Learning from other worlds : estrangement, cognition and the politics of science fiction and utopia / / edited by Patrick Parrinder [[electronic resource]]

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910782252103321
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Liverpool : , : Liverpool University Press, , 2000
• ISBN: 1-84631-349-X
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (viii, 312 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)
• Collana: Liverpool science fiction texts and studies ; ; 17
• Disciplina: 809.38762
• Soggetti: Science fiction - History and criticism; Utopias - History and criticism
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 11 Aug 2017).
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [291]-306) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Title Page; Contents; Acknowledgements; Contributors; Introduction: Learning from Other Worlds; Part One: Science Fiction and Utopia: Theory and Politics; Before the Novum: The Prehistory of Science Fiction Criticism; Revisiting Suvin's Poetics of Science Fiction; 'Look into the dark': On Dystopia and the Novum; Science Fiction and Utopia: A Historico-Philosophical Overview; Society After the Revolution: The Blueprints for the Forthcoming Socialist Society published by the Leaders of the Second International; Part Two: Science fiction in its Social, Cultural and Philosophical Contexts; From the Images of Science to Science FictionEstranged Invaders: The War of the Worlds; 'A part of the ... family [?]': John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos as Estranged Autobiography; Labyrinth, Double and Mask in the Science Fiction of Stanislaw Lem; 'We're at the start of a new ball game and that's why we're all real nervous': Or, Cloning-Technological Cognition Reflects Estrangement from Women; 'If I find one good city I will spare the man': Realism and Utopia in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy; Afterword: With Sober, Estranged Eyes; Darko Suvin: Checklist of Printed Items that Concern Science Fiction (with Utopian Fiction or Utopianism, and a few Bordering Items)Bibliography; Index
• Sommario/riassunto: 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.