Science Fiction

Roger Luckhurst, Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck College University of London

• Acknowledgements. Introduction.PART I. EMERGENCE, 1880-1945.1. Conditions of Emergence.2. Britain: The Scientific Romance and the Evolutionary Paradigm.3. America: Pulp Fictions and the Engineer Paradigm.PART II. ELABORATION, 1945-1959.4. 1945: The Technocultural Conjuncture.5. From Atomjocks to Cultural Critique: American SF, 1939-1959.6. ‘All that Age, Horribly Dislocated’: England After 1945.PART III. DECADE STUDIES.7. The 1960s.8. The 1970s.9. The 1980s.10. The 1990s.Notes.Selected Bibliography.Index.

"An exciting, argumentative and invaluable overview of the most interesting literature out there. Roger Luckhurst does an excellent job of embedding SF in history."China Miéville, author of Perdido Street Station and Iron Council "This is a well-conceived, impressively researched and eloquently argued study of Anglo-American science fiction. Combining a sweeping command of cultural-historical contexts with incisive close readings of individual texts, Roger Luckhurst illuminates over a century's worth of print and mass-media SF. Whether discussing popular concerns about the pervasive power of "Mechanism" in the nineteenth century or avant-gardist critiques of the media-saturated "Society of the Spectacle" in the 1960s, Luckhurst's consistent emphasis on how SF registers the impact of techno-scientific change gives his study a remarkable coherence. In sum, this is an essential and timely volume" Rob Latham, University of Iowa "This is a refreshing and lively survey of a very broad field. It usefully situates science fiction in its relevant cultural context and makes a valuable contribution to the history of the genre." David Seed, Liverpool University