Critical Theory and Science Fiction. Carl Freedman

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Название Critical Theory and Science Fiction
Автор произведения Carl Freedman
Жанр Историческая фантастика
Серия
Издательство Историческая фантастика
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780819574541



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       Critical Theory and Science Fiction

       Critical Theory and Science Fiction

      Carl Freedman

      Wesleyan University Press

      Middletown, Connecticut

      Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459

      www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

      © 2000 by Carl Freedman

      All rights reserved

      Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2

      CIP data appear at the end of the book

      ISBNs for the paperback edition:

      ISBN-13: 978–0–8195–6399–6

      ISBN-10: 0–8195–6399–4

      Cover photograph by Piotr Uklanski, Untitled (Queens), 1998, © the artist. Courtesy Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York.

       To my mother and father

       And to the memory of Lev Davidovich Bronstein

      To change the world is not to explore the moon. It is to make the revolution and build socialism without regressing back to capitalism.

      The rest, including the moon, will be given to us in addition.

      —LOUIS ALTHUSSER

      Se vuol ballare,

      Signor Contino,

      Il chitarrino

      Le suonerò.

      —LORENZO DA PONTE

      A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.

      —OSCAR WILDE

       Contents

Acknowledgments xi
Preface xv
1. Definitions 1
Critical Theory 1
Science Fiction 13
2. Articulations 24
Genre, Theory, and Phases of Canon-Formation 24
The Critical Dynamic: Science Fiction and Style 30
The Critical Dynamic: Science Fiction and the Historical Novel 44
The Critical Dynamic: Science Fiction and Utopia 62
Science Fiction and the Canon 86
3. Excursuses 94
Solaris: Stanisław Lem and the Structure of Cognition 96
The Dispossessed: Ursula Le Guin and the Ambiguities of Utopia 111
The Two of Them: Joanna Russ and the Violence of Gender 129
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand: Samuel Delany and the Dialectics of Difference 146
The Man in the High Castle: Philip K. Dick and the Construction of Realities 164
Coda: Critical Theory, Science Fiction, and the Postmodern 181
Index 201

       Acknowledgments

      I have been working on this essay, in one way or another, for a long time. Indeed, in composing and revising the text I have often been struck by how much preparation was accomplished on occasions when I had no conscious notion that any