H.G. Wells

Patrick Parrinder

Gregory Claeys

While walking in the Swiss Alps, two English travellers fall into a space-warp, and suddenly find themselves in another world. In many ways the same as our own - even down to the characters that inhabit it - this new planet is still somehow radically different, for the two walkers are now upon a Utopian Earth controlled by a single World Government. Here, as they soon learn, all share a common language, there is sexual, economic and racial equality, and society is ruled by socialist ideals enforced by an austere, voluntary elite: the 'Samurai'. But what will the Utopians make of these new visitors from a less perfect world?

A Modern Utopia

First Published in 2002. This volume is about Science Fiction, its criticisms and teaching and covers the rise of science-fiction as a study and genre, looking at the work of H.G Wells, and the themes of epic, fable, language, cultures, its sociology, as a romance, and of a working daydream.

Science Fiction

Critical study of Wells' science fiction.

H. G. Wells, Science Fiction, and Prophecy

Shadows of Future

This book, first published in 1980, examines issues such as the definition of the genre, its function as social criticism and as an embodiment and critique of the scientific outlook. In order to work towards a more comprehensive view of the genre, the author analyses science fiction by turns as a mode of popular literature, as a socially responsible and quasi-realistic form of writing, and as a home for a fantastic and parodic use of language. How much are ‘future histories’, to name but one type of SF, the answer to a frustration of the epic impulse? These questions and more are closely examined in this lively and informative book.

Science Fiction: Its Criticism and Teaching

Its Criticism and Teaching

This set comprises 40 volumes covering 19th and 20th century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set complements the first 68 volume set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.

The Critical Heritage

H. G. Wells

First published in 1979. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A Critical Guide

Alex Shvartsman

Leah Cypess

Eleanor Wood

Allen Stroud

Wang Jinkang

Han Song

Zhao Haihong

Russell James

Amdi Silvestri

Ronald Ferguson

Yao Haijun

Bao shu

Chen Zijun

He Xi

If you love the mission of science fiction, the interchange between cultures, the hopeful and inexorable trajectory of technology and ideas, you'll love this anthology of new stories from Chinese and English language writers. An impressive joint project, this outstanding new anthology brings the best of Chinese and English science fiction in a mediation on the theme of Exploration in Space. New, emerging, established and much-lauded writers from both cultures are brought together to demonstrate that technology and humanity when they work together bring challenges, joy and benefits to all of humankind. From Baoshu comes 'A Trip to the End', from Allen Stroud 'The First', from He Xi 'Never Meet Again in Life', from Amdi Silvestri 'A Minuet of Corpses' and under the guiding eye of Patrick Parrinder (President of the H.G. Wells society) and Yao Haijun (celebrated editor of Science Fiction World in China) fifteen authors create a series of worlds which will enthral and entertain.

Adventures in Space (Short stories by Chinese and English Science Fiction writers)

John S. Partington

H.G. Wells was described by one of his European critics as a 'seismograph of his age'. He is one of the founding fathers of modern science fiction, and as a novelist, essayist, educationalist and political propagandist his influence has been felt in every European country. This collection of essays by scholarly experts shows the varied and dramatic nature of Wells's reception, including translations, critical appraisals, novels and films on Wellsian themes, and responses to his own well-publicized visits to Russia and elsewhere. The authors chart the intense ideological debate that his writings occasioned, particularly in the inter-war years, and the censorship of his books in Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain. This book offers pioneering insights into Wells's contribution to 20th century European literature and to modern political ideas, including the idea of European union. Reception of H.G. Wells in Europe Review

The Reception of H.G. Wells in Europe

Danièle Chatelain

George Slusser

This collection of essays offers a series of original, penetrating, and wide-ranging perspectives on Wells's masterpiece by an international group of major Wells and science fiction scholars. The authors explore such textual topics as the narrative techniques and mythological undertones.

H. G. Wells's Perennial Time Machine

Patrick Parrinder's new history of the English novel from its beginnings to the present day traces the form's distinctive and often subversive reflection of national identity across the centuries. From the early stories of rogues and criminals to present-day novels of immigration, fiction has played a major part in defining our ideas of England and Englishness. Nation and Novel provides both a comprehensive survey and also a new interpretation of theimportance of the English novel.

The English Novel from Its Origins to the Present Day

Nation and Novel

Scientific progress is usually seen as a precondition of modern utopias, but science and utopia are frequently at odds. Ranging from Galileo's observations with the telescope to current ideas of the post-human and the human-animal boundary, this study brings a fresh perspective to the paradoxes of utopian thinking since Plato.

From the Scientific Revolution to Brave New World and Beyond

Utopian Literature and Science

This book, first published in 1979, presents a portrait of science fiction as a distinct form of serious and creative literature. Contributors are drawn from Britain, America and Europe, and range from well-known academic critics to young novelists. The essays establish the common properties of science fiction writing, and assess the history and significance of a field in which critical judgements have often been unreliable. The material ranges from the earliest imaginative journeys to the moon, to later developments of British, American and European science fiction.

Science Fiction: A Critical Guide

Jenny Bourne Taylor

John Kucich

This series presents a comprehensive, global and up-to-date history of English-language prose fiction and written ... by a international team of scholars ... -- dust jacket.

Volume 3: The Nineteenth-Century Novel 1820-1880

The Oxford History of the Novel in English

George Edgar Slusser

Acclaimed as a work of genius when first published in 1895, The Time Machine represents a revolution in storytelling. H. G. Wells's first--and greatest--novel has been recognized worldwide as a founding text of the science fiction genre and one of the most seminal narratives of the last hundred years. This collection of essays offers a series of original, penetrating, and wide-ranging perspectives on Wells's masterpiece by an international group of major Wells and science fiction scholars. The authors explore such textual topics as the narrative techniques and mythological undertones of the novel as well as its contribution to modern ideas of time and evolution and its focusing of the intellectual cross-currents of the late nineteenth century. This insightful volume captures the innovative imagination, richness, and fascinating ambiguity that resulted in a classic literary work and demonstrates that Wells's novel is both a visionary story and an unstoppable idea.

Time Machine

This book is an original and well-informed survey of the whole of Joyce's work. It offers close readings of his early writings such as Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and an extended examination of his masterpiece, Ulysses.

James Joyce

A collection of new essays on science fiction and utopian literature honouring the work of Darko Suvin, the scholar and literary theorist who co-founded the journal Science-Fiction Studies in 1973. The title of this volume attempts to convey the essence of ‘cognitive estrangement’ in relation to SF and utopia: that by imagining strange worlds we learn to see our own world in a new perspective. The contributors have all been influenced by Darko Suvin’s belief that the double movement of estrangement and cognition reflects deep structures of human storytelling. Learning from otherness is as natural and inevitable a process as the instinct for imitation and representation that Aristotle described in his Poetics. Though written from varying perspectives, the essays in Learning from Other Worlds pay tribute to the intellectual and personal inspiration of Darko Suvin to whom the essays are dedicated.

Estrangement, Cognition, and the Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia

Learning from Other Worlds

H.G. Wells - inventor of the concept of the time machine and the phrase the shape of things to come - described his life's work as one of critical anticipation. This book unravels the complex layers of meaning in The Time Machine, and shows how, throughout his life, he sought to exploit the potential of literary and cultural prophecy in new ways. Described by John Middleton Murry as the last prophet of bourgeois Europe, he was its first futurologist.

Patrick Parrinder

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