This collection of fifteen original essays offers new perspectives
on armed conflict as a central aspect of science fiction and
fantasy writing. Looking past the superficial conventions
associated with ray guns and aliens, swords and sorcerers, the
contributors show how writers in the genre today are not so much
imagining war more fully as they are completely re-imagining it.
Science fiction and fantasy writing is no longer mired in epic or
chivalric models but is responding to new and more complex
"real-world" motivations for armed aggression: advances in
weaponry, shifts in the theaters of war, and changes in battlefield
conditions.
Most of the papers were presented at the annual J. Lloyd Eaton
Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, the field's
most prestigious international gathering. The trend throughout the
book is away from critical interest in stories of spatial or
territorial conquest and toward works that deal with topics related
to wars of temporal logistics and the internationalization of the
combat zone, including urban street violence, gender conflicts, and
resistance to runaway technology. The essays range from studies of
the semantics and linguistics of warfare in science fiction to a
critique of Osip Senkovsky's "Fantastic Journeys of Baron
Brambeus"; from writer Joe Haldeman's assessment of the impact of
his Vietnam experiences on his fiction to inquiries into a shared
author/reader agenda in novels concerning potential mass
destruction, including Stephen King's "Dead Zone" and M. J. Engh's
"Arslan." The collection also charts new directions in writing,
such as the anti-apocalyptic science fiction of Samuel R. Delany,
and embraces new modes of presentation, particularly computer
animation and the bande dessinee, or illustrated narrative, as
exemplified by French novelist Phillippe Druillet's "La Nuit."
Musician Bob Marley, film actor/directors Sylvester Stallone and
Bruce Lee, and the cyberpunk film classics "Terminator" and the
"Road Warrior" series are among other topics discussed.
Together, the essays reinforce the editors' contention that the
true function of these fantasies and science fictions is neither
nostalgia nor fancy, but analysis. The contributors treat the texts
they examine as a means not of playing war games but of
understanding the role of war in the present and the future.
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