1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910783832303321

Autore

Broderick Damien

Titolo

Reading by starlight : postmodern science fiction / / Damien Broderick

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London ; ; New York : , : Routledge, , 1995

ISBN

1-134-86005-6

1-134-86006-4

1-280-14509-9

0-203-99321-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (221 p.)

Collana

Popular fiction series

Disciplina

813087620905

823.087609

Soggetti

Science fiction, American - History and criticism

Science fiction, English - History and criticism

Discourse analysis, Literary

Postmodernism (Literature)

Semiotics and literature

Narration (Rhetoric)

Literary form

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

READING BY STARLIGHT Postmodernscience fiction; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I Modern science fiction; 1 New World, New Texts; The lineage of sf; Definitions; A mythology of tomorrow; Running the universe; The catlike mrem; At play in the fields of the word; Sf after 19?; Changing paradigms; 2 Generic Engineering; Out of the pulps; Science fiction's formulae; How much change?; Uncanny and marvellous; Diagramming the fantastic; Cognitive and estranged; New words, new sentences; 3 Genre or Mode?; Genre regarded as a game of tennis; The persuasions of rhetoric

A trans-historical temptationDrawing from life; A literature of metaphor; 4 The Uses of Otherness; Really strange bedfellows; Pretending to shock; Sf and subversion; Feminist futures; Metaphor and



metonymy; The mega-text; Icon and mega-text; The absent signified; 5 Reading The Episteme; Delany's critical path; Subjunctivity and mega-text; Learning to read sf; Sf as paraliterary; Critiquing the object; 6 Dreams of Reason and Unreason; out of the kindergarten; Familiarising the estranged; Monstrous dreams; Cyberpunk; Value-added trash; Beyond satire; 7 The Stars My Dissertation

Learning the tropesTime's arrow, time's cycle; Flaws in the pattern; The hazard of didacticism; A fatal innocence; Deep identity; Part II Postmodern science fiction; 8 Making Up Worlds; What is the postmodern?; Mapping utopia; Jameson's postmodern and sf; Screen test; A new dominant; 9 Allography and Allegory; Sf as allegory of reading; Difference; Remaking myth; Myth re-complicated; The music of words; The interpretative context; 10 Sf as a Modular Calculus; A mirror for observers; Black box and finagle factor; The rudder of language; Writing in phase space; Conceptual breakthrough

11 The Multiplicity of Worlds, of OthersArt as play, art as revelation; Assailing dogma; The postmodern intersection; Worlds out of words; Norman Rockwell on Mars; Self-reference; The antinomies of spacetime; 12 The Autumnal City; The object of science fiction; A definition of sf; Sf and the renovated novel; Strange attractors; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Sommario/riassunto

Reading by Starlight explores the characteristics in the writing, marketing and reception of science fiction which distinguish it as a genre.Damien Broderick explores the postmodern self-referentiality of the sci-fi narrative, its intricate coded language and discursive `encyclopaedia'. He shows how, for perfect understanding, sci-fi readers must learn the codes of these imaginary worlds and vocabularies, all the time picking up references to texts by other writers.Reading by Starlight includes close readings of paradigmatic cyberpunk texts and writings by SF novelist