scholarly journals Conversations about Science Fiction: The Category of “Fantastic” in The Bibliographic Discourse of the 1960s and 1970s

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 360-372
Author(s):  
Maxim Lyzlov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Sharp Increase ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Fantastic Literature ◽  
Artificial Earth Satellites ◽  
Educational Literature ◽  
Artificial Earth ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Theoretical Apparatus

In the 1950s and 1970s, bibliographers made attempts to define the genre of fiction and offer a systematization of the available fiction literature. The purpose of the article is to trace the development of the category of “fantastic” in the recommendation indexes of Z. P. Shalashova “Adventures. Journeys. Science Fiction”, “Artificial Earth satellites. Interplanetary flights”, “Adventures and travel”. The problems faced by bibliographers were related both to the sharp increase in publications of fantastic literature, and to the weak development of the theoretical apparatus in literary studies and bibliography. The concept of “fantastic” has evolved from an adventure-related type of scientific and educational literature to a metaphorical “dream world” devoid of terminological clarity. The material of bibliographic indexes, de- spite its limited functionality, nevertheless demonstrates that the processes that took place in the field of recommendation bibliography of children’s books reflect the significant difficulties that bibliographers experienced in finding a language for describing fiction.

John Brunner

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jad Smith
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Own Name ◽  
John Brunner

Under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, John Brunner (1934–1995) was one of the most prolific and influential science fiction authors of the late twentieth century. During his exemplary career, the British author wrote with a stamina matched by only a few other great science fiction writers and with a literary quality of even fewer, importing modernist techniques into his novels and stories and probing every major theme of his generation: robotics, racism, drugs, space exploration, technological warfare, and ecology. This book, an intensive review of Brunner's life and works, demonstrates how Brunner's much-neglected early fiction laid the foundation for his classic Stand on Zanzibar and other major works such as The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. Making extensive use of Brunner's letters, columns, speeches, and interviews published in fanzines, the book approaches Brunner in the context of markets and trends that affected many writers of the time, including his uneasy association with the “New Wave” of science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s. This book shows how Brunner's attempts to cross-fertilize the American pulp tradition with British scientific romance complicated the distinctions between genre and mainstream fiction, and between hard and soft science fiction, and helped carve out space for emerging modes such as cyberpunk, slipstream, and biopunk.

scholarly journals FANTASTIC CONSERVATISM: THE CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY IN WESTERN AND RUSSIAN FANTASTIC LITERATURE

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (34) ◽  
Author(s):  
A.M VAFIN ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Russian Science ◽  
Fantastic Literature ◽  
Philosophy Today ◽  
Academic Philosophy ◽  
Conservative Values

In one of the lectures a Russian philosopher said: philosophy today is literature. The noted philosopher in his statement relies on the ideas of the French (post)structuralism's. As you know, French thought in the mid-20th century influenced a variety of intellectual schools, from American literary studies to Russian academic philosophy in the 1990s. Literature-centered approach characteristic of modern philosophy. The process of centering on literature is not started in the XX century. Since the eighteenth century, France, Russia, and Germany have been plunging into the worlds of literature on the verge of philosophy or philosophy on the verge of literature. The idea was presented in a variety of ideological formats from socialism and liberalism to conservatism. And if ideologically, more or less, the authors can be identified, then it is impossible to give a clear answer to the question of who all these people are, writers or philosophers. This article analyzes the phenomenon of fantastic conservatism. Conservative values in Western and Russian science fiction literature are analyzed.

The Two Cultures of English

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Maxwell
Keyword(s):  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Composition Studies ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Organizational Patterns ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Fredric Jameson ◽  
De Man

The Two Cultures of English examines the academic discipline of English in the final decades of the twentieth century and the first years of the new millennium. During this period, longstanding organizational patterns within the discipline were disrupted. With the introduction of French theory into the American academy in the 1960s and 1970s, both literary studies and composition studies experienced a significant reorientation. The introduction of theory into English Studies not only intensified existing tensions between those in literature and those in composition but also produced commonalities among colleagues that had not previously existed. As a result, the various fields within English began to share an increasing number of assumptions at the same time that institutional conflicts between literary studies and composition studies became more intense than ever before. Through careful reconsiderations of some of the key figures that helped shape (and were shaped by) this new landscape—including Michel Foucault, Kenneth Burke, Paul de Man, Fredric Jameson, James Berlin, Susan Miller, John Guillory, and Bruno Latour—the book offers a more comprehensive map of the discipline than one would find from histories on either side of the literature/composition divide.

scholarly journals The (Ir)Relevance of Science Fiction to Non-Binary and Genderqueer Readers

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67
Author(s):  
Anamarija Šporčič
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Third Order ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Gender Binary ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Gender Traits

As an example of jean Baudrillard’s third order of simulacra, contemporary science fiction represents a convenient literary platform for the exploration of our current and future understanding of gender, gender variants and gender fluidity. The genre should, in theory, have the advantage of being able to avoid the limitations posed by cultural conventions and transcend them in new and original ways. In practice, however, literary works of science fiction that are not subject to the dictations of the binary understanding of gender are few and far between, as authors overwhelmingly use the binary gender division as a binding element between the fictional world and that of the reader. The reversal of gender roles, merging of gender traits, androgynous characters and genderless societies nevertheless began to appear in the 1960s and 1970s. This paper briefly examines the history of attempts at transcending the gender binary in science fiction, and explores the possibility of such writing empowering non-binary/genderqueer individuals.

Romanticism with the Machine (1): From Frankenstein’s Monster to Hippie Computing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Coeckelbergh
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Counter Culture ◽  
Historical Times ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Romantic Science ◽  
A Current

In chapter 4 it is argued that already in historical times the romantic relation to technology cannot be reduced to mere opposition. It is shown how in the early nineteenth century romantics were not only fearful of, but also fascinated by the new science and technology. Drawing on Tresch (2012) and Holmes (2008) it is argued that there was a current in Romanticism which viewed science and the arts as entwined, and which tried to fuse the organic and the mechanic, life and science. These material romanticisms are neglected by philosophers of technology who reduce romanticism to escapism, nostalgia, or anti-machine thinking. This brings us to our age, with its life sciences and its robotics that share these deeply material-romantic aims. First it is shown how in the 20th century there was a romantic science (Freud) and how technology and romanticism became very much entangled: not only in science fiction but also in reality: born as hippie computing in the context of the 1960s and 1970s counter-culture, there is a development of what we may call romantic devices.

scholarly journals Post-Digital Literary Studies

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Cramer
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Graphic Design ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Boom And Bust ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Digital Literary Studies ◽  
Information Aesthetics

Digital humanities and digital literary studies face much the same challenges as contemporary media art: what will become of them once their media are no longer “new”, and the limitations of processing art as data have become more clearly and widely understood? This paper revisits information aesthetics and computer poetics from the 1960s and 1970s, casting them as precursors of today’s digital humanities, with many of the same issues, achievements and failures, and with their own hype cycles of boom and bust. Conversely, “post-digital” and “Post-Internet” trends in music, graphic design and visual arts may anticipate possible futures of digital humanities and literary studies after the hype has passed.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14195/2182-8830_4-1_1

scholarly journals The Two Cultures Revisited. Stanisław Lem’s His Master’s Voice

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-478
Author(s):  
Dominika Oramus
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
The West ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Stanislaw Lem ◽  
The 1960S

I would like to take, as my starting point, the famous 1959 lecture of C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures, where science fiction is by and large ignored, and see how the consecutive points Snow is making are also discussed in the following decades of the 20th century by other philosophers of science, among them Stanisław Lem, Steven Weinberg, and Jonathan Gottschall. In 1959 Snow postulated re-uniting the two cultures through the reform of education. In the 1960s and 1970s Lem did not believe in any reform, but prophesied that science left alone would procure the final war and, probably, the self-inflicted technological death of the West. I am then going to juxtapose Snow’s argument with a science fiction novel concerned with the same civilizational crisis: Stanis law Lem’s His Master’s Voice.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Jason Maxwell
Keyword(s):  
Composition Studies ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
English Departments ◽  
French Theory ◽  
Wayne Booth ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

The introduction provides an overview of the longstanding division within the discipline of English between literary studies and composition studies. It briefly examines the writings of critics, most notably Wayne Booth, who seek a way of overcoming the hostilities that have long characterized the relationship between these two fields. The introduction then offers the central thesis of the book: that the relationship between literary studies and composition was complicated significantly by the introduction of French theory in the 1960s and 1970s. The incorporation of theory into English departments not only intensified existing antagonisms within the discipline but also forged new and unexpected alliances.

scholarly journals Recovering the Barbarians: Reprinting “Forgotten Fantasy” in the 1970s1

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuri Cowan
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Fantasy Literature ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Fantastic Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Material Form

In the 1960s and 70s, a new interest in the prehistory of fantastic literature found its paperback and digest magazine form in projects of textual recovery like the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, Forgotten Fantasy Magazine, and the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy series. This article describes how the material form of these books speaks to their intended audience of fans of science fiction and fantasy, and compares the processes of editing and disseminating Victorian fantasy to the social practices of SF fandom. In the colourful covers and facsimile reprints of these reprints the exigencies of cheap dissemination and the desire to make the works accessible to a modern audience result in eclectic, modern paratexts under the guidance of editors such as Doug Menville, Robert Reginald, and Lin Carter, themselves active readers who form, collect, and print their own personalized bodies of essential fantasy literature, blurring the arbitrary boundaries between author, reader, editor, publisher, and fan.

Ken Russell's Wartime Imagery

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Flanagan
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Personal Style ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World ◽  
Wartime Experience ◽  
National Experience

This article traces Ken Russell's explorations of war and wartime experience over the course of his career. In particular, it argues that Russell's scattered attempts at coming to terms with war, the rise of fascism and memorialisation are best understood in terms of a combination of Russell's own tastes and personal style, wider stylistic and thematic trends in Euro-American cinema during the 1960s and 1970s, and discourses of collective national experience. In addition to identifying Russell's recurrent techniques, this article focuses on how the residual impacts of the First and Second World Wars appear in his favoured genres: literary adaptations and composer biopics. Although the article looks for patterns and similarities in Russell's war output, it differentiates between his First and Second World War films by indicating how he engages with, and temporarily inhabits, the stylistic regime of the enemy within the latter group.

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