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The Stuff of Science Fiction

Author: Gary Westfahl

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2022-09-23

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1476686599

While students and general readers typically cannot relate to esoteric definitions of science fiction, they readily understand the genre as a literature that characteristically deals with subjects such as new inventions, space, robot and aliens. This book looks at science fiction in precisely this manner, with twenty-one chapters that each deal with a subject that is repeatedly addressed in science fiction of recent centuries. Based on a packet of original essays that the author assembled for his classes, the book could serve as a supplemental textbook in science fiction classes, but also contains material of interest to science fiction scholars and others devoted to the genre. In some cases, chapters offer thorough surveys of numerous works involving certain subjects, such as imagined vehicles, journeys beneath the Earth and undersea adventures, discovering intriguing patterns in the ways that various writers developed their ideas. When comprehensive coverage of ubiquitous topics such as robots, aliens and the planet Mars is impossible, chapters focus on major themes referencing selected texts. A conclusion discusses other science fiction subjects that were omitted for various reasons, and a bibliography lists additional resources for the study of science fiction in general and the topics of each chapter.

The Science in Science Fiction

Author: Peter Nicholls

Publisher: Crescent

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 9780517653357

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Bodies and Things in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

Author: K. Boehm

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-02-18

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1137283653

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This book provides fresh perspectives on the object world, embodied experience and materiality in nineteenth-century literature and culture. Contributors explore canonical works by Austen, Brontë, Dickens and James, alongside less-familiar texts and a range of objects including nineteenth-century automata, scrapbooks, museum exhibits and antiques.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Enhanced Edition)

Author: Charles Yu

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2010-09-07

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0307379884

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This enhanced eBook includes video, audio, photographic, and linked content, as well as a bonus short story. Hear TAMMY talk. Learn the origins of Minor Universe 31. See the TM-31. Take a trip in it. Photos and illustrations appear as hyperlinked endnotes. Video and audio are embedded directly in text. *Video and audio may not play on all readers. Check your user manual for details. National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space–time. Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life. Wildly new and adventurous, Yu’s debut is certain to send shock waves of wonder through literary space–time.

Look to Windward

Author: Iain Banks

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 0743421922

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Eight hundred years after the most horrific battle of the Idiran war, light from its world-destroying detonations is about to reach the Masaq Orbital, home to the Culture. Major Quilan has supposedly come to take the exiled Composer Ziller back to their war-ravaged home world, Chel. But despite the major's civilized veneer, his true mission may be the death and destruction of an entire civilization.

Project Hail Mary

Author: Andy Weir

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2021-05-04

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 0593135210

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Martian, a lone astronaut must save the earth from disaster in this “propulsive” (Entertainment Weekly), cinematic thriller full of suspense, humor, and fascinating science—in development as a major motion picture starring Ryan Gosling. HUGO AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST BOOKS: Bill Gates, GatesNotes, New York Public Library, Parade, Newsweek, Polygon, Shelf Awareness, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal • “An epic story of redemption, discovery and cool speculative sci-fi.”—USA Today “If you loved The Martian, you’ll go crazy for Weir’s latest.”—The Washington Post Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. Or does he? An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could deliver, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.

The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of

Author: Thomas M. Disch

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2000-07-05

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0684859785

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A popular insider offers a fascinating history of science fiction filled with provocative critiques, tidbits, and insights that reveal much about our cultural and literary history.

The Golden Age of Science Fiction

Author: John Wade

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781526729255

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John Wade grew up in the 1950s, a decade that has since been dubbed the 'golden age of science fiction'. It was a wonderful decade for science fiction, but not so great for young fans. With early television broadcasts being advertised for the first time as 'unsuitable for children' and the inescapable barrier of the 'X' certificate in the cinema barring anyone under the age of sixteen, the author had only the radio to fall back on - and that turned out to be more fertile for the budding SF fan than might otherwise have been thought. Which is probably why, as he grew older, rediscovering those old TV broadcasts and films that had been out of bounds when he was a kid took on a lure that soon became an obsession.For him, the super-accuracy and amazing technical quality of today's science fiction films pale into insignificance beside the radio, early TV and B-picture films about people who built rockets in their back gardens and flew them to lost planets, or tales of aliens who wanted to take over, if not our entire world, then at least our bodies. This book is a personal account of John Wade's fascination with the genre across all the entertainment media in which it appeared - the sort of stuff he revelled in as a young boy - and still enjoys today.

How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy

Author: Orson Scott Card

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2001-09-15

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 158297103X

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Learn to write science fiction and fantasy from a master You've always dreamed of writing science fiction and fantasy tales that pull readers into extraordinary new worlds and fantastic conflicts. Best-selling author Orson Scott Card shows you how it's done, distilling years of writing experience and publishing success into concise, no-nonsense advice. You'll learn how to: • utilize story elements that define the science fiction and fantasy genres • build, populate, and dramatize a credible, inviting world your readers will want to explore • develop the "rules" of time, space and magic that affect your world and its inhabitants • construct a compelling story by developing ideas, characters, and events that keep readers turning pages • find the markets for speculative fiction, reach them, and get published • submit queries, write cover letters, find an agent, and live the life of a writer The boundaries of your imagination are infinite. Explore them with Orson Scott Card and create fiction that casts a spell over agents, publishers, and readers from every world.

The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction

Author: Mike Ashley

Publisher: Robinson

Published: 2010-07-31

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 184901535X

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Here are 25 stories of science fiction that push the envelope, by the biggest names in an emerging new crop of high-tech futuristic SF - including Charles Stross, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton and Neal Asher. High-tech SF has made a significant comeback in the last decade, as bestselling authors successfully blend the super-science of 'hard science fiction' with real characters in an understandable scenario. It is perhaps a reflection of how technologically controlled our world is that readers increasingly look for science fiction that considers the fates of mankind as a result of increasing scientific domination. This anthology brings together the most extreme examples of the new high-tech, far-future science fiction, pushing the limits way beyond normal boundaries. The stories include: "A Perpetual War Fought Within a Cosmic String", "A Weapon That Could Destroy the Universe", "A Machine That Detects Alternate Worlds and Creates a Choice of Christs", "An Immortal Dead Man Sent To The End of the Universe", "Murder in Virtual Reality", "A Spaceship So Large That There is An Entire Planetary System Within It", and "An Analytical Engine At The End of Time", and "Encountering the Untouchable."