Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vi
Contributors vii
Introduction: Learning from Other Worlds / Patrick Parrinder 1
Part I. Science Fiction and Utopia: Theory and Politics
Before the Novum: The Prehistory of Science Fiction Criticism / Edward Jones 19
Revisiting Suvin's Poetics of Science Fiction / Patrick Parrinder 36
"Look into the dark": On Dystopia and the Novum / Tom Moylan 51
Science Fiction and Utopia: A Historico-Philosophical Overview / Carl Freedman 72
Society After the Revolution: The Blueprints for the Forthcoming Socialist Society published by the Leaders of the Second International / Marc Angenot 98
Part II. Science Fiction it its Social, Cultural, and Philosophical Contexts
From the Images of Science to Science Fiction / Gérard Klein 119
Estranged Invaders: The War of the Worlds / Peter Fitting 127
"A part of the . . . family[?]": John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos as Estranged Autobiography / David Ketterer 146
Labyrinth, Double and Mask in the Science Fiction of Stanislaw Lem / Rafail Nudelman 178
"We're at the start of a new ball game and that's why we're all real nervous": Or, Cloning—Technological Cognition Reflects Estrangement from Women / Marleen S. Barr 193
"If I find one good city I will spare the man": Realism and Utopia in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy / Fredric Jameson 208
Afterword: With Sober, Estranged Eyes / Darko Suvin 233
Darko Suvin: Checklist of Printed Items that Concern Science Fiction 272
Bibliography 291
Index 307

About the Author

Patrick Parrinder is Professor of English at the University of Reading, England. His previous books include Authors and Authority: English and American Criticism, 1750–1990 and Shadows of the Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction, and Prophecy.

Reviews

""Learning From Other Worlds "performs a difficult task admirably well. The task, as defined by Patrick Parrinder in his excellent introduction to this volume, is to bring together a representative variety of critical writings on science fiction that, despite their differences in critical approach, focus, and national origin, all build upon pioneering SF critic Darko Suvin's most salient themes. The task is difficult because one would be hard-pressed to find any work of SF criticism that did not respond to and/or build upon, either implicitly or explicitly, and either critically or approvingly, some aspect of Suvin's critical corpus on SF. Parrinder has chosen eleven recently authored essays exemplary of one among several interimplicated tendencies in the field of SF criticism, a tendency that he describes in the following passage."
--Alcena Madeline Davis Rogan," South Atlantic Review"

"[A] demanding yet rewarding collection . . ."
--P. Schlueter," Choice"

"[A] diverse collection of insightful elaborations and literary/cultural analyses . . . . Scholars working with Suvin's theories of literature and culture will be hard pressed to find a more timely and comprehensive collection."
--Jimmy McCroy, "SFRA Review"

"Most of the book will appeal to readers interested either in canonical science fiction or in Suvin's wide-ranging and provocative work; the theoretical essays will attract those studying the nature of science fiction. . . . [T]he other essays will attract those inquiring into specific subjects, such as a theme, text, or author, or the development of science fiction studies. . . . [A] well-timed, thoughtful examination of the field through commentary on a scholar whose work exemplifies it."
--Ellen Peel, "Modern Philology"

"Science fiction studies has always been committed to exploring the relationship between science fiction and utopia, and all of the essays in this volume take up that task."
--American Literature