Jad Smith
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040634
- eISBN:
- 9780252099076
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040634.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction author Alfred Bester started his career as a pulp writer and finished it as a Grand Master, but he followed a far more curious path to the ...
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Like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction author Alfred Bester started his career as a pulp writer and finished it as a Grand Master, but he followed a far more curious path to the field’s highest honor than either of his big-name contemporaries. He focused on SF only intermittently yet, as a result, developed a distinctive, outsider approach that opened up avenues for cutting-edge vanguards such as New Wave and cyberpunk. Making extensive use of Bester’s unpublished correspondence, this book carefully examines Bester’s entire career, giving particular attention to how his work across mediums, combined with his love of modernist and decadent authors, shaped his groundbreaking approach to science fiction. During the 1950s, Bester crossbred pulp aesthetics and high style to explosive effect, producing landmark novels and stories that crackled with excess and challenged the assumptions of Golden Age science fiction. His focus on language as a plot device and a tool for world-building, and his use of modernist style in the service of science-fictional extrapolation left the field changed forever. The book argues that what Bester brought to SF was not a radically new template but an idiosyncratic self-reflexivity about the writing and reading protocols of the genre that put the field into a highly productive and transformative dialogue with itself.Less
Like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction author Alfred Bester started his career as a pulp writer and finished it as a Grand Master, but he followed a far more curious path to the field’s highest honor than either of his big-name contemporaries. He focused on SF only intermittently yet, as a result, developed a distinctive, outsider approach that opened up avenues for cutting-edge vanguards such as New Wave and cyberpunk. Making extensive use of Bester’s unpublished correspondence, this book carefully examines Bester’s entire career, giving particular attention to how his work across mediums, combined with his love of modernist and decadent authors, shaped his groundbreaking approach to science fiction. During the 1950s, Bester crossbred pulp aesthetics and high style to explosive effect, producing landmark novels and stories that crackled with excess and challenged the assumptions of Golden Age science fiction. His focus on language as a plot device and a tool for world-building, and his use of modernist style in the service of science-fictional extrapolation left the field changed forever. The book argues that what Bester brought to SF was not a radically new template but an idiosyncratic self-reflexivity about the writing and reading protocols of the genre that put the field into a highly productive and transformative dialogue with itself.
Sean McQueen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474414371
- eISBN:
- 9781474422369
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474414371.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
This book theorises shifts in and across critical approaches to capitalism, science, technology, psychoanalysis, literature, and cinema and media studies. Analysing a wide range of novels and films, ...
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This book theorises shifts in and across critical approaches to capitalism, science, technology, psychoanalysis, literature, and cinema and media studies. Analysing a wide range of novels and films, the book brings renewed Marxian readings to cyberpunk texts previously theorised by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard, and places them at the heart of the emergence of biopunk and its relation to biocapitalism by mapping their generic, technoscientific, libidinal, and economic exchanges. Biocapitalism is the frontline of capitalism today that promises to enrich and prolong our lives and threatens to extend capitalism's capacity to command our hearts and minds. Biopunk is the literature and film of this new space.Less
This book theorises shifts in and across critical approaches to capitalism, science, technology, psychoanalysis, literature, and cinema and media studies. Analysing a wide range of novels and films, the book brings renewed Marxian readings to cyberpunk texts previously theorised by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard, and places them at the heart of the emergence of biopunk and its relation to biocapitalism by mapping their generic, technoscientific, libidinal, and economic exchanges. Biocapitalism is the frontline of capitalism today that promises to enrich and prolong our lives and threatens to extend capitalism's capacity to command our hearts and minds. Biopunk is the literature and film of this new space.
Jad Smith
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037337
- eISBN:
- 9780252094514
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037337.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, John Brunner (1934–1995) was one of the most prolific and influential science fiction authors of the late twentieth century. During his exemplary career, ...
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Under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, John Brunner (1934–1995) was one of the most prolific and influential science fiction authors of the late twentieth century. During his exemplary career, the British author wrote with a stamina matched by only a few other great science fiction writers and with a literary quality of even fewer, importing modernist techniques into his novels and stories and probing every major theme of his generation: robotics, racism, drugs, space exploration, technological warfare, and ecology. This book, an intensive review of Brunner's life and works, demonstrates how Brunner's much-neglected early fiction laid the foundation for his classic Stand on Zanzibar and other major works such as The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. Making extensive use of Brunner's letters, columns, speeches, and interviews published in fanzines, the book approaches Brunner in the context of markets and trends that affected many writers of the time, including his uneasy association with the “New Wave” of science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s. This book shows how Brunner's attempts to cross-fertilize the American pulp tradition with British scientific romance complicated the distinctions between genre and mainstream fiction, and between hard and soft science fiction, and helped carve out space for emerging modes such as cyberpunk, slipstream, and biopunk.Less
Under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, John Brunner (1934–1995) was one of the most prolific and influential science fiction authors of the late twentieth century. During his exemplary career, the British author wrote with a stamina matched by only a few other great science fiction writers and with a literary quality of even fewer, importing modernist techniques into his novels and stories and probing every major theme of his generation: robotics, racism, drugs, space exploration, technological warfare, and ecology. This book, an intensive review of Brunner's life and works, demonstrates how Brunner's much-neglected early fiction laid the foundation for his classic Stand on Zanzibar and other major works such as The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. Making extensive use of Brunner's letters, columns, speeches, and interviews published in fanzines, the book approaches Brunner in the context of markets and trends that affected many writers of the time, including his uneasy association with the “New Wave” of science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s. This book shows how Brunner's attempts to cross-fertilize the American pulp tradition with British scientific romance complicated the distinctions between genre and mainstream fiction, and between hard and soft science fiction, and helped carve out space for emerging modes such as cyberpunk, slipstream, and biopunk.
Gary Westfahl
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037801
- eISBN:
- 9780252095085
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037801.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The leading figure in the development of cyberpunk, William Gibson (born in 1948) crafted works in which isolated humans explored near-future worlds of ubiquitous and intrusive computer technology ...
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The leading figure in the development of cyberpunk, William Gibson (born in 1948) crafted works in which isolated humans explored near-future worlds of ubiquitous and intrusive computer technology and cybernetics. This volume is the first comprehensive examination of the award-winning author of the seminal novel Neuromancer (and the other books in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), as well as other acclaimed novels including recent bestsellers Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. This book draws upon extensive research to provide a compelling account of Gibson's writing career and his lasting influence in the science fiction world. Delving into numerous science fiction fanzines that the young Gibson contributed to and edited, the book describes for the first time more than eighty virtually unknown Gibson publications from his early years, including articles, reviews, poems, cartoons, letters, and a collaborative story. The book also documents the poems, articles, and introductions that Gibson has written for various books, and its discussions are enriched by illuminating comments from various print and online interviews. The works that made Gibson famous are also featured, as the book provides extended analyses of Gibson's ten novels and nineteen short stories. Lastly, the book presents a new interview with Gibson in which the author discusses his correspondence with author Fritz Leiber, his relationship with the late scholar Susan Wood, his attitudes toward critics, his overall impact on the field of science fiction, and his recently completed screenplay and forthcoming novel.Less
The leading figure in the development of cyberpunk, William Gibson (born in 1948) crafted works in which isolated humans explored near-future worlds of ubiquitous and intrusive computer technology and cybernetics. This volume is the first comprehensive examination of the award-winning author of the seminal novel Neuromancer (and the other books in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), as well as other acclaimed novels including recent bestsellers Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. This book draws upon extensive research to provide a compelling account of Gibson's writing career and his lasting influence in the science fiction world. Delving into numerous science fiction fanzines that the young Gibson contributed to and edited, the book describes for the first time more than eighty virtually unknown Gibson publications from his early years, including articles, reviews, poems, cartoons, letters, and a collaborative story. The book also documents the poems, articles, and introductions that Gibson has written for various books, and its discussions are enriched by illuminating comments from various print and online interviews. The works that made Gibson famous are also featured, as the book provides extended analyses of Gibson's ten novels and nineteen short stories. Lastly, the book presents a new interview with Gibson in which the author discusses his correspondence with author Fritz Leiber, his relationship with the late scholar Susan Wood, his attitudes toward critics, his overall impact on the field of science fiction, and his recently completed screenplay and forthcoming novel.
Gary Westfahl
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037801
- eISBN:
- 9780252095085
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037801.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This conclusion reflects on the reputation that William Gibson will likely enjoy in the future, based on his publications to date. Gibson has earned a permanent place in the history of science ...
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This conclusion reflects on the reputation that William Gibson will likely enjoy in the future, based on his publications to date. Gibson has earned a permanent place in the history of science fiction, and he will always be remembered for his seminal contributions in the 1980s. Despite the stylishly cynical attitude said to characterize cyberpunk, Gibson has shown himself to be unfashionably optimistic fiction tropes of space travel and alien life. But he even more assiduously avoids creating apocalyptic futures such as Alas, Babylon and similar science fiction visions that terrified him as a child. This chapter argues that Gibson does not worry about what future generations might say about him; for Gibson, anyone thinking about the future is really thinking about the present, precluding genuine speculation about the future, so there is no reason to worry about the unknowable judgments of posterity.Less
This conclusion reflects on the reputation that William Gibson will likely enjoy in the future, based on his publications to date. Gibson has earned a permanent place in the history of science fiction, and he will always be remembered for his seminal contributions in the 1980s. Despite the stylishly cynical attitude said to characterize cyberpunk, Gibson has shown himself to be unfashionably optimistic fiction tropes of space travel and alien life. But he even more assiduously avoids creating apocalyptic futures such as Alas, Babylon and similar science fiction visions that terrified him as a child. This chapter argues that Gibson does not worry about what future generations might say about him; for Gibson, anyone thinking about the future is really thinking about the present, precluding genuine speculation about the future, so there is no reason to worry about the unknowable judgments of posterity.
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846318344
- eISBN:
- 9781846317798
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846317798.018
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Science fiction writers of the 1980s borrowed ideas from the works of the 1970s, but the genre and its reception both underwent a radical transformation. Authors such as William Gibson and Bruce ...
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Science fiction writers of the 1980s borrowed ideas from the works of the 1970s, but the genre and its reception both underwent a radical transformation. Authors such as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling created a new subgenre known as cyberpunk to belittle and scoff at their predecessors, with the latter instead giving credit to the New Wave of the 1960s, rather than the 1970s. Jean Baudrillard and Jean-François Lyotard proposed descriptions of postmodernism and were later joined by Fredric Jameson, while Donna Haraway came up with her version of the cyborg as a new feminist identity that draws upon existing science fiction to question notions of sex, race and class. Tom Moylan coined the term ‘critical utopia’ in works such as Demand the Impossible (1986) and Triton (1976).Less
Science fiction writers of the 1980s borrowed ideas from the works of the 1970s, but the genre and its reception both underwent a radical transformation. Authors such as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling created a new subgenre known as cyberpunk to belittle and scoff at their predecessors, with the latter instead giving credit to the New Wave of the 1960s, rather than the 1970s. Jean Baudrillard and Jean-François Lyotard proposed descriptions of postmodernism and were later joined by Fredric Jameson, while Donna Haraway came up with her version of the cyborg as a new feminist identity that draws upon existing science fiction to question notions of sex, race and class. Tom Moylan coined the term ‘critical utopia’ in works such as Demand the Impossible (1986) and Triton (1976).
Gary Westfahl
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037801
- eISBN:
- 9780252095085
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037801.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter examines three William Gibson novels: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. Gibson had planned Pattern Recognition for a long time: in 1986, he declared that he would ...
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This chapter examines three William Gibson novels: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. Gibson had planned Pattern Recognition for a long time: in 1986, he declared that he would “eventually try something else,” and “in twenty years” he would probably be “writing about human relationships.” By shifting from the future to the present, Gibson clearly felt that he was relaunching his career, and hence he logically reverted to the pattern of his first novel. Known as a science fiction writer for decades, Gibson felt an obvious need to justify Pattern Recognition's present-day setting. This chapter considers a number of ways to argue that Pattern Recognition should be classified as science fiction. Spook Country asserts that we live today in a world filled with science-fictional events, but we are unable or unwilling to properly observe them. Zero History suggests that Gibson has entirely distanced himself from the world of computers, the focus of the cyberpunk literature he was once said to represent.Less
This chapter examines three William Gibson novels: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. Gibson had planned Pattern Recognition for a long time: in 1986, he declared that he would “eventually try something else,” and “in twenty years” he would probably be “writing about human relationships.” By shifting from the future to the present, Gibson clearly felt that he was relaunching his career, and hence he logically reverted to the pattern of his first novel. Known as a science fiction writer for decades, Gibson felt an obvious need to justify Pattern Recognition's present-day setting. This chapter considers a number of ways to argue that Pattern Recognition should be classified as science fiction. Spook Country asserts that we live today in a world filled with science-fictional events, but we are unable or unwilling to properly observe them. Zero History suggests that Gibson has entirely distanced himself from the world of computers, the focus of the cyberpunk literature he was once said to represent.
Erik Dussere
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199969913
- eISBN:
- 9780199369027
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199969913.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Chapter 6 examines the cyberpunk subgenre. Beginning in the early eighties, films like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and novels like William Gibson’s Neuromancer employ the conventions of noir and ...
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Chapter 6 examines the cyberpunk subgenre. Beginning in the early eighties, films like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and novels like William Gibson’s Neuromancer employ the conventions of noir and hard-boiled detective fiction in a science-fiction context as a way of mapping the complexities and contradictions of the capitalist world-system. I focus primarily on novels by Gibson in order to argue that the ethos of hybridity and bricolage that defines both cyberpunk and much of the critical discourse on postmodernism is, in the terms of my study, not a violation of authenticity but rather the postmodern form of authenticity. Although cyberpunk rejects essentialist identities in favor of a hybrid, “cyborg” aesthetic, that cyborg aesthetic is imagined as a new site of authentic resistance to the dominance of consumer capitalism.Less
Chapter 6 examines the cyberpunk subgenre. Beginning in the early eighties, films like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and novels like William Gibson’s Neuromancer employ the conventions of noir and hard-boiled detective fiction in a science-fiction context as a way of mapping the complexities and contradictions of the capitalist world-system. I focus primarily on novels by Gibson in order to argue that the ethos of hybridity and bricolage that defines both cyberpunk and much of the critical discourse on postmodernism is, in the terms of my study, not a violation of authenticity but rather the postmodern form of authenticity. Although cyberpunk rejects essentialist identities in favor of a hybrid, “cyborg” aesthetic, that cyborg aesthetic is imagined as a new site of authentic resistance to the dominance of consumer capitalism.
Jad Smith
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040634
- eISBN:
- 9780252099076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040634.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
During the 1960s, Bester drifted away from SF for a second time and largely gave up fiction writing to work as an editor at Holiday magazine. When he returned to the field in the early 1970s, he ...
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During the 1960s, Bester drifted away from SF for a second time and largely gave up fiction writing to work as an editor at Holiday magazine. When he returned to the field in the early 1970s, he found his reputation at an all-time high, in part because writers associated with the New Wave—Michael Moorcock, Samuel R. Delany, and Harlan Ellison, among them—had praised his work. This chapter looks at the ups and downs of Bester’s late career, giving particular attention to “The Four Hour Fugue,” Golem100, and the story collections The Light Fantastic and Star Light, Star Bright. It also discusses renewed interest in Bester’s fiction during the 1980s and his influence on cyberpunk.Less
During the 1960s, Bester drifted away from SF for a second time and largely gave up fiction writing to work as an editor at Holiday magazine. When he returned to the field in the early 1970s, he found his reputation at an all-time high, in part because writers associated with the New Wave—Michael Moorcock, Samuel R. Delany, and Harlan Ellison, among them—had praised his work. This chapter looks at the ups and downs of Bester’s late career, giving particular attention to “The Four Hour Fugue,” Golem100, and the story collections The Light Fantastic and Star Light, Star Bright. It also discusses renewed interest in Bester’s fiction during the 1980s and his influence on cyberpunk.
Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846311352
- eISBN:
- 9781846313882
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846313882
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Contestations over the meaning and practice of sexuality have become increasingly central to cultural self-definition and critical debates over issues of identity, citizenship and the definition of ...
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Contestations over the meaning and practice of sexuality have become increasingly central to cultural self-definition and critical debates over issues of identity, citizenship and the definition of humanity itself. In an era when a religious authority can declare lesbians antihuman while some nations legalise same-sex marriage and are becoming increasingly tolerant of a variety of non-normative sexualities, it is hardly surprising that science fiction, in turn, takes up the task of imagining a diverse range of queer and not-so-queer futures. The chapters in this book investigate both contemporary and historical practices of representing sexualities and genders in science fiction literature. The book opens with Wendy Pearson's award-winning work on reading SF queerly and goes on to include discussions about ‘sextrapolation’ in New Wave science fiction, ‘stray penetration’ in William Gibson's cyberpunk fiction, the queering of nature in ecofeminist science fiction, and the radical challenges posed to conventional science fiction in the work of important writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ. In addition, the book offers an interview with Nalo Hopkinson and a conversation about queer lives and queer fictions by authors Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge.Less
Contestations over the meaning and practice of sexuality have become increasingly central to cultural self-definition and critical debates over issues of identity, citizenship and the definition of humanity itself. In an era when a religious authority can declare lesbians antihuman while some nations legalise same-sex marriage and are becoming increasingly tolerant of a variety of non-normative sexualities, it is hardly surprising that science fiction, in turn, takes up the task of imagining a diverse range of queer and not-so-queer futures. The chapters in this book investigate both contemporary and historical practices of representing sexualities and genders in science fiction literature. The book opens with Wendy Pearson's award-winning work on reading SF queerly and goes on to include discussions about ‘sextrapolation’ in New Wave science fiction, ‘stray penetration’ in William Gibson's cyberpunk fiction, the queering of nature in ecofeminist science fiction, and the radical challenges posed to conventional science fiction in the work of important writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ. In addition, the book offers an interview with Nalo Hopkinson and a conversation about queer lives and queer fictions by authors Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge.
