This is the story of an ape-descended human called Douglas Adams who, in a field in Innsbruck in 1971, had an idea. This is also the story of what that idea became: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - of the original radio series which started it all and the five book trilogy, the TV series, almost-film, computer game, towel and website that followed. This revised edition comes up to date, covering Adams' recent work, his untimely death in May 2001 and posthumous publications.

Science fiction is at the intersection of numerous fields. It is literature which draws on popular culture, and engages in speculation about science, history, and all varieties of social relations. This volume brings together essays by scholars and practitioners of science fiction, which look at the genre from different angles. It examines science fiction from Thomas More to the present day; and introduces important critical approaches (including Marxism, postmodernism, feminism and queer theory).

A collection of essays by a master of science fiction is devoted to a discussion of the nature, characteristics, and function of science-fiction writing, including information on authors, works, and themes

America is a nation making itself up as it goes along--a story of discovery and invention unfolding in speeches and images, letters and poetry, unprecedented feats of scholarship and imagination. In these myriad, multiform, endlessly changing expressions of the American experience, the authors and editors of this volume find a new American history. In more than two hundred original essays, this book brings together the nation's many voices. From the first conception of a New World in the sixteenth century to the latest re-envisioning of that world in cartoons, television, science fiction, and hip hop, the book gives us a new, kaleidoscopic view of what "Made in America" means. Literature, music, film, art, history, science, philosophy, political rhetoric--cultural creations of every kind appear in relation to each other, and to the time and place that give them shape.--From publisher description.

"A collection of bestselling, NBCC prize-winning author Jonathan Lethem's finest writing on the subject of writers and writing. A readerly wake-up call from one of America's finest and most acclaimed working writers. Picking up where his NBCC Award finalist collection The Ecstasy of Influence left off, More Alive and Less Lonely collects more than a decade of Lethem's finest writing on writing, with new and previously unpublished material, including: impassioned appeals for forgotten writers and overlooked books, razor-sharp essays, and personal accounts of his most extraordinary literary encounters and discoveries. Only Lethem, with his love of cult favorites and the canon alike, can write with equal insight about the stories of modern masters like Lorrie Moore and Salman Rushdie, graphic novelist Chester Brown, science fiction outlier Philip K. Dick, and classic icons like Moby-Dick. Edited by novelist Christopher Boucher (Golden Delicious), More Alive and Less Lonely deserves a place on every serious reader's bookshelf. Lethem's joyful approach to literature will inspire you to dive back into your favorite books and then point you towards what to read next"--

Debates on the authenticity of the Star Wars franchise and the hero-or-villain status of George Lucas are at the heart of these essays by bestselling science-fiction authors. The incredible popularity of the movies has led to the formation of strong emotions within the science fiction community on the strengths and flaws of the films, exemplified here by David Brin's attacks and Matthew Woodring Stover's defense of the movies. This intense examination of the epic works addresses a broad range of issues—from politics, religion, and the saga's overall logic to the impact of the series on bookshelf space as well as science-fiction film. The question Is George Lucas a hero for bringing science fiction to a mass audience or a villain who doesn't understand the genre he's working for? is discussed before a final "Judge's Verdict" on the greatness—or weakness—of the franchise is reached.

“One of the cleverest, most accessibly in-depth film books released this year . . . a smart-ass novelist exploring a cheesy-cheeky ‘80s sci-fi flick.”— Hartford Advocate Deep Focus is a series of film books with a fresh approach. Take the smartest, liveliest writers in contemporary letters and let them loose on the most vital and popular corners of cinema history: midnight movies, the New Hollywood of the sixties and seventies, film noir, screwball comedies, international cult classics, and more . . . Kicking off the series is Jonathan Lethem’s take on They Live , John Carpenter’s 1988 classic amalgam of deliberate B-movie, sci-fi, horror, anti-Yuppie agitprop. Lethem exfoliates Carpenter’s paranoid satire in a series of penetrating, free-associational forays into the context of a story that peels the human masks off the ghoulish overlords of capitalism. Taking into consideration classic Hollywood cinema and science fiction—as well as popular music and contemporary art and theory— They Live provides a wholly original perspective on Carpenter’s subversive classic.

Robert A. Heinlein began publishing in the 1940s at the dawn of the Golden Age of science fiction, and today he is considered one of the genre's 'big three' alongside Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. His short stories were instrumental in developing its structure and rhetoric, while novels such as Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers demonstrated that such writing could be a vehicle for political argument. Heinlein's influence remains strong, but his legacy is fiercely contested. His vision of the future was sometimes radical, sometimes deeply conservative, and arguments have flared up recently about which faction has the most significant claim on his ideas. In this major critical study, Hugo Award-winner Farah Mendlesohn carries out a close reading of Heinlein's work, including unpublished stories, essays, and speeches. It sets out not to interpret a single book, but to think through the arguments Heinlein made over a lifetime about the nature of science fiction, about American politics, and about himself.

"This book considers the development of science fiction for children and teens between 1950 and 2010, exploring why it differs from science fiction aimed at adults. In a broader sense, this examination of 400 texts sheds light on changing attitudes toward children and teenagers, toward science education, and toward the authors' expectations and sociological views of their audience"--Provided by publisher.

British author Diana Wynne Jones has been writing speculative fiction for children for more than thirty years. A clear influence on more recent writers such as J. K. Rowling, her humorous and exciting stories of wizard's academies, dragons, and griffins-many published for children but read by all ages-are also complexly structured and thought provoking critiques of the fantasy tradition. This is the first serious study of Jones's work, written by a renowned science fiction critic and historian. In addition to providing an overview of Jones's work, Farah Mendlesohn also examines Jones's important critiques of the fantastic tradition's ideas about childhood and adolescence.

Renaissance military memoirs studied for what they reveal of contemporary attiudes towards war, selfhood and identity.

One of the most imaginative figures to emerge from the science fiction field. Olaf Stapledon left an indelible mark on many other writers, from Arthur C. Clarke to Saul Bellows, but never won a mass following himself. This study by a renowned American literary critic provides a long-needed introduction to the life and work of the man Brian Aldiss called "the great classical example, the cold pitch of perfection as he turns scientific concepts into ontological epic prose poems, the ultimate science fiction writer." Probing the recurrent themes and images of Stapledon's novels -- which include Last and First Men, Odd John, Star Maker, and Sirius -- Leslie A. Fiedler brilliantly illuminates the complexity and richness that underlie Stapledon's fiction. As Fiedler demonstrates, Stapledon was very much a product of the 1930s, embracing a set of leftist attitudes that were common to many other "Oxbridge-educated sons of the English upper classes." But, as Fiedler further shows, there is much more to Stapleton's books than their superficial ideological content: his works are unique in their awe-inspiring vision of the breadth of the physical universe and the depths of the human psyche. "Certainly since encountering him," Fielder writes, "I have never been able to stare up at thee night sky with the same secure faith that either God exists or he does not; anymore than I have been able between sleeping and waking to be sure that the nighttime "I" preparing to dream is identical with or totally different from the conscious "I" about to surrender its dominion."

"This book is important--and portentous--for if it is true that tragedy is dead, we face a vital cultural loss. . . . The book is bound to start controversy. . . . The very passion and insight with which he writes about the tragedies that have moved him prove that the vision still lives and that words can still enlighten and reveal."--R.B. Sewall, New York Times Book Review "A remarkable achievement. . . . The knowledge is marshalled here with the skill and authority of a great general, and from it a large strategic argument emerges with clarity and force. . . . A brilliantly thoughtful and eloquent book which deserves to be read with the greatest attention and respect."--Philip Toynbee, The Observer "As brilliant, thorough, and concerned a contemplation of the nature of dramatic art as has appeared in many years."--Richard Gilman, Commonweal "A rich and illuminating study, full of intelligence and sensibility."-- Times Literary Supplement (London) "His merits are shining and full of the capacity to give both delight and illumination. . . . His style is throughout vigorous, sensitive, and altogether worthy of its subject."--Harold Hobson, Christian Science Monitor "Immensely useful and [a book] to be reckoned with by everyone working in this field."--Raymond Williams, The Guardian

Novel Gazing is the first collection of queer criticism on the history of the novel. The contributors to this volume navigate new territory in literary theory with essays that implicitly challenge the "hermeneutic of suspicion" widespread in current critical theory. In a stunning introductory essay, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick delineates the possibilities for a criticism that would be "reparative" rather than cynical or paranoid. The startlingly imaginative essays in the volume explore new critical practices that can weave the pleasures and disorientations of reading into the fabric of queer analyses. Through discussions of a diverse array of British, French, and American novels—including major canonical novels, best-sellers, children’s fiction, and science fiction—these essays explore queer worlds of taste, texture, joy, and ennui, focusing on such subjects as flogging, wizardry, exorcism, dance, Zionist desire, and Internet sexuality. Interpreting the works of authors as diverse as Benjamin Constant, Toni Morrison, T. H. White, and William Gibson, along with canonical queer modernists such as James, Proust, Woolf, and Cather, contributors reveal the wealth of ways in which selves and communities succeed in extracting sustenance from the objects of a culture whose avowed desire has often been not to sustain them. The dramatic reframing that these essays perform will make the significance of Novel Gazing extend beyond the scope of queer studies to literary criticism in general. Contributors . Stephen Barber, Renu Bora, Anne Chandler, James Creech, Tyler Curtain, Jonathan Goldberg, Joseph Litvak, Michael Lucey, Jeff Nunokawa, Cindy Patton, Jacob Press, Robert F. Reid-Pharr, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Melissa Solomon, Kathryn Bond Stockton, John Vincent, Maurice Wallace, Barry Weller

This volume incorporates Darko Suvin's thinking on utopian horizons in fiction and on eutopian and dystopian readings of historical reality since the 1970s. While the focus is on the United States and the United Kingdom, the essays also draw on French, German and Russian sources. The book is composed of eighteen chapters, including four sets of poems. The chapters include heretic reflections on utopian fiction, science fiction and utopian studies, explorations of dystopias, and epistemological examinations of political standpoint. Throughout, plebeian history is the stance from which all the author's value judgements are made. The essays and poems engage with the empirical world and identify areas of hope. In a dark dystopian time, they reaffirm eutopia, the radically better place to be striven for in every here and now.

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This text attempts to shape definitions of the American science fiction film, studying the connection between the films and social preconceptions. It covers many classic films and discusses their import, seeking to rescue the genre from the neglect of film theorists. The book should appeal to both film buff and fans of science fiction.

"In Reckoning with Restorative Justice, Leanne Trapedo Sims explores the experiences of women who are incarcerated at the Women's Community Correctional Center, the only women's prison in the state of Hawai'i. Adopting a decolonial and pro-abolitionist lens, she focuses particularly on women's participation in the Kailua Prison Writing Project and its accompanying Prison Monologues program. Trapedo Sims argues that while the writing project served as a vital resource for the inside women, it also remained deeply embedded within carceral logics at the institutional, state, and federal levels. She foregrounds different aspects of these programs, such as the classroom spaces and the dynamics that emerged between performer and audiences in the Prison Monologues. Blending ethnography, literary studies, psychological analysis, and criminal justice critique, Trapedo Sims centers the often-overlooked stories of incarcerated Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women in Hawai'i in ways that resound with the broader American narrative: the disproportionate incarceration of people of color in the prison-industrial complex"-- Provided by publisher.