Ursula K. Le Guin

Brian Attebery

A collection of sixty-seven contemporary American science fiction writers includes contributions by Poul Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, and Philip K. Dick. Tour.

North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990

The Norton Book of Science Fiction

The first comprehensive study of fantasy's uses of myth, this book offers insights into the genre's popularity and cultural importance. Combining history, folklore, and narrative theory, Attebery's study explores familiar and forgotten fantasies and shows how the genre is also an arena for negotiating new relationships with traditional tales.

Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth

Stories about Stories

Matthew Sangster

Dimitra Fimi

Taylor Driggers

Fantastic Incarnations and the Deconstruction of Theology

Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature

Includes chapters on L. Frank Baum and Ursula Le Guin, with material on Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, James Branch Cabell, H. P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, Edward Eager, and James Thurber, among others.

From Irving to Le Guin

The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature

A collection of sixty-seven contemporary American science fiction stories includes contributions by Poul Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, and Philip K. Dick

An exciting and accessible study of the genre of fantasy. One of the dominant modes of storytelling in the twenty-first century, fantasy can mirror contemporary experiences and convey our anxieties and longings better than any representation of the merely real. It is the lie that speaks truth. This book addresses two central questions about fantastic storytelling: first, how can it be meaningful if it doesn't claim to represent things as they are, and second, what kind of change can it make in the world? How can a form of storytelling that alters physical laws and denies facts about the past be at the same time a source of insight into human nature and the workings of the world? What kind of social, political, cultural, intellectual work does fantasy perform in the world--the world of the reader, that is, not that of the characters? Focusing on various aspects of fantastic world-building and story creation in classic and contemporary fantasy, from the use of symbolic structures to the way new stories incorporate bits of significance from earlier texts, this book shows how fantasy allows writers such as Michael Cunningham, Hans Christian Anderson, Helene Wecker, C. S. Lewis, Ursula K. Le Guin, Nnedi Okorafor, Nalo Hopkinson, George MacDonald, Aliette deBodard, and Patricia Wrightson to test new modes of understanding and interaction and thus to rethink political institutions, social practices, and models of reality.

How It Works

Fantasy

Marek Oziewicz

Tereza Dedinová

"The first study to look at the intersection of the discourse of the Anthropocene within the two highly influential and perennially popular storytelling modes of fantasy and myth, this book articulates the idea that if humanity is to have a future, it needs stories that articulate visions of a biocentric, ecological civilization. As the two story systems that have been humanity's most advanced technologies for collective dreaming, fantastic fiction and myths are helping us adopt a biocentric lens, re-kin us with other forms of life, and assist us in the transition to an ecological civilization. Deliberately moving away from dystopian narratives toward anticipatory imaginations of sustainable futures, this volume blends chapters by top scholars in the fields of climate fiction, science fiction, fantasy, myth, and Young-Adult literature studies with personal reflections by award-winning authors and illustrators of speculative fiction for young audiences such as Jeff Vandermeer, Shaun Tan, Jane Yolen, Katherine Applegate and Joseph Bruchac. Covering the works of major fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Prachett, J. K. Rowling, China Mieville, Barbara Henderson, Jeanette Winterson, John Crowly, Richard Powers, George R. R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson, and offering interrogations of cultural expressions set in or from the UK, USA, Nigeria, Ghana, Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia, this book frames fantasy and myth as spaces where visions of sustainable futures can be designed with most detail and nuance. Rather than merely criticizing the ecocidal status quo, the book asks how Fantastic stories can mobilize resistance around ideas necessary for the emergence of an ecological civilization"--

Imagining Futures and Dreaming Hope in Literature and Media

Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene

Mark K McBeth

John Gribas

Paul Sivitz

Kandi Turley-Ames

Grounded in narrative theory, this book offers a case study of a liberal arts college’s use of narrative to help build identity, community, and collaboration within the college faculty across a range of disciplines, including history, psychology, sociology, theatre and dance, literature, anthropology, and communication. Exploring issues of methodology and their practical application, this narrative project speaks to the construction of identity for the liberal arts in today’s higher education climate. Narrative, Identity, and Academic Community focuses on the ways a cross-disciplinary emphasis on narrative can impact institutions in North America and contribute to the discussion of strategies to foster bottom-up, faculty-driven collaboration and innovation.

Narrative, Identity, and Academic Community in Higher Education

In the early chapters, the author sorts out some of the confusion about the term fantasy, distinguishing the fantastic as a technique from fantasy as a popular formula and a literary genre. Looking back to the early reception of Tolkien's trend-setting epic fantasy, he points out how critical theory at the time was simply unable to account for either the strengths or the weaknesses of The Lord of the Rings. By contrast, critical methods developed for coping with postmodernist metafictions are shown to apply equally well to the genre of fantasy. Having worked primarily with older fantasies in his study of The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature, Attebery focuses here on important recent examples such as Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, Suzette Haden Elgin's Ozark Trilogy, and John Crowley's Little, Big.

Strategies of Fantasy

The first study to look at the intersection of the discourse of the Anthropocene within the two highly influential and perennially popular storytelling modes of fantasy and myth, this book articulates the idea that if humanity is to have a future, it needs stories that articulate visions of a biocentric, ecological civilization. As the two story systems that have been humanity's most advanced technologies for collective dreaming, fantastic fiction and myths are helping us adopt a biocentric lens, re-kin us with other forms of life, and assist us in the transition to an ecological civilization. Deliberately moving away from dystopian narratives toward anticipatory imaginations of sustainable futures, this volume blends chapters by top scholars in the fields of climate fiction, science fiction, fantasy, myth, and Young-Adult literature studies with personal reflections by award-winning authors and illustrators of speculative fiction for young audiences such as Jeff Vandermeer, Shaun Tan, Jane Yolen, Katherine Applegate and Joseph Bruchac. Covering the works of major fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Prachett, J. K. Rowling, China Mieville, Barbara Henderson, Jeanette Winterson, John Crowly, Richard Powers, George R. R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson, and offering interrogations of cultural expressions set in or from the UK, USA, Nigeria, Ghana, Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia, this book frames fantasy and myth as spaces where visions of sustainable futures can be designed with most detail and nuance. Rather than merely criticizing the ecocidal status quo, the book asks how Fantastic stories can mobilize resistance around ideas necessary for the emergence of an ecological civilization.

From Frankenstein to futuristic feminist utopias, Decoding Gender in Science Fiction examines the ways science fiction writers have incorporated, explored, and revised conventional notions of sexual difference. Attebery traces a fascinating history of men's and women's writing that covertly or overtly investigates conceptions of gender, suggesting new perspectives on the genre.

Decoding Gender in Science Fiction

Veronica Hollinger

As a geometric term, parabola suggests a narrative trajectory or story arc. In science fiction, parabolas take us from the known to the unknown. More concrete than themes, more complex than motifs, parabolas are combinations of meaningful setting, character, and action that lend themselves to endless redefinition and jazzlike improvisation. The fourteen original essays in this collection explore how the field of science fiction has developed as a complex of repetitions, influences, arguments, and broad conversations. This particular feature of the genre has been the source of much critical commentary, most notably through growing interest in the “sf megatext,” a continually expanding archive of shared images, situations, plots, characters, settings, and themes found in science fiction across media. Contributors include Jane Donawerth, Terry Dowling, L. Timmel Duchamp, Rachel Haywood Ferreira, Pawel Frelik, David M. Higgins, Amy J. Ransom, John Rieder, Nicholas Ruddick, Graham Sleight, Gary K. Wolfe, and Lisa Yaszek.

Parabolas of Science Fiction

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Brian Attebery

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