Science Fiction Criticism

Rob Latham is an independent scholar based in the USA. Winner of the Science Fiction Research Association’s Thomas D. Clareson award for distinguished service to the field, he is editor of the journal Science Fiction Studies and of The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction (2014), co-editor of The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction (2010) and author of Consuming Youth: Vampires, Cyborgs and the Culture of Consumption (2002). For two decades, he was a senior editor of the journal Science Fiction Studies.

• IntroductionPart I: Definition and Boundaries1. Editorial: A New Sort of Magazine, Hugo Gernsback2. Preface to The Scientific Romances of H.G. Wells, H.G. Wells 3. On the Writing of Speculative Fiction, Robert A. Heinlein4. What Do You Mean: Science? Fiction? Judith Merril5. Preface to Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, Bruce Sterling6. Cybernetic Deconstructions: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism, Veronica Hollinger7. The Many Deaths of Science Fiction: A Polemic, Roger Luckhurst8. On Defining SF, or Not: Genre Theory, SF, and History, John Rieder Recommended Further ReadingPart II: Structure and Form9. Which Way to Inner Space? J.G. Ballard10. About 5,750 Words, Samuel R. Delany11. On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre, Darko Suvin 12. The Absent Paradigm: An Introduction to the Semiotics of Science Fiction, Marc Angenot13. Reading SF as a Mega-Text, Damien Broderick14. Time Travel and the Mechanics of Narrative, David Wittenberg Recommended Further ReadingPart III: Ideology and World View15. Mutation or Death! John B. Michel16. The Imagination of Disaster, Susan Sontag17. The Image of Women in Science Fiction, Joanna Russ18. Progress versus Utopia; or, Can We Imagine the Future? Fredric Jameson 19. Science Fiction and Critical Theory, Carl Freedman 20. Alien Cryptographies: The View from Queer, Wendy Pearson21. The Women History Doesn't See: Recovering Mid-Century Women's SF as a Literature of Social Critique, Lisa YaszekRecommended Further ReadingPart IV: The Non-Human22. Author's Introduction to Frankenstein, Mary Shelley23. The Android and the Human, Philip K. Dick 24. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, Donna Haraway25. Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers, N. Katherine Hayles26. The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in a Post-Human Era, Vernor Vinge 27. Aliens in the Fourth Dimension, Gwyneth Jones 28. Technofetishism and the Uncanny Desires of A.S.F.R. (alt.sex.fetish.robots), Allison de Fren29. Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and Human-Animal Studies, Sherryl Vint Recommended Further ReadingPart V: Race and the Legacy of Colonialism30. Science Fiction and Empire, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay31. Further Considerations on Afrofuturism, Kodwo Eshun 32. Indigenous Scientific Literacies in Nalo Hopkinson’s Ceremonial Worlds, Grace Dillon33. Biotic Invasions: Ecological Imperialism in New Wave Science Fiction, Rob Latham34. Alien/Asian: Imaging the Racialized Future, Stephen Hong Sohn35. A Report from Planet Midnight, Nalo Hopkinson36. Future Histories and Cyborg Labor: Reading Borderlands Science Fiction after NAFTA, Lysa Rivera Recommended Further ReadingIndex

Ultimately, by covering many bases without being laborious, Latham’s Science Fiction Criticism manages to offer a high use-value for students of science fiction while also appealing to non-academic fans.