Gerry Canavan - Böcker

"I began writing about power because I had so little," Octavia E. Butler once said. Butler's life as an African American woman--an alien in American society and among science fiction writers--informed the powerful works that earned her an ardent readership and acclaim both inside and outside science fiction. Gerry Canavan offers a critical and holistic consideration of Butler's career. Drawing on Butler's personal papers, Canavan tracks the false starts, abandoned drafts, tireless rewrites, and real-life obstacles that fed Butler's frustrations and launched her triumphs. Canavan departs from other studies to approach Butler first and foremost as a science fiction writer working within, responding to, and reacting against the genre's particular canon. The result is an illuminating study of how an essential SF figure shaped themes, unconventional ideas, and an unflagging creative urge into brilliant works of fiction.

"I began writing about power because I had so little," Octavia E. Butler once said. Butler's life as an African American woman--an alien in American society and among science fiction writers--informed the powerful works that earned her an ardent readership and acclaim both inside and outside science fiction. Gerry Canavan offers a critical and holistic consideration of Butler's career. Drawing on Butler's personal papers, Canavan tracks the false starts, abandoned drafts, tireless rewrites, and real-life obstacles that fed Butler's frustrations and launched her triumphs. Canavan departs from other studies to approach Butler first and foremost as a science fiction writer working within, responding to, and reacting against the genre's particular canon. The result is an illuminating study of how an essential SF figure shaped themes, unconventional ideas, and an unflagging creative urge into brilliant works of fiction.

The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction explores the relationship between the ideas and themes of American science fiction and their roots in the American cultural experience. Science fiction in America has long served to reflect the country's hopes, desires, ambitions, and fears. The ideas and conventions associated with science fiction are pervasive throughout American film and television, comics and visual arts, games and gaming, and fandom, as well as across the culture writ large. Through essays that address not only the history of science fiction in America but also the influence and significance of American science fiction throughout media and fan culture, this companion serves as a key resource for scholars, teachers, students, and fans of science fiction.

The first science fiction course in the American academy was held in the early 1950s. In the sixty years since, science fiction has become a recognized and established literary genre with a significant and growing body of scholarship. The Cambridge History of Science Fiction is a landmark volume as the first authoritative history of the genre. Over forty contributors with diverse and complementary specialties present a history of science fiction across national and genre boundaries, and trace its intellectual and creative roots in the philosophical and fantastic narratives of the ancient past. Science fiction as a literary genre is the central focus of the volume, but fundamental to its story is its non-literary cultural manifestations and influence. Coverage thus includes transmedia manifestations as an integral part of the genre's history, including not only short stories and novels, but also film, art, architecture, music, comics, and interactive media.

The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction explores the relationship between the ideas and themes of American science fiction and their roots in the American cultural experience. Science fiction in America has long served to reflect the country's hopes, desires, ambitions, and fears. The ideas and conventions associated with science fiction are pervasive throughout American film and television, comics and visual arts, games and gaming, and fandom, as well as across the culture writ large. Through essays that address not only the history of science fiction in America but also the influence and significance of American science fiction throughout media and fan culture, this companion serves as a key resource for scholars, teachers, students, and fans of science fiction.

«The Boom & The Boom is a profound, accessibly written analysis that will appeal to both scholars and an engaged general audience.» (Mengmeng Zhu, Extrapolation, vol. 66, no. 1 (2025))«The Boom & the Boom, like China Miéville’s The City and the City, presents a puzzle involving two parallel worlds. It builds a bridge for both worlds, forms mutually stimulating mirror images for both cultures, and creates a beautiful structure of discursive exploration of the multiplicity of contemporary science fiction beyond national boundaries.»(Mingwei Song, author of Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction (2023), SFRA Book Award Winner)«Twenty-five years ago, many of us thought we were in a period of growth: the British SF Boom. Lyu’s very readable book locates this radical sf in its political and economic contexts, but his genius is to discuss a parallel event: the Chinese SF Boom. This is a brilliant exploration of the genre outside the Gernsback-Campbell Continuum of American SF.»(Andrew M. Butler, Managing Editor, Extrapolation)«This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis of two sf booms, one in Britain, one in China, which until now seemed invisible to each other. LYU Guangzhao’s carefully paired readings of key novels show that sf is a global phenomenon but that, like economic globalisation itself, it takes distinctive local forms. Let a hundred schools of thought contend and a hundred science fictions boom!»(Mark Bould, Professor of Film and Literature, UWE Bristol)The Boom & The Boom provides a comparative study of the recent science fiction renaissances in the UK and China, known as the British and Chinese SF Booms, which emerged in the late 1980s. It contextualizes the two booms within the transformative political and cultural histories of both countries, characterized by the politico-economic shifts initiated by Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping. In an era marked by the state’s retreat from society and the redefinition of social subjects through market competition, science fiction assumes a crucial counter position for cultural critique, envisioning alternatives and possibilities embodied in utopian hopes.

This handbook illustrates the evolution of literature and science, in collaboration and contestation, across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The essays it gathers question the charged rhetoric that pits science against the humanities while also demonstrating the ways in which the convergence of literary and scientific approaches strengthens cultural analyses of colonialism, race, sex, labor, state formation, and environmental destruction.The broad scope of this collection explores the shifting relations between literature and science that have shaped our own cultural moment, sometimes in ways that create a problematic hierarchy of knowledge and other times in ways that encourage fruitful interdisciplinary investigations, innovative modes of knowledge production, and politically charged calls for social justice.  Across units focused on epistemologies, techniques and methods, ethics and politics, and forms and genres, the chapters address problems rangingacross epidemiology and global health, genomics and biotechnology, environmental and energy sciences, behaviorism and psychology, physics, and computational and surveillance technologies.Chapter 19 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This handbook illustrates the evolution of literature and science, in collaboration and contestation, across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The essays it gathers question the charged rhetoric that pits science against the humanities while also demonstrating the ways in which the convergence of literary and scientific approaches strengthens cultural analyses of colonialism, race, sex, labor, state formation, and environmental destruction.The broad scope of this collection explores the shifting relations between literature and science that have shaped our own cultural moment, sometimes in ways that create a problematic hierarchy of knowledge and other times in ways that encourage fruitful interdisciplinary investigations, innovative modes of knowledge production, and politically charged calls for social justice.  Across units focused on epistemologies, techniques and methods, ethics and politics, and forms and genres, the chapters address problems rangingacross epidemiology and global health, genomics and biotechnology, environmental and energy sciences, behaviorism and psychology, physics, and computational and surveillance technologies.Chapter 19 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.