Ruby S. Ramraj)     
13. “Wartime Inventions with Peaceful Intentions”: Television and the Media Cyborg in C.L. Moore’s No Woman Born (Linda Howell)     
14. The Fantasy of Gender/Sex: Angela Carter and Mythmaking (Darlene M. Juschka)     
15. In the Spirit of Process: A Braiding Together of New Utopianism, Gilles Deleuze, and Anne Carson (Jacqueline Plante)     
16. Dystopia in a New Land (Karyn Huenemann)     
17. Surfing the Singularity: Science Fiction and the Future of Narrative Media (Brian Greenspan)     

About the Contributors     
Index     

Editorial Reviews

excellent...a significant contribution...a fine contribution to any serious SF critic’s research library”—SFRA Review; “a worthwhile critical collection that approaches questions about sf’s social importance with admirable clarity...provides its reader with many hours of thoughtful, multifaceted, and excellent sf criticism”—Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.

From the Publisher

"a worthwhile critical collection that approaches questions about sf's social importance with admirable clarity...provides its reader with many hours of thoughtful, multifaceted, and excellent sf criticism"

Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

excellent...a significant contribution...a fine contribution to any serious SF critic's research library

SFRA Review