Shockwaves of Possibility : Essays on Science Fiction, Globalization, and Utopia.
Title:
Shockwaves of Possibility : Essays on Science Fiction, Globalization, and Utopia.
Author:
Wegner, Phillip E.
ISBN:
9783035306422
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (333 pages)
Series:
Ralahine Utopian Studies ; v.15
Ralahine Utopian Studies
Contents:
Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Chapter One: The Modernisms of Science Fiction: Toward a Periodizing History -- Part One: Evental Genres -- Chapter Two: If Everything Means Something Else: Technology, Allegory, and Events in Roadside Picnic and Stalker -- Chapter Three: After the End of the World: Pseudo-Apocalypse and Universal History in Paradise and The Windup Girl -- Chapter Four: Recognizing the Patterns -- Part Two: Possible Worlds -- Chapter Five: The Beat Cops of History: Or, The Paranoid Style in American Intellectual Politics -- Chapter Six: Popular Dystopias in an Era of Global War -- Chapter Seven: Alan Moore, "Secondary Literacy," and the Modernism of the Graphic Novel -- Chapter Eight: Ken MacLeod's Permanent Revolution: Utopian Possible Worlds, History, and the Augenblick in the "Fall Revolution" -- Part Three: Alternate Histories -- Chapter Nine: Alternate Histories, Periodization, and the Geopolitical Aesthetics of Ken MacLeod and Iain M. Banks -- Chapter Ten: Learning to Live in History: Alternate Historicities and the 1990s in The Years of Rice and Salt -- Chapter Eleven: "An Unfinished Project that was Also a Missed Opportunity": Utopia and Alternate History in Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro -- Bibliography -- Index.
Abstract:
Shockwaves of Possibility explores the deep utopianism of one of the most significant modern cultural practices: science fiction. The author contends that utopianism is not simply a motif in SF, but rather is fundamental to its narrative dynamics. Drawing upon a rich array of theory and criticism in SF and utopian studies, the book opens with a global periodizing history that shows the inseparability of SF from developments in other cultural fields. It goes on to examine literature, film, television, comics, and animation in order to demonstrate SF's unique effectiveness for grappling with the upheavals brought about by globalization. Shockwaves of Possibility proves SF's vitality in the brave new world of the twenty-first century, as it illuminates the contours of the present and educates our desire for a radically other future.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
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