Description
Book SynopsisThis major two-volume collection presents Darko Suvin’s critical meditations on science
fiction and utopia from the late 1960s through the early years of the new millennium,
excluding only the landmark monographs Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, Victorian
Science Fiction, and Defined by a Hollow. From essential programmatic statements
charting the parabolic logic of science fiction and establishing the parameters of
a theoretically supple and rigorously historical SF criticism to confrontations with
both a postmodernist abdication of politics and a “neutral” sociology of literature,
these writings reflect the evolving thought of the preeminent contemporary theorist of
science fiction. Underpinned by a method of heretical cognition and the steadfast
insistence of utopian possibility, the varied essays, interviews, poems, and polemics
presented here—encompassing four decades of sustained thought on the topic—
offer up the affirmation of freedom as the truest horizon of science fiction.
Table of ContentsContents: Volume I: Preliminary Theses on Allegory (1977) – The Moon as a Mirror to Man: Or, Lessons of Selenography (1969) – Significant Themes in Soviet Criticism of Science Fiction to 1965 (1969) – The SF Novel in 1969 (1970) – Against Common Sense: Levels of SF Criticism (1972) – A, B, and C: The Significant Context of SF: A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation (1973) – Four Worries on Science Fiction Contexts (1970–1975) – James Blish, 1921–1975 (1975) – On Philip K. Dick – On Ursula K. Le Guin – On the Strugatsky Brothers – For a Social Theory of Science Fiction: Programmatic Reflections (1977–1988) – with Marc Angenot: Editorial of Science-Fiction Studies (1979) – with Marc Angenot: Not Only But Also: Reflections on Cognitions and Ideology in SF and SF Criticism (1979) – Three World Paradigms for SF: Asimov, Yefremov, and Lem (1979–1993) – Pilgrim Award Speech for the SF Research Association (1979) – A Brief Valedictory on Stepping Down (1981) – Volume II: Playful Cognizing, or Technical Errors in Harmonyville: The SF of Johanna and Günter Braun (1981 and 1987) – The Science-Fiction Novel as Epic Narration: For a Fusion of «Formal» and «Sociological» Analysis (1980–1985) – with Eike Barmeyer and Dieter Hasselblatt: A Discussion of Stanisław Lem’s SF Radio-Drama Do You Exist Mr Johns? (1982) – Narrative Logic, Ideological Domination, and the Range of Science Fiction: A Hypothesis with a Test Case (1982) – Science Fiction: Metaphor, Parable, and Chronotope (With the Bad Conscience of Reaganism) (1984) – with Marc Angenot: On «Post-Modernist» Political Impotence and the Horizons of Fiction and SF: A Response to Professor Fekete’s «Five Theses» (1988) – Science Fiction: A Basic Sketch (1987–1994) – Utopia in the Asian Eighties: Six Songlets (1983–1988) – Visions Off Yamada (1988) – Thinking Worlds of a Liminal Shintoist Cybermarxist: Five Interviews (1987–1995) – Counter-Projects: William Morris and the SF of the 1880s (1988) – We’ve Met the Aliens and They Are Us: Weinbaum’s Parables of Class (1993–2010) – Notes and Memories on Science Fiction – With Sober, Estranged Eyes (1998) – SF Parables of Mutation and Cloning as/and Cognition (2002).
