Trajectories of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Fourteenth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

by Michael Morrison

Overview

The essays in this volume examine elements of the fantastic in a variety of media. From the fiction of Toni Morrison, Stephen King, and Chinua Achebe, to the rock songs of David Bowie, the fantastic is seen as adaptable to any art form. In an accessible manner, the contributors present fresh approaches to examining the elements of the fantastic in literature, film, music, and popular culture. The collection features an essay by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313296468
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	10/28/1997
Series:	Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy , #70
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

MICHAEL A. MORRISON is a David Ross Boyd Professor of Physics and English at the University of Oklahoma, Norman. He has published extensively in both physics and the criticism of horror, film, and science fiction. Recent publications include several papers in The Physical Review and Jourbanal of Physics, the textbook, Understanding Quantum Physics: A User's Manual (1990), and A Dark Night's Dreaming: Understanding Contemporary American Horror Fiction (1996), coedited with Tony Magistrale.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Kingdom of the Fantastic
Changing Kingdoms by Ursula K. Le Guin
Myth and Gender in SF and the Gothic
No Paradise to Be Lost: Deconstructing the Myth of "Domestic Affection" in [Mary] Shelley's Frankenstein by Rosemary Hathaway
Using the Fantastic to Disrupt the Domestic: An Examination of Marriage and Family in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus and Wise Children by Anna Katsavos
Androgyny and Difference in SF by Brian Attebery
Androgynous Architecture: Fantasies of Genre-Bending in the British Gothic Novel by Tanya Gardiner-Scott
Fantasy, Genre, and the Mainstream
The Role of the Fantastic in African Narratives: From Sundiata to Things Fall Apart by William E. Mallory
Behemyth Evolving: Whale/Ape/Rocket by Joseph Andriano
Apocalyptic Grotesque: The Day of the Locust by Catherine Merrill
Unraveling the Mystery of Toni Morrison's Beloved by Beverly Skinner
King as Classic: Excellence, Relevance, Endurance by Edwin F. Casebeer
The Seductive Doom in Young Adult Fantasy by Greer Watson
Fantastic Rock
The Moorcock/Hawkwind Connection: A Rock SF Multiverse by Michel Delville
Future Legends: David Bowie and Science Fiction by Maureen King
Cinema Fantastique I: Fantasy in Representation and Critique
Architecture as Duality and Fantasy: Mise en Scene and Boundaries in Tim Burton's Films by Leonard G. Heldreth
Beauty in the Beast: Technological Reanimation in the Contemporary Horror Film by Mark J. Charney
Screening Desire: Posthuman Couplings in Atom Egoyan's Speaking Parts and David Cronenberg's Videodrome by Rob Latham
Cinema Fantastique I: Twice Told Tales
A Few Remarks about a Couple of Things: Hawkes and Carpenter Reconfigure Campbell by Michael A. Morrison
Version/Inversion: Paranoia in Two Cases of Bodysnatching by Michael Collins
Greek Gifts: Vision and Revision in the Two Nights of the Living Dead by Mary Pharr
Index
About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

This collection of papers presented at the March 1993 conference covers the undermining of domestic conventions in the fiction of Mary Shelley and Angela Carter; challenges to the gender dynamic in science fiction and the British gothic novel; the blurring of boundaries between fantasy and mainstream literary fiction; the mutual influence between science fiction and rock music; and the dialogue between the fantastic and film and the ways in which this dialogue is being used for cultural critique. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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