Download The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein PDF

The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein

Author: Farah Mendlesohn
Publsiher: Unbound Publishing
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2019-03-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1783526807
Rating: 4.5/5 (268 downloads)

Download The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Robert A. Heinlein began publishing in the 1940s at the dawn of the Golden Age of science fiction, and today he is considered one of the genre's 'big three' alongside Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. His short stories were instrumental in developing its structure and rhetoric, while novels such as Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers demonstrated that such writing could be a vehicle for political argument. Heinlein’s influence remains strong, but his legacy is fiercely contested. His vision of the future was sometimes radical, sometimes deeply conservative, and arguments have flared up recently about which faction has the most significant claim on his ideas. In this major critical study, Hugo Award-winner Farah Mendlesohn carries out a close reading of Heinlein’s work, including unpublished stories, essays, and speeches. It sets out not to interpret a single book, but to think through the arguments Heinlein made over a lifetime about the nature of science fiction, about American politics, and about himself.

Download Science Fiction Literature through History: An Encyclopedia [2 volumes] PDF

Science Fiction Literature through History: An Encyclopedia [2 volumes]

Author: Gary Westfahl
Publsiher: ABC-CLIO
Total Pages: 766
Release: 2021-07-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1440866171
Rating: 4.8/5 (661 downloads)

Download Science Fiction Literature through History: An Encyclopedia [2 volumes] Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book provides high school and undergraduate students, and other interested readers, with a comprehensive survey of science fiction history and numerous essays addressing major science fiction topics, authors, works, and subgenres written by a distinguished scholar. This encyclopedia deals with written science fiction in all of its forms, not only novels and short stories but also mediums often ignored in other reference books, such as plays, poems, comic books, and graphic novels. Some science fiction films, television programs, and video games are also mentioned, particularly when they are relevant to written texts. Its focus is on science fiction in the English language, though due attention is given to international authors whose works have been frequently translated into English. Since science fiction became a recognized genre and greatly expanded in the 20th century, works published in the 20th and 21st centuries are most frequently discussed, though important earlier works are not neglected. The texts are designed to be helpful to numerous readers, ranging from students first encountering science fiction to experienced scholars in the field. Provides readers with information about written science fiction in all its forms—novels, stories, plays, poems, comic books, and graphic novels Includes original interviews with major writers like Ted Chiang, Samuel R. Delany, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Connie Willis that are not available elsewhere Features numerous sidebars with additional data about various subjects and key passages from several classic works Includes hundreds of bibliographies of sources that provide additional information on various specific topics and the genre of science fiction as a whole

Download “All-Electric” Narratives PDF

“All-Electric” Narratives

Author: Rachele Dini
Publsiher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2021-10-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501367366
Rating: 4.3/5 (673 downloads)

Download “All-Electric” Narratives Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

“All-electric” Narratives is the first in-depth study of time-saving electrical appliances in American literature. It examines the literary depiction of refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, oven ranges, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, toasters, blenders, standing and hand-held mixers, and microwave ovens between 1945, when the “all-electric” home came to be associated with the nation's hard-won victory, and 2020, as contemporary writers consider the enduring material and spiritual effects of these objects in the 21st century. The appropriation and subversion of the rhetoric of domestic electrification and time-saving comprises a crucial, but overlooked, element in 20th-century literary forms and genres including Beat literature, Black American literature, second-wave feminist fiction, science fiction, and postmodernist fiction. Through close-readings of dozens of literary texts alongside print and television ads from this period, Dini shows how U.S. writers have unearthed the paradoxes inherent to claims of appliances' capacity to “give back” time to their user, transport them into a technologically-progressive future, or “return” them to some pastoral past. In so doing, she reveals literary appliances' role in raising questions about gender norms and sexuality, racial exclusion and erasure, class anxieties, the ramifications of mechanization, the perils and possibilities of conformity, the limitations of patriotism, and the inevitable fallacy of utopian thinking-while both shaping and radically disrupting the literary forms in which they operated.

Download The Postworld In-Between Utopia and Dystopia PDF

The Postworld In-Between Utopia and Dystopia

Author: Katarzyna Ostalska
Publsiher: Routledge
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2021-12-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000509966
Rating: 4.5/5 (99 downloads)

Download The Postworld In-Between Utopia and Dystopia Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This collection of essays offers global perspectives on feminist utopia and dystopia in speculative literature, film, and art, working from a range of intersectional approaches to examine key works and genres in both their specific cultural context and a wider, global, epistemological, critical background. The international, diverse contributions, including a Foreword by Gregory Claeys, draw upon posthumanism, speculative realism, speculative feminism, object-oriented ontology, new materialisms, and post-Anthropocene studies to propose alternative perspectives on gender, environment, as well as alternate futures and pasts rendered in fiction. Instead of binary divisions into utopia vs dystopia, the collection explores genres transcending this dichotomy, scrutinising the oeuvre of both established and emerging writers, directors, and critics. This is a rich and unique collection suitable for scholars and students studying feminist literature, media cultural studies, and women’s and gender studies.

Download Aliens in Popular Culture PDF

Aliens in Popular Culture

Author: Michael M. Levy
Publsiher: ABC-CLIO
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2019-03-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 144083833X
Rating: 4.8/5 (383 downloads)

Download Aliens in Popular Culture Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

An indispensable resource, this book provides wide coverage on aliens in fiction and popular culture. • Provides cultural context in introductory essays on some of the key themes and contexts of alien representation • Covers a broad scope, with more than 130 entries on different topics, and is written by nearly 90 researchers with diverse expertise • Shows readers the varied ways that imagined aliens have become a part of popular culture • Presents both familiar topics and more obscure topics in popular culture to provide new scholarship

Download The Year's Best Science Fiction Vol. 1 PDF

The Year's Best Science Fiction Vol. 1

Author: Jonathan Strahan
Publsiher: Gallery / Saga Press
Total Pages: 608
Release: 2020-09-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1534449590
Rating: 4.4/5 (495 downloads)

Download The Year's Best Science Fiction Vol. 1 Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The definitive guide and a must-have collection of the best short science fiction and speculative fiction of 2019, showcasing brilliant talent and examining the cultural moment we live in, compiled by award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan. With short works from some of the most lauded science fiction authors, as well as rising stars, this collection displays the top talent and the cutting-edge cultural moments that affect our lives, dreams, and stories. The list of authors is truly star-studded, including New York Times bestseller Ted Chiang (author of the short story that inspired the movie Arrival), N. K. Jemisin, Charlie Jane Anders, and many more incredible talents. An assemblage of future classics, this anthology is a must-read for anyone who enjoys the vast and exciting world of science fiction.

Download The Moon PDF

The Moon

Author: Oliver Morton
Publsiher: Profile Books
Total Pages:
Release: 2019-05-16
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1782835466
Rating: 4.8/5 (354 downloads)

Download The Moon Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

A Sunday Times must read book of 2019 'An out-of-this-world read ... brilliant and compelling. Morton is a high-octane British science journalist, and every chapter is littered with material that strikes, amazes or haunts ... this is a book filled not just with a lifetime's knowledge of its subject but with a lifetime's suppressed excitement.' James McConnachie, Sunday Times Every generation has looked up from the Earth and wondered at the beauty of the Moon. 50 years ago, a few Americans became the first to do the reverse - with the whole world watching through their eyes. In this short but wide-ranging book, Oliver Morton explores the history and future of humankind's relationship with the Moon. A counterpoint in the sky, it has shaped our understanding of the Earth from Galileo to Apollo. Its gentle light has spoken of love and loneliness; its battered surface of death and the cosmic. For some, it is a future on which humankind has turned its back. For others, an adventure yet to begin. Advanced technologies, new ambitions and old dreams mean that men, women and robots now seem certain to return to the Moon. What will they learn there about the universe, the Earth-and themselves? And, this time, will they stay?

Download Citizen Science Fiction PDF

Citizen Science Fiction

Author: Dr. Jerome Winter
Publsiher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2021-03-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1793621489
Rating: 4.6/5 (214 downloads)

Download Citizen Science Fiction Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Citizen Science Fiction argues that science-fiction literature and media can engage and empower individuals to become active and critical participants in citizen science such that they can collaborate meaningfully in the scientific and technological communities, institutions, and industries that deeply shape their everyday lives.

Download Uneven Futures PDF

Uneven Futures

Author: Ida Yoshinaga
Publsiher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2022-12-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 026254394X
Rating: 4.5/5 (439 downloads)

Download Uneven Futures Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Essays on speculative/science fiction explore the futures that feed our most cherished fantasies and terrifying nightmares, while helping diverse communities devise new survival strategies for a tough millennium. The explosion in speculative/science fiction (SF) across different media from the late twentieth century to the present has compelled those in the field of SF studies to rethink the community’s identity, orientation, and stakes. In this edited collection, more than forty writers, critics, game designers, scholars, and activists explore core SF texts, with an eye toward a future in which corporations dominate both the means of production and the means of distribution and governments rely on powerful surveillance and carceral technologies. The essays, international in scope, demonstrate the diversity of SF through a balance of popular mass-market novels, comics, films, games, TV shows, creepypastas, and more niche works. SF works explored range from Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi, 2084: The End of the World by Boualem Sansal, Terra Nullius by Claire Coleman, Watchmen and X-Men comics, and the Marvel film Captain America: The Winter Soldier, to the MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin, and the Wormwood trilogy by Tade Thompson. In an era in which ecological disaster and global pandemics regularly expose and intensify deep political-economic inequalities, what futures has SF anticipated? What survival strategies has it provided us? Can it help us to deal with, and grow beyond, the inequalities and injustices of our times? Unlike other books of speculative/science fiction criticism, Uneven Futures uses a think piece format to make its critical insights engaging to a wide audience. The essays inspire visions of better possible futures—drawing on feminist, queer, and global speculative engagements with Indigenous, Latinx, and Afro- and African futurisms—while imparting important lessons for political organizing in the present. Contributors: Ben Abraham, Emmet Asher-Perrin, Brent Ryan Bellamy, Gerry Canavan, Andrew Ferguson, Fabio Fernandes, Dexter Gabriel, M. Elizabeth Ginway, Sean Guynes, Ouissal Harize, David M. Higgins, Veronica Hollinger, Allanah Hunt, Nicola Hunte, Nathaniel Isaacson, Ayana Jamieson, Darshana Jayemanne, Gwyneth Jones, Brendan Keogh, Sami Ahmad Khan, Cameron Kunzelman, Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada, Isiah Lavender III, Caryn Lesuma, Karen Lord, Sarah Marrs, Farah Mendlesohn, Cathryn Merla-Watson, Hugh Charles O’Connell, B. Pladek, John Rieder, Lysa Rivera, Kim Stanley Robinson, Steven Shaviro, Rebekah Sheldon, Alison Sperling, Alfredo Suppia, Bogi Takács, Taryne Jade Taylor, Sherryl Vint, Kirin Wachter-Grene, Ida Yoshinaga.

Download Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 1 PDF

Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 1

Author: William H. Patterson, Jr.
Publsiher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2010-08-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1429964855
Rating: 4.9/5 (648 downloads)

Download Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 1 Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

For the first time, the real story of the life of Robert A. Heinlein in the authorized biography Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) is generally considered the greatest American SF writer of the 20th century. A famous and bestselling author in later life, he started as a navy man and graduate of Annapolis who was forced to retire because of tuberculosis. A socialist politician in the 1930s, he became one of the sources of Libertarian politics in the USA in his later years. His most famous works include the Future History series (stories and novels collected in The Past Through Tomorrow and continued in later novels), Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Given his desire for privacy in the later decades of his life, he was both stranger and more interesting than one could ever have known. This is the first of two volumes of a major American biography. This volume is about Robert A. Heinlein's life up to the end of the 1940s and the mid-life crisis that changed him forever. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download Robert A. Heinlein PDF

Robert A. Heinlein

Author: Howard Bruce Franklin
Publsiher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1980
Genre: Authors, American
ISBN: 9780195027471
Rating: 4.1/5 (95 downloads)

Download Robert A. Heinlein Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

A brief biographical profile accompanies a detailed analysis of the stories and novels of the science fiction author and an evaluation of his influence on the genre

Download Glory Road PDF

Glory Road

Author: Robert Anson Heinlein
Publsiher: Baen Books
Total Pages: 306
Release: 1993
Genre: Life on other planets
ISBN:
Rating: 4./5 ( downloads)

Download Glory Road Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Until he came to the part about "handsome of face and figure", Scar Gordon thought the ad was aimed straight at him by someone who knew his habit of reading the personals. When on a whim he answered it, the gorgeous Amazon who examined him seemed to think his looks were fine. Now Scar Gordon, in the company of the most beautiful woman he'd ever met, was off to Glory Road. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Download Starship Troopers PDF

Starship Troopers

Author: Robert Anson Heinlein
Publsiher: Berkley
Total Pages: 208
Release: 1984-01-15
Genre: Science fiction
ISBN:
Rating: 4./5 ( downloads)

Download Starship Troopers Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

In one of Robert A. Heinlein's most controversial bestsellers, a recruit of the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the universe--and into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry against mankind's most frightening enemy. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Download Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature PDF

Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature

Author: Brian M. Stableford
Publsiher: Historical Dictionaries of Lit
Total Pages: 572
Release: 2005
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:
Rating: 4./5 ( downloads)

Download Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

"This Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature provides an invaluable guide to the current state of the field. The chronology tracks fantasy's evolution from the origins of literature until the 21st century. The introduction explains the nature of the impulse to create and shape fantasy literature, the problems in defining what it is, and the reasons for its changing historical fortunes. The dictionary includes more than 700 entries on authors, both contemporary and historical, and more than 200 entries on fantasy subgenres, key images in fantasy literature, technical terms used in fantasy criticism, and the intimately convoluted relationship between literary fantasies, scholarly fantasies, and lifestyle fantasies.

Download Robert A. Heinlein PDF

Robert A. Heinlein

Author: Joseph D. Olander
Publsiher:
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1978
Genre: Science fiction, American
ISBN: 9780800868024
Rating: 4.8/5 (8 downloads)

Download Robert A. Heinlein Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Critical and interpretive essays on the science-fiction master's works examine the important novels, including Stranger in a Strange Land, and his shorter fiction

Download Looking Awry PDF

Looking Awry

Author: Slavoj Zizek
Publsiher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 206
Release: 1992-09-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780262740159
Rating: 4.2/5 (627 downloads)

Download Looking Awry Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Slavoj Žižek, a leading intellectual in the new social movements that are sweeping Eastern Europe, provides a virtuoso reading of Jacques Lacan. Žižek inverts current pedagogical strategies to explain the difficult philosophical underpinnings of the French theoretician and practician who revolutionized our view of psychoanalysis. He approaches Lacan through the motifs and works of contemporary popular culture, from Hitchcock's Vertigo to Stephen King's Pet Sematary, from McCullough's An Indecent Obsession to Romero's Return of the Living Dead—a strategy of "looking awry" that recalls the exhilarating and vital experience of Lacan. Žižek discovers fundamental Lacanian categories the triad Imaginary/Symbolic/Real, the object small a, the opposition of drive and desire, the split subject—at work in horror fiction, in detective thrillers, in romances, in the mass media's perception of ecological crisis, and, above all, in Alfred Hitchcock's films. The playfulness of Žižek's text, however, is entirely different from that associated with the deconstructive approach made famous by Derrida. By clarifying what Lacan is saying as well as what he is not saying, Žižek is uniquely able to distinguish Lacan from the poststructuralists who so often claim him.

Download Cultural Theory and Popular Culture PDF

Cultural Theory and Popular Culture

Author: John Storey
Publsiher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 684
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780820328492
Rating: 4.8/5 (23 downloads)

Download Cultural Theory and Popular Culture Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Whether used on its own or in conjunction with Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, this reader is a theoretical, analytical, and historical introduction to the study of popular culture within cultural studies. The readings cover the culture and civilization tradition, culturalism, structuralism and poststructuralism, Marxism, feminism, and postmodernism, as well as current debates in the study of popular culture. New to this edition: Four new readings by Stuart Hall, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Judith Butler, and Savoj Žižek Fully revised general and section introductions that contextualize and link the readings with key issues in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction Fully updated bibliography Ideal for courses in: cultural studies media studies communication studies sociology of culture popular culture visual studies cultural criticism