Description
Book SynopsisAlthough a number of contributions discuss 'mainstream' science fiction, the collection's emphasis is not on any single genre, but rather on the ways in which different histories - technological, cultural, military, ideological - generate and inform different modes of speculation about things to come.
Table of ContentsList of Plates Preface Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors Introducing the Future: The Dawn of Science Fiction Criticism; H.Harrison History in SF: What (Hasn't Yet) Happened in History; K.MacLeod The Ruins of the Future: Macaulay's New Zealander and the Spirit of the Age; R.Dingley Celluloid Scientists: Futures Visualised; R.D.Haynes Losing the Sense and Space: Forster's The Machine Stops and Jameson's Third Machine Age; B.Battaglia Boys, Battleships, Books: The Cult of the Navy in US Juvenile Fiction, 1898-1919; B.Brasington American Dreams and Edwardian Aspirations: Technological Innovation and Temporal Uncertainty in Narratives of Expectation; C.E.Gannon Filing the Future: Reporting on World War Three; D.Seed The Map of the Apocalypse: Nuclear War and the Space of Dystopia in American Science Fiction; B.Baker A New World Made to Order: Making Sense of the Future in a Global Era; A.Spark Sign, Symbol, Power: The New Martian Novel; R.Crossley Starship Troopers, Galactic Heroes, Mercenary Princes: The Military and its Discontents in Science Fiction; T.Shippey Terrible Angels: Science Fiction and the Singularity; D.Broderick Index