Palgrave Science Fiction and Fantasy: A New Canon – Serie

This book offers an in-depth analysis of Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer, an Afrofuturist project that appeared simultaneously as a concept album and a visual album or “emotion picture” in spring 2018.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer, an Afrofuturist project that appeared simultaneously as a concept album and a visual album or “emotion picture” in spring 2018.

Fantasy author Neil Gaiman’s 1996 novel Neverwhere is not just a marvelous self-contained novel, but a terrifically useful text for introducing students to fantasy as a genre and issues of adaptation.

Fantasy author Neil Gaiman’s 1996 novel Neverwhere is not just a marvelous self-contained novel, but a terrifically useful text for introducing students to fantasy as a genre and issues of adaptation.

Wilson’s study depicts Bester as an SF insider as much as an outlier, writing in the spirit of the genre but breaking with the fixation on hard science in favor of psychological interiority, literary experimentation, and adult themes.

Wilson’s study depicts Bester as an SF insider as much as an outlier, writing in the spirit of the genre but breaking with the fixation on hard science in favor of psychological interiority, literary experimentation, and adult themes.

This book offers an examination of Jeff Noon’s iconoclastic debut novel, Vurt (1993). In this first book-length study of the novel, which includes an extended interview with Noon, Wenaus considers how Vurt complicates the process of literary canonization, its constructivist relationship to genre, its violent and oneiric setting of Manchester, its use of the Orphic myth as an archetype for the practice of literary collage and musical remix, and how the structural paradoxes of chaos and fractal geometry inform the novel’s content, form, and theme. Finally, Wenaus makes the case for Vurt’s ongoing relevance in the 21st century, an era increasingly characterized by neuro-totalitarianism, psychopolitics, and digital surveillance. With Vurt, Noon begins his project of rupturing feedback loops of control by breaking narrative habits and embracing the contingent and unpredictable. An inventive, energetic, and heartbreaking novel, Vurt is also anoptimistic and heartfelt call for artists to actively create open futures.

This book is a detailed examination of one of the most important works of fantasy literature from the twentieth century. The book also briefly examines how the themes laid out in Mythago Wood are carried through into later books in the sequence as well as the Merlin Codex

Drawing on Marxist literary criticism and narrative theory, this book examines the form and content of Tolkien’s work, demonstrating how the heroic romance is simultaneously employed and subverted by Tolkien in his tale of an unlikely hero, “quite a little fellow in a wide world,” who nonetheless makes history.

This book offers a critical study of Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), the world’s bestselling science fiction novel.

This book argues that Ann Leckie’s novel Ancillary Justice offers a devastating rebuke to the political, social, cultural, and economic injustices of American imperialism in the post 9/11 era.

The videogame series Mass Effect is a remarkable rarity not only for being an original science-fictional franchise of recent vintage that has risen to such prominent commercial and critical success in popular culture but also for pushing the canonical boundaries of how science fiction as a genre will be experienced and understood in the future. This book analyzes the significance of the game for an understanding of the evolving SF genre and articulates an explanatory framework to limn its landmark reception in videogame history. This book both synthesizes the burgeoning body of scholarship on Mass Effect for a readership unfamiliar with either the game or the critical conversation on its salient importance, while simultaneously, for readers already invested in the science-fiction and videogame scholarship, mounting an extended inquiry as to why Mass Effect has served as such a representative milestone in videogame and genre history. The book should appeal to veteran science-fiction and videogame scholars and students as well as a wide variety of fans, consumers, gamers, and general readers.

The videogame series Mass Effect is a remarkable rarity not only for being an original science-fictional franchise of recent vintage that has risen to such prominent commercial and critical success in popular culture but also for pushing the canonical boundaries of how science fiction as a genre will be experienced and understood in the future. This book analyzes the significance of the game for an understanding of the evolving SF genre and articulates an explanatory framework to limn its landmark reception in videogame history. This book both synthesizes the burgeoning body of scholarship on Mass Effect for a readership unfamiliar with either the game or the critical conversation on its salient importance, while simultaneously, for readers already invested in the science-fiction and videogame scholarship, mounting an extended inquiry as to why Mass Effect has served as such a representative milestone in videogame and genre history. The book should appeal to veteran science-fiction and videogame scholars and students as well as a wide variety of fans, consumers, gamers, and general readers.

Written not so long after "Tolkien mania" first gripped the United States in the 1960s, Ursula K. Le Guin's novel A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) has long been recognized as a classic of the fantasy genre, and the series of Earthsea books that followed on it over the next several decades earned its author both considerable sales and critical accolades. This new introduction to the text will closely contextualize the original novel in relation to its heady decade of composition and publication — a momentous time for genre publishing — and also survey the half century and more of scholarship on Earthsea, which has shifted in direction and emphasis many times over the decades, just as surely as Le Guin frequently adjusted her own sails when composing later works set in the fantasy world. Above all, this book positions A Wizard of Earthsea as perhaps an "old text" that nevertheless belongs in a "new canon," a key novel in the author's career and the genre in which it participates, and one that at once looks back to Tolkien and his own antecedents in masculinist early fantasy; looks forward to Le Guin's own continuing feminist and progressive education; and anticipates and indeed helped to shape young adult literature in its contemporary form.

​This book assesses the work of one of the foundational figures of American fantasy, Peter S. Beagle. Through its focused analysis of The Last Unicorn, this study contextualises Beagle’s work in relation to the popularity of the fantasy genre, following its growing success in the aftermath of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. In addition, through reference to the film adaptation of The Last Unicorn and also Beagle’s other works, this study highlights the author’s longevity and the influence that his metafictional and comedic work has had on contemporary fantasy.

In addition, through reference to the film adaptation of The Last Unicorn and also Beagle’s other works, this study highlights the author’s longevity and the influence that his metafictional and comedic work has had on contemporary fantasy.

​William Gibson’s Neuromancer: A Critical Companion presents Gibson’s rise as an influential figure within and beyond the science fiction field. Gibson’s success with Neuromancer, the first novel to win the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and Philip K. Dick Award, is in part a direct result of the rising popularity of cyberpunk in the early- to mid-1980s, although it could just as easily be said cyberpunk’s success was in no small part a direct result of Neuromancer’s explosion onto the science fiction scene.Neuromancer’s ongoing relevance remains undiminished because we are effectively living in a technocultural age that is increasingly difficult to distinguish from Gibson’s novel. As Graham J. Murphy demonstrates in this companion, the novel remains instrumental in thinking through the ongoing explorations of the posthuman:transhumanism, the Utopia/Anti-Utopia dynamic, and capitalist realism, to name a few of themore significant critical vehicles with which to better understand and contextualize our technocultural age and Neuromancer’s role in both shaping it and responding to it. This book provides a critical introduction to Neuromancer and cyberpunk culture.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of Keith Roberts's Pavane and explores why this work was instrumental to the evolution of the Science Fiction genre in British Literature.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of Keith Roberts's Pavane and explores why this work was instrumental to the evolution of the Science Fiction genre in British Literature. In addition to a focused exploration of the individual stories and themes that make up Pavane, this study also presents a commentary on the mosaic structure of this work, and the impact this has on the book as a whole. Through its discussion of themes such as religion, technology and morality, this text explores how alternate history plots can be used as a commentary or criticism of the current state of society.

The book vividly reconstructs how Ballard came to write Crash, the cultural landscape in which it was written, the effect of its reception, and the toll it took on its author.

This book provides a brief scholarly introduction to A Game of Thrones, the first volume of George R. R. Martin's ongoing series A Song of Ice and Fire. The book examines Martin's novel as a shrewd, genre-literate utilization of commonplaces and imperatives of its genre. Young focuses on various aspects of Martin's worldbuilding, as well as his use of fantasy to manage and utilize narrative tension. The overall polemic thrust of the book will be that Martin's novel displays his ability to manage the inherent tension between literary convention and innovation, producing something that is both an admirable essay in genre and a strong platform for distinctive author.