Description
Book SynopsisIn what N. Katherine Hayles describes as "this enormously ambitious posthumous volume," renowned scholar George Slusser offers a definitive version of the argument about the history of science fiction that he developed throughout his career: that several important ideas and texts, routinely overlooked in other critical studies, made significant contributions to the creation of modern science fiction as it developed into a truly global literature. He explores how key thinkers like René Descartes, Benjamin Constant, Thomas DeQuincey, Guy du Maupassant, J.D. Bernal, and Ralph Waldo Emerson influenced and are reflected in twentieth-century science fiction stories from the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Poland, and Russia. The conclusion begins with Slusser’s overview of global science fiction in the twenty-first century and discusses recent developments in countries like China, Romania, and Israel. Hayles’s foreword provides a useful summation of the book’s contents, while science fiction writer Gregory Benford contributes an afterword providing a personal perspective on the life and thoughts of his longtime friend. The book was edited by Slusser’s former colleague Gary Westfahl, a distinguished scholar in his own right.
Table of ContentsForeword: A Novel Method for Constructing Science Fiction’s Origins
by N. Katherine Hayles
Notes on the Text
by Gary Westfahl
Introduction: Science Fiction:
Toward a World Literature
Chapter One
The Paradigms of Science Fiction
Chapter Two
Fraternal Frontiers: Defining a Space for Literature
Chapter Three
Future Liberty: Nineteenth Century Horizons
Chapter Four
Extending the Mind Circle: DeQuincey’s English Mail Coach
Chapter Five
Genre at the Crossroads: Cultural Readings of Maupassant’s “Le Horla”
Chapter Six
Bernal’s Masterplot and the Transhuman Promise
Chapter Seven
Each Man Is an Island: The Legacy of Emerson’s Golden Age
Conclusion
The Fortunes of Science Fiction
Afterword: Knowing George
by Gregory Benford
A Brief Bibliography of the Works of George Slusser
