The Cambridge History of Science Fiction

Gerry Canavan · Eric Carl Link

Jan 2019 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

The first science fiction course in the American academy was held in the early 1950s. In the sixty years since, science fiction has become a recognized and established literary genre with a significant and growing body of scholarship. The Cambridge History of Science Fiction is a landmark volume as the first authoritative history of the genre. Over forty contributors with diverse and complementary specialties present a history of science fiction across national and genre boundaries, and trace its intellectual and creative roots in the philosophical and fantastic narratives of the ancient past. Science fiction as a literary genre is the central focus of the volume, but fundamental to its story is its non-literary cultural manifestations and influence. Coverage thus includes transmedia manifestations as an integral part of the genre's history, including not only short stories and novels, but also film, art, architecture, music, comics, and interactive media.

About the author

Gerry Canavan is an assistant professor of twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature in the Department of English at Marquette University. He is the co-editor, with Kim Stanley Robinson, of Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction (2014) and, with Eric Carl Link, of The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction (Cambridge, 2015). His first monograph is Octavia E. Butler (2016).

Eric Carl Link is Professor of American Literature and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Purdue University Fort Wayne. His many publications include The Vast and Terrible Drama: American Literary Naturalism in the Late Nineteenth Century (2004), Understanding Philip K. Dick (2009), and Crosscurrents: Readings in the Disciplines (2012). He is the editor or co-editor of numerous volumes, including The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction (co-edited with Gerry Canavan, Cambridge, 2015).