Author of more than forty novels and myriad short stories over a three-decade literary career, Philip K. Dick (1928a1982) single-handedly reshaped twentieth-century science fiction. His influence has only increased since his death with the release of numerous feature films based on his work, including Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall (based on aWe Can Remember It for You Wholesalea), Minority Report (based on aThe Minority Reporta), and Next (based on aThe Golden Mana). In Understanding Philip K. Dick, Eric Carl Link introduces readers to the life, career, and work of this groundbreaking, prolific, and immeasurably influential force in American literature, media culture, and contemporary science fiction.

Dick was at times a postmodernist, a mainstream writer, a pulp fiction writer, and often all three simultaneously, but as Link illustrates, he was more than anything else a novelist of ideas. From this vantage point, Link surveys Dickas own tragicomic biography, his craft and career, and the recurrent ideas and themes that give shape and significance to his fiction. Link addresses Dickas efforts to break into the mainstream in the 1950s, his return to science fiction in the 1960s, and his move toward more theologically oriented work in his final two decades. Link finds across Dickas writing career an intellectual curiosity that transformed his science fiction novels from bizarre pulp extravaganzas into philosophically challenging explorations of the very nature of reality, and it is this depth of vision that continues to garner new audiences and fresh approaches to Dickas genre-defining tales.

The first science fiction course in the American academy was held in the early 1950s. In the sixty years since, science fiction has become a recognized and established literary genre with a significant and growing body of scholarship. The Cambridge History of Science Fiction is a landmark volume as the first authoritative history of the genre. Over forty contributors with diverse and complementary specialties present a history of science fiction across national and genre boundaries, and trace its intellectual and creative roots in the philosophical and fantastic narratives of the ancient past. Science fiction as a literary genre is the central focus of the volume, but fundamental to its story is its non-literary cultural manifestations and influence. Coverage thus includes transmedia manifestations as an integral part of the genre's history, including not only short stories and novels, but also film, art, architecture, music, comics, and interactive media.

A broad treatment of the cultural, social, political, and literary under-pinnings of an entire period and movement in American letters. The Vast and Terrible Drama is a critical study of the context in which authors such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and Jack London created their most significant work. In 1896 Frank Norris wrote: "Terrible things must happen to the characters of the naturalistic tale. They must be twisted from the ordinary . . . and flung into the throes of a vast and terrible drama." There could be "no teacup tragedies here." This volume broadens our understanding of literary naturalism as a response to these and other aesthetic concerns of the 19th century.Themes addressed include the traditionally close connection between French naturalism and American literary naturalism; relationships between the movement and the romance tradition in American literature, as well as with utopian fictions of the 19th century; narrative strategies employed by the key writers; the dominant naturalist theme of determinism; and textual readings that provide broad examples of the role of the reader. By examining these and other aspects of American literary naturalism, Link counters a century of criticism that has perhaps viewed literary naturalism too narrowly, as a subset of realism, bound by the conventions of realistic narration.

The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction explores the relationship between the ideas and themes of American science fiction and their roots in the American cultural experience. Science fiction in America has long served to reflect the country's hopes, desires, ambitions, and fears. The ideas and conventions associated with science fiction are pervasive throughout American film and television, comics and visual arts, games and gaming, and fandom, as well as across the culture writ large. Through essays that address not only the history of science fiction in America but also the influence and significance of American science fiction throughout media and fan culture, this companion serves as a key resource for scholars, teachers, students, and fans of science fiction.

The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction explores the relationship between the ideas and themes of American science fiction and their roots in the American cultural experience. Science fiction in America has long served to reflect the country's hopes, desires, ambitions, and fears. The ideas and conventions associated with science fiction are pervasive throughout American film and television, comics and visual arts, games and gaming, and fandom, as well as across the culture writ large. Through essays that address not only the history of science fiction in America but also the influence and significance of American science fiction throughout media and fan culture, this companion serves as a key resource for scholars, teachers, students, and fans of science fiction.

A guide to the fantastic world of a science fiction legendAuthor of more than forty novels and myriad short stories over a three-decade literary career, Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) single-handedly reshaped twentieth-century science fiction. His influence has only increased since his death with the release of numerous feature films and television series based on his work, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle. In Understanding Philip K. Dick, Eric Carl Link introduces readers to the life, career, and work of this groundbreaking, prolific, and immeasurably influential force in American literature, media culture, and contemporary science fiction. Dick was at times a postmodernist, a mainstream writer, a pulp fiction writer, and often all three simultaneously, but as Link illustrates, he was more than anything else a novelist of ideas. From this vantage point, Link surveys Dick's tragicomic biography, his craft and career, and the recurrent ideas and themes that give shape and significance to his fiction. Link finds across Dick's writing career an intellectual curiosity that transformed his science fiction novels from bizarre pulp extravaganzas into philosophically challenging explorations of the nature of reality, and it is this depth of vision that continues to garner new audiences and fresh approaches to Dick's genre-defining tales.

The Red Badge of Courage was a sensation when it was first published in 1894. More vivid, unflinching, and artistically and philosophically complex than any prior war novel, it made its author, Stephen Crane, an overnight international celebrity. Readers were gripped by Crane's lucid descriptions of warfare and of the vacillating mind of his young, untested soldier, Henry Fleming, and many assumed that he must have been a veteran of the Civil War. Some actual veterans went so far as to claim that they had fought alongside Crane in the war. Astonishing as the novel itself is the fact that Crane was only twenty-three when he wrote it and had never even lived through a war, let alone fought in one. Even today, more than one hundred years after its publication and after generations of readers and decades of commentary, this most famous of Crane's works continues to astonish, amaze, and puzzle. As Eric Carl Link, Professor of American Literature at the University of Memphis, writes in his introduction to this volume in the Critical Insights series, Red Badge is much more than a war novel-it is a drama of the human psyche, a pinnacle of American naturalism and impressionism, a precursor to modernism, and a brilliant comment on the relations between human beings and our universe. As the essays collected here can attest, the novel is rich in interpretive possibilities. For readers studying Red Badge for the first time, a quartet of introductory essays provide valuable background. Matthew J. Bolton examines how the culture of the 1890's-with its clashes over immigration, industrialization, poverty, and military policy-influenced Crane and, in another essay, how Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism can improve our understanding of the novel. Patrick K. Dooley offers a comprehensive survey of the veritable ocean of Red Badge criticism, and Stanley B. Greenfield draws on two of Crane's short stories to resolve some of the some of the critical issues that have long plagued scholars of Red Badge. Continuing the discussion are a variety of classic and contemporary essays on the novel. Author and poet James M. Cox provides a comprehensive overview of the novel and praises it as "one of the great war novels of world literature." Harold R. Hungerford turns to Civil War history to establish the battle Crane on which modeled the action of his story. Robert C. Albrecht analyzes Crane's use of narrative point of view to show how it supports Crane's concept of reality. Thomas L. Kent takes up Crane's stance of epistemological uncertainty, and Eric Carl Link likewise examines his subjectivism. Ben Satterfield argues that, despite some critics' qualms, the novel is a unified, coherent work of art that projects a humanistic vision, and Donald Pizer, in the course of an examination of the textual controversies surrounding the novel, agrees with Satterfield that it is a unified and coherent work. Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin examines the use of humor and fallacious reasoning in the novel. James W. Tuttleton and James Trammell Cox analyze Crane's imagery, and William B. Dillingham pieces together Crane's concept of courage and heroism. Robert M. Rechnitz and Harold Kaplan then weigh in on two perennial questions-whether Henry Fleming matures over the course of the novel and the meaning of the novel's ending-and Verner D. Mitchell offers a highly innovative reading of race and gender in the work. Also included in this volume are a brief biography of Crane's life, a celebration of Crane's achievement by Paris Review contributor Barry Harbaugh, a chronology of Crane's life, and a detailed bibliography for readers wishing to study this classic American novel in greater depth.