The second edition of Eric S. Rabkin's study of the life and work of Arthur C. Clarke.

The second edition of Eric S. Rabkin's study of the life and work of Arthur C. Clarke.

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.

What is Mars? From the ancients to the present, we have imagined Mars repeatedly and studied it longingly. As scientific knowledge of Mars has changed, so has the cultural imagination of this celestial neighbors. The earth-centered beginnings of astronomy connected the blood-red planet with the God of War. The Copernican Revolution and a later, simple mistranslation from Italian supported fantastic visions of distant Mars as the abode of life variously bizarre, ideal, or malignant. In the work of H. G. Wells and Orson Welles, in books, films, radio, and television, Mars reflected not only eternal hopes and fears but then-current political realities. In recent years, "NASA-fication" has brought Mars home, imagining the Red Planet almost as an eighth continent of Earth, a candidate for exploration and exploitation both in fiction and in fact. Rabkin weaves a chronological tale of many threads, including mythology, astrology, astronomy, literary criticism, and cultural studies. More than 60 brief chapters focus on people, events, or phenomena concerning the eternal object of curiosity, Mars. This rich series of readable, illustrated chapters can be sampled at will for the fun of discovery, read sequentially as a connected history, or enjoyed as a resource for the contemplation. Featuring over 100 illustrations, this unique examination of humanity's most storied companion serves as a resource for the study of ourselves.

What exactly is the fantastic? In the twentieth-century world, our notions of what is impossible are assaulted every day. To define the nature of fantasy and the fantastic, Eric S. Rabkin considers its role in fairy tales, science fiction, detective stories, and religious allegory, as well as in traditional literature. The examples he studies range from Grimm's fairy tales to Agatha Christie, from Childhood's End to the novels of Henry James, from Voltaire to Robbe-Grillet to A Canticle for Leiboivitz. By analyzing different works of literature, the author shows that the fantastic depends on a reversal of the ground rules of a narrative world. This reversal signals most commonly a psychological escape, often from boredom, to an unknown world secretly yearned for, whose order, although reversed, bears a precise relation to reality. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

What exactly is the fantastic? In the twentieth-century world, our notions of what is impossible are assaulted every day. To define the nature of fantasy and the fantastic, Eric S. Rabkin considers its role in fairy tales, science fiction, detective stories, and religious allegory, as well as in traditional literature. The examples he studies range from Grimm's fairy tales to Agatha Christie, from Childhood's End to the novels of Henry James, from Voltaire to Robbe-Grillet to A Canticle for Leiboivitz. By analyzing different works of literature, the author shows that the fantastic depends on a reversal of the ground rules of a narrative world. This reversal signals most commonly a psychological escape, often from boredom, to an unknown world secretly yearned for, whose order, although reversed, bears a precise relation to reality. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

These nineteen original essays seek to recontextualize the subject of immortality, examining its influence as an ancient human aspiration while at the same time considering new scientific advances and their impact on life and literature. Grouped in three broad categories, the essays provide key information about and concepts of immortality, examine science fiction stories and scientific research to consider the prospects and possible effects of achieving immortality, and discuss immortality and life extension as literary themes. The topics the essays focus on, as well as the perspectives of the contributors, range widely: genetics, cryonics, Marxism, Darwinism, cyberspace, feminist writing, religion, Italian science fiction, film, children's literature, video games, and comic books.

An invaluable contribution to the serious study of science fiction as well as a highly entertaining collection, Science Fiction contains 27 chronologically-arranged stories and excerpts, ranging from such early classic works as Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Shelley's Frankenstein to recent stories such as Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" and Ursula K. Le Guin's "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow." Including brief general essays and a separate introduction to each individual story or excerpt, Rabkin's anthology greatly illuminates the evolution of the genre.

When Slim Turned Sideways . . .—this is narrative suspense, and if well done propels the reader on into and through a novel, or folktale, or printed play, or epic poem. How does it work? Is it a matter of plot only? Why do some works rivet our attention from the first page, while others obviously do not? These are among the deceptively simple questions taken up in Eric Rabkin's seminal study of narrative suspense. Using the insights afforded by structuralism, linguistics, and modern criticism—and basing his discussion on close readings of many well-known works—Rabkin provides at once an original work in literary theory and a remarkably practical account of how successful narrative establishes and sustains interest on several levels. Suspense, Rabkin shows, is involved not only in the plot of a narrative, but in its thematic development, character development, and style as well. This broad understanding enables the author to develop a coherent theoretical description of suspense, using the terminology of rhetoric. The most startling result of this approach is a schematic representation for literary genres that, though arrived at theoretically, corresponds almost exactly to our intuitive categorization of literary works. Narrative Suspense can be read with ample profit by interested layman and professional critic alike. With wit and intelligence, the book clarifies an oft-perceived phenomenon—the fundamental importance of suspense, broadly defined, in all great works of literature.

As the first international anthology to cover the entire scope of fantastic narrative, Fantastic Worlds presents over fifty tales, myths, and stories, ranging from Genesis to Ovid, Hans Christian Andersen to J.R.R. Tolkien, Edgar Allan Poe to James Thurber, and Franz Kafka to Italo Calvino. Including tales of fairies and elves, ghost stories, high fantasy, and stories of social criticism and the conflict between science and religion, this volume presents a diverse selection of writings that all share the same capacity to liberate the human spirit through the wild mental acrobatics of fantasy.

The planet Mars has always maintained a strong grip on the human imagination. These 17 wide-ranging essays explore the study of Mars through history and the ways in which Mars has figured in literature, the arts and popular culture. Topics covered include the role of scientific discovery in the development of science fiction as a genre and the ways in which science fiction and popular discourse have, in turn, influenced science; the extent of life in the solar system; and the presence of Mars in the work of popular writers such as Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury.

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.