FYSP 018: Finding a Work of Socialist Fiction

For over a century, most of the science fiction produced by the world's largest country has been beyond the reach of Western readers. This new collection aims to change that, bringing a large body of influential works into the English orbit. A scientist keeps a severed head alive, and the head lives to tell the tale... An explorer experiences life on the moon, in a story written six decades before the first moon landing... Electrical appliances respond to human anxieties and threaten to crash the electrical grid... Archaeologists discover strange powers emanating from a Central Asian excavation site... A teleporting experiment goes awry, leaving a subject to cope with a bizarre sensory swap... A boy discovers the explosive truth of his father's "antiseptic" work, stamping out dissent on distant worlds... The last 100 years in Russia have seen an astonishing diversity and depth of literary works in the science fiction genre, by authors with a dizzying array of styles and subject matter. This volume brings together 18 such works, translated into English for the first time, spanning from path-breaking, pre-revolutionary works of the 1890s, through the difficult Stalinist era, to post-Soviet stories published in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction features over a 150 years' worth of the best science fiction ever collected in a single volume. The fifty-two stories and critical introductions are organized chronologically as well as thematically for classroom use. Filled with luminous ideas, otherworldly adventures, and startling futuristic speculations, these stories will appeal to all readers as they chart the emergence and evolution of science fiction as a modern literary genre. They also provide a fascinating look at how our Western technoculture has imaginatively expressed its hopes and fears from the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century to the digital age of today. A free online teacher's guide at http://sfanthology.site.wesleyan.edu/ accompanies the anthology and offers access to a host of pedagogical aids for using this book in an academic setting. The stories in this anthology have been selected and introduced by the editors of Science Fiction Studies, the world's most respected journal for the critical study of science fiction.

So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy is an anthology of original new stories by leading African, Asian, South Asian, and Aboriginal authors, as well as North American and British writers of colour. Stories of imagined futures abound in Western writing. Writer and editor Nalo Hopkinson notes that the science fiction/fantasy genre "speaks so much about the experience of being alienated, but contains so little writing by alienated people themselves." It's an oversight that Hopkinson and Mehan aim to correct with this anthology. The book depicts imagined futures from the perspectives of writers associated with what might loosely be termed the "third world." It includes stories that are bold, imaginative, edgy; stories that are centred in the worlds of the "developing" nations; stories that dare to dream what we might develop into. The wealth of postcolonial literature has included many who have written insightfully about their pasts and presents. With So Long Been Dreaming they creatively address their futures. With an introduction by Hugo and Nebula Award-winner Samuel R. Delany. Contributors to So Long Been Dreaming are Opal Palmer Adisa, Celu Amberstone, Ven Begamudre, Tobias S. Buckell, Wayde Compton, Andrea Hairston, Maya Khankhoje, Tamai Kobayashi, Larissa Lai, Karin Lowachee, devorah major, Suzette Mayr, Carole McDonnell, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Eden Robinson, Nisi Shawl, Vandana Singh, Sheree R. Thomas, and Greg van Eekhout.

Invisible Planets, edited by multi award-winning writer Ken Liu--translator of the bestselling and Hugo Award-winning novelThe Three Body Problem by acclaimed Chinese author Cixin Liu--is his second thought-provoking anthology of Chinese short speculative fiction.Invisible Planetsis a groundbreaking anthology of Chinese short speculative fiction. The thirteen stories in this collection, including two by Cixin Liu and the Hugo and Sturgeon award-nominated "Folding Beijing" by Hao Jingfang, add up to a strong and diverse representation of Chinese SF. Some have won awards, some have garnered serioius critical acclaim, some have been selected for Year's Best anthologies, and some are simply Ken Liu's personal favorites. To round out the collection, there are several essays from Chinese scholars and authors, plus an illuminating introduction by Ken Liu. Anyone with an interest in international science fiction will findInvisible Planets an indispensable addition to their collection. For more Chinese SF in translation, check outBroken Stars. Stories: "The Year of the Rat" by Chen Qiufan "The Fist of Lijian" by Chen Qiufan "The Flower of Shazui" by Chen Qiufan "A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight" by Xia Jia "Tongtong's Summer" by Xia Jia "Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse" by Xia jia "The City of Silence" by Ma Boyong "Invisible Planets" by Hao Jingfang "Folding Beijing" by Hao Jingfang "Call Girl" by Tang Fei "Grave of the Fireflies" by Cheng Jingbo "The Circle" by Liu Cixin "Taking Care of God" by Liu Cixin Essays: "The Worst of All Possible Universes and the Best of All Possible Earths:Three-Bodyand Chinese Science Fiction" by Liu Cixin and Ken Liu "The Torn Generation" Chinese Science Fiction in a Culture in Transition" by Chen Qiufan and Ken Liu "What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese?" by Xia Jia and Ken Liu

A pocket color manifesto for a new futuristic feminism Injustice should not simply be accepted as "the way things are." This is the starting point for The Xenofeminist Manifesto, a radical attempt to articulate a feminism fit for the twenty-first century. Unafraid of exploring the potentials of technology, both its tyrannical and emancipatory possibilities, the manifesto seeks to uproot forces of repression that have come to seem inevitable--from the family, to the body, to the idea of gender itself. If nature is unjust, change nature!

Including more than 30 essential works of science fiction criticism in a single volume, this is a comprehensive introduction to the study of this enduringly popular genre.

The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction attempts to descry the historical and cultural contours of SF in the wake of technoculture studies. Rather than treating the genre as an isolated aesthetic formation, it examines SF's many lines of cross-pollination with technocultural realities since itsinception in the nineteenth century, showing how SF's unique history and subcultural identity has been constructed in ongoing dialogue with popular discourses of science and technology.

The notion of the utopian is also explored through representations of otherness, alien life and alien worlds in science fiction, including LeGuin, Lem, Stapledon and the Strugatskys, and concludes with an examination of the opposing positions on utopia and an assessment of its political value and function today.

Science fiction is at the intersection of numerous fields. It is literature which draws on popular culture, and engages in speculation about science, history, and all varieties of social relations. This volume brings together essays by scholars and practitioners of science fiction, which look at the genre from different angles. It examines science fiction from Thomas More to the present day; and introduces important critical approaches (including Marxism, postmodernism, feminism and queer theory).

A collection of essays, bringing science fiction cinema into the ambit of film and cultural theory.

Pursue the critical and theoretical issues opened up in the earlier book and explores fresh territory: visionary cities, psycho-cybernetics, internet fandom, the convergence of science fiction literature and science action film, the body and its limits are just some of the subjects brought under its gaze.

Since the dawn of the Space Age, when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite and sent the first human into the cosmos, science fiction literature and cinema from Russia has fascinated fans, critics, and scholars from around the world. Informed perspectives on the surprisingly long and incredibly rich tradition of Russian science fiction, however, are hard to come by in accessible form. This critical reader aims to provide precisely such a resource for students, scholars, and the merely curious who wish to delve deeper into landmarks of the genre, discover innumerable lesser-known gems in the process, and understand why science fiction came to play such a crucial role in Russian society, politics, technology, and culture for more than a century.