Science Fiction (Polity Cultural History of Literature)

by Roger Luckhurst

0 ratings • 0 reviews • 0 shelved
Book cover for Science Fiction

Bookhype may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. Full disclosure.

In this new and timely cultural history of science fiction, Roger Luckhurst examines the genre from its origins in the late nineteenth century to its latest manifestations. The book introduces and explicates major works of science fiction literature by placing them in a series of contexts, using the history of science and technology, political and economic history, and cultural theory to develop the means for understanding the unique qualities of the genre.

Luckhurst reads science fiction as a literature of modernity. His astute analysis examines how the genre provides a constantly modulating record of how human embodiment is transformed by scientific and technological change and how the very sense of self is imaginatively recomposed in popular fictions that range from utopian possibility to Gothic terror. This highly readable study charts the overlapping yet distinct histories of British and American science fiction, with commentary on the central authors, magazines, movements and texts from 1880 to the present day. It will be an invaluable guide and resource for all students taking courses on science fiction, technoculture and popular literature, but will equally be fascinating for anyone who has ever enjoyed a science fiction book.

  • ISBN10 0745628931
  • ISBN13 9780745628936
  • Publish Date 16 March 2005
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country GB
  • Imprint Polity Press
  • Format Paperback
  • Pages 224
  • Language English