This handbook illustrates the evolution of literature and science, in collaboration and contestation, across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The essays it gathers question the charged rhetoric that pits science against the humanities while also demonstrating the ways in which the convergence of literary and scientific approaches strengthens cultural analyses of colonialism, race, sex, labor, state formation, and environmental destruction. The broad scope of this collection explores the shifting relations between literature and science that have shaped our own cultural moment, sometimes in ways that create a problematic hierarchy of knowledge and other times in ways that encourage fruitful interdisciplinary investigations, innovative modes of knowledge production, and politically charged calls for social justice. Across units focused on epistemologies, techniques and methods, ethics and politics, and forms and genres, the chapters address problems ranging across epidemiology and global health, genomics and biotechnology, environmental and energy sciences, behaviorism and psychology, physics, and computational and surveillance technologies. Chapter 19 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

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.

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.

This handbook illustrates the evolution of literature and science, in collaboration and contestation, across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The essays it gathers question the charged rhetoric that pits science against the humanities while also demonstrating the ways in which the convergence of literary and scientific approaches strengthens cultural analyses of colonialism, race, sex, labor, state formation, and environmental destruction. The broad scope of this collection explores the shifting relations between literature and science that have shaped our own cultural moment, sometimes in ways that create a problematic hierarchy of knowledge and other times in ways that encourage fruitful interdisciplinary investigations, innovative modes of knowledge production, and politically charged calls for social justice. Across units focused on epistemologies, techniques and methods, ethics and politics, and forms and genres, the chapters address problems ranging across epidemiology and global health, genomics and biotechnology, environmental and energy sciences, behaviorism and psychology, physics, and computational and surveillance technologies. Chapter 19 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

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.

"I began writing about power because I had so little," Octavia E. Butler once said. Butler's life as an African American woman--an alien in American society and among science fiction writers--informed the powerful works that earned her an ardent readership and acclaim both inside and outside science fiction. Gerry Canavan offers a critical and holistic consideration of Butler's career. Drawing on Butler's personal papers, Canavan tracks the false starts, abandoned drafts, tireless rewrites, and real-life obstacles that fed Butler's frustrations and launched her triumphs. Canavan departs from other studies to approach Butler first and foremost as a science fiction writer working within, responding to, and reacting against the genre's particular canon. The result is an illuminating study of how an essential SF figure shaped themes, unconventional ideas, and an unflagging creative urge into brilliant works of fiction.

"I began writing about power because I had so little," Octavia E. Butler once said. Butler's life as an African American woman--an alien in American society and among science fiction writers--informed the powerful works that earned her an ardent readership and acclaim both inside and outside science fiction. Gerry Canavan offers a critical and holistic consideration of Butler's career. Drawing on Butler's personal papers, Canavan tracks the false starts, abandoned drafts, tireless rewrites, and real-life obstacles that fed Butler's frustrations and launched her triumphs. Canavan departs from other studies to approach Butler first and foremost as a science fiction writer working within, responding to, and reacting against the genre's particular canon. The result is an illuminating study of how an essential SF figure shaped themes, unconventional ideas, and an unflagging creative urge into brilliant works of fiction.