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This major two-volume collection presents Darko Suvin's critical
meditations on science fiction and utopia from the late 1960s
through the early years of the new millennium, excluding only the
landmark monographs Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, Victorian
Science Fiction, and Defined by a Hollow. From essential
programmatic statements charting the parabolic logic of science
fiction and establishing the parameters of a theoretically supple
and rigorously historical SF criticism to confrontations with both
a postmodernist abdication of politics and a "neutral" sociology of
literature, these writings reflect the evolving thought of the
preeminent contemporary theorist of science fiction. Underpinned by
a method of heretical cognition and the steadfast insistence of
utopian possibility, the varied essays, interviews, poems, and
polemics presented here-encompassing four decades of sustained
thought on the topic- offer up the affirmation of freedom as the
truest horizon of science fiction.
This major two-volume collection presents Darko Suvin's critical
meditations on science fiction and utopia from the late 1960s
through the early years of the new millennium, excluding only the
landmark monographs Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, Victorian
Science Fiction, and Defined by a Hollow. From essential
programmatic statements charting the parabolic logic of science
fiction and establishing the parameters of a theoretically supple
and rigorously historical SF criticism to confrontations with both
a postmodernist abdication of politics and a "neutral" sociology of
literature, these writings reflect the evolving thought of the
preeminent contemporary theorist of science fiction. Underpinned by
a method of heretical cognition and the steadfast insistence of
utopian possibility, the varied essays, interviews, poems, and
polemics presented here-encompassing four decades of sustained
thought on the topic- offer up the affirmation of freedom as the
truest horizon of science fiction.
Returning to print for the first time since the 1980s,
Metamorphoses of Science Fiction is the origin point for decades of
literary and theoretical criticism of science fiction and related
genres. Darko Suvin's paradigm-setting definition of SF as "the
literature of cognitive estrangement" established a robust theory
of the genre that continues to spark fierce debate, as well as
inspiring myriad intellectual descendants and disciples. Suvin's
centuries-spanning history of the genre links SF to a long
tradition of utopian and satirical literatures crying out for a
better world than this one, showing how SF and the imagination of
utopia are now forever intertwined. In addition to the 1979 text of
the book, this edition contains three additional essays from Suvin
that update, expand and reconsider the terms of his original
intervention, as well as a new introduction and preface that
situate the book in the context of the decades of SF studies that
have followed in its wake.
This volume incorporates Darko Suvin's thinking on utopian horizons
in fiction and on eutopian and dystopian readings of historical
reality since the 1970s. While the focus is on the United States
and the United Kingdom, the essays also draw on French, German and
Russian sources. The book is composed of eighteen chapters,
including four sets of poems. The chapters include heretic
reflections on utopian fiction, science fiction and utopian
studies, explorations of dystopias, and epistemological
examinations of political standpoint. Throughout, plebeian history
is the stance from which all the author's value judgements are
made. The essays and poems engage with the empirical world and
identify areas of hope. In a dark dystopian time, they reaffirm
eutopia, the radically better place to be striven for in every here
and now.
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was created in a surge
of revolutionary self-determination that rejected both the
free-market-Capitalism of Europe, and the bureaucratic-Socialism of
the Soviet Union. Yet this early experimentation and dynamism
ultimately gave way to the same sclerotic state-system its creators
were trying to avoid. In this engaging treatise, Suvin seeks out
the source of this failure.
Featured on the 2021 Locus Recommended Reading List For over 50
years, Darko Suvin has set the agenda for science fiction studies
through his innovative linking of scifi to utopian studies,
formalist and leftist critical theory, and his broader engagement
with what he terms "political epistemology." Disputing the Deluge
joins a rapidly growing renewal of critical interest in Suvin's
work on scifi and utopianism by bringing together in a single
volume 24 of Suvin's most significant interventions in the field
from the 21st century, with an Introduction by editor Hugh
O'Connell and a new preface by the author. Beginning with writings
from the early 2000s that investigate the function of literary
genres and reconsider the relationship between science fiction and
fantasy, the essays collected here--each a brilliant example of
engaged thought--highlight the value of scifi for grappling with
the key events and transformations of recent years. Suvin's
interrogations show how speculative fiction has responded to 9/11,
the global war on terror, the 2008 economic collapse, and the rise
of conservative populism, along with contemporary critical utopian
analyses of the Capitalocene, the climate crisis, COVID-19, and the
decline of democracy. By bringing together Suvin's essays all in
one place, this collection allows new generations of students and
scholars to engage directly with his work and its continuing
importance and timeliness.
Featured on the 2021 Locus Recommended Reading List For over 50
years, Darko Suvin has set the agenda for science fiction studies
through his innovative linking of scifi to utopian studies,
formalist and leftist critical theory, and his broader engagement
with what he terms "political epistemology." Disputing the Deluge
joins a rapidly growing renewal of critical interest in Suvin's
work on scifi and utopianism by bringing together in a single
volume 24 of Suvin's most significant interventions in the field
from the 21st century, with an Introduction by editor Hugh
O'Connell and a new preface by the author. Beginning with writings
from the early 2000s that investigate the function of literary
genres and reconsider the relationship between science fiction and
fantasy, the essays collected here--each a brilliant example of
engaged thought--highlight the value of scifi for grappling with
the key events and transformations of recent years. Suvin's
interrogations show how speculative fiction has responded to 9/11,
the global war on terror, the 2008 economic collapse, and the rise
of conservative populism, along with contemporary critical utopian
analyses of the Capitalocene, the climate crisis, COVID-19, and the
decline of democracy. By bringing together Suvin's essays all in
one place, this collection allows new generations of students and
scholars to engage directly with his work and its continuing
importance and timeliness.
In eleven incisive, biting essays, Marxist philosopher Darko Suvin
suggests that "capitalism (and all of us in Leviathan's belly)
stands today in the presence of Yeats's rough beast advancing
toward Bethlehem, that finance capitalism is not simply a stage but
a recurrent 'Autumn' signal of transition from one world regime of
accumulation and domination to another; it signals the destruction
of the old regime and creation of a 'new' one." And to bolster his
argument, Suvin points to the economic and social chaos creeping
and growing through western society, bank failures, riots, unrest,
loss of private capital, loss of middle-class jobs, increase in
drug and alcohol abuse, proliferation of guns and other weapons in
society, failure of our school systems, inability of police to
provide security, and political revolution in less-developed
states. The author stresses the need to provide "universal
guaranteed income sufficient to modestly live on for all adults
working 35 hours a week, and a stress on providing decent]
education and health." And to fund these simple measures: "Just pay
trillions to people instead of banks and the military." Suvin's
intelligent analysis and commentary will open many eyes that have
been prejudiced against socialist thought by the rise of right-wing
politicians, and demonstrate quite clearly to the modern reader
that there IS another perspective worth considering.
Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) is now recognized as a philosopher and
cultural critic of the greatest importance, his subtle and profound
developments of utopian Marxism as influential for the student New
Left of the 1960s and 1970s as they were for the leftist movements
of the twenties. Today, in the United States and Britain, his
enormous body of work is attracting new generations of readers:
more translations are appearing, and his utopian thought is finding
a new resonance in many different contexts. Several of the authors
here address the centrality of a radically unconventional concept
of utopia to Bloch's thought; others write on the question of
memory and pedagogical theory. There is a Blochian reading of crime
fiction, illuminating overviews of Bloch's work and an exploration
of the stylistics of hope in Bloch's Spuren, as well as a
translation of excerpts from that extraordinary book. The essays
gathered here are intended, above all, to recommend Bloch's work as
a challenge to older models of historical materialism and utopian
emancipation, and to give specific examples of how that work can
contribute to current debates about utopia, nationalism and
collective memory, the liberatory content of popular cultural
forms, and the complex relationship between ideology and everyday
life. Together they provide a timely introduction to one of the
most untimely and inspiring thinkers of the twentieth century.
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