Challenging convention with the SF nonconformist Roger Zelazny combined poetic prose with fearless literary ambition to become one of the most influential science fiction writers of the 1960s. Yet many critics found his later novels underachieving and his turn to fantasy a disappointment. F. Brett Cox surveys the landscape of Zelazny's creative life and contradictions. Launched by the classic 1963 short story "A Rose for Ecclesiastes," Zelazny soon won the Hugo Award for Best Novel with …And Ca...
An Asimov Companion (Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy)
by Donald E. Palumbo
A prolific author, Isaac Asimov is most admired for his science fiction, including his collection of short stories I, Robot and his Robot, Empire and Foundation series novels. While each of these narratives takes place in a different fictional universe, Asimov asserted at the end of his career that he had, with his last Robot and Foundation novels, unified them into one coherent metaseries. The Encyclopedia Galactica, a compendium of all human knowledge, is prominent in the Foundation series as...
Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie's Fiction (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature)
by Ursula Kluwick
Kluwick breaks new ground in this book, moving away from Rushdie studies that focus on his status as postcolonial or postmodern, and instead considering the significance of magic realism in his fiction. Rushdie's magic realism, in fact, lies at the heart of his engagement with the post/colonial. In a departure from conventional descriptions of magic realism--based primarily on the Latin-American tradition--Kluwick here proposes an alternative definition, allowing for a more accurate description...
"Brave New World" (Bloom's Guides) (Modern Critical Interpretations S.)
- Comprehensive reading and study guides for some of the world's most important literary masterpieces - Concise critical excerpts provide a scholarly overview of each work - The Story Behind the Story details the conditions under which the work was written - Each book includes a biographical sketch of the author, a descriptive list of characters, an extensive summary and analysis, and an annotated bibliography
Ecocritical Geopolitics (Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies)
by Elena dell'Agnese
What is the role of popular culture in shaping our discourse about the multifaceted system of material things, subjects and causal agents that we call "environment"? Ecocritical Geopolitics offers a new theoretical perspective and approach to the analysis of environmental discourse in popular culture. It combines ecocriticial and critical geopolitical approaches to explore three main themes: dystopian visions, the relationship between the human, post-human, and "nature" and speciesism and carnis...
"Stephen R. Donaldson's `Chronicles of Thomas Covenant'" examines Donaldson's first three novels in an attempt to define their place in the fantasy canon. The book begins with an extensive introduction to the fantasy genre in which W.A. Senior eloquently defends fantasy against charges of being mere escapism, or simply juvenile, and not warranting serious critical consideration. The heart of the text treats such issues as Donaldson's debt to Tolkien, the use of myth and the creation of sustainin...
Narrative in the Age of the Genome (Explorations in Science and Literature)
by Lara Choksey
Shortlisted for the 2021 BSLS Book Prize This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the Wellcome Trust. Genomic technologies have had a profound impact on understandings of what it means to be human and our links to the world we inhabit, and on practices of inhabiting the world. This book considers this impact across a range of literary forms, cultural practices, and political imaginari...
This is a brilliant study of utopia and science fiction, from Thomas More to Philip K. Dick, by the master literary critic. "Archaeologies of the Future", Jameson's most substantial work since "Postmodernism", investigates the development of the Utopian form since Thomas More, and interrogates the functions of Utopian thinking in a post-Communist age. The relationship between utopia and science fiction is explored through the representations of otherness...alien life and alien worlds...and a stu...
The Rough Guide to "Lord of the Rings" (Rough Guides Reference Titles)
by Paul Simpson
This guide to the "Lord of the Rings" provides an entertaining and informative insight into the books, the films and their creator, J.R.R. Tolkien. It serves as an introduction to those who have seen the films but fear the books are for "anoraks" and is of sufficient depth for devoted Tolkienites. It tracks the evolution of the "Lord of the Rings" phenomenon from Ronald Tolkien's upbringing and contemporaries such as C.S. Lewis to the revival of fantasy fiction, the obsessive fans and the trilog...
Explores Doris Lessing's innovative engagement with historical change in her own lifetime and beyond The death of Nobel Prize-winning Doris Lessing sparked a range of commemorations that cemented her place as one of the major figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century world literature. This volume views Lessing's writing as a whole and in retrospect, focusing on her innovative attempts to rework literary form to engage with the challenges thrown up by the sweeping historical changes through...
The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture (Routledge Media and Cultural Studies Companions)
In this companion, an international range of contributors examine the cultural formation of cyberpunk from micro-level analyses of example texts to macro-level debates of movements, providing readers with snapshots of cyberpunk culture and also cyberpunk as culture. With technology seamlessly integrated into our lives and our selves, and social systems veering towards globalization and corporatization, cyberpunk has become a ubiquitous cultural formation that dominates our twenty-first century...
Charlotte Turner Smith held a central position during the formative years of the British Romantic period. Smith's work includes eleven novels and two fictional adaptations from the French. This edition reveals the extent to which Smith's work in this form constitutes as significant an achievement as her poetry.