Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction

Front Cover
Routledge, Jun 29, 2005 - Literary Criticism - 216 pages

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 novelists and theorists including Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Patrick Parrinder, Kim Stanley Robinson, John Varley, Roger Zelazny, William Gibson, Fredric Jameson and Samuel R. Delaney.

 

Contents

NEW WORLD NEW TEXTS
3
GENERIC ENGINEERING
21
GENRE OR MODE?
38
THE USES OF OTHERNESS
49
READING THE EPISTEME
64
DREAMS OF REASON AND UNREASON
75
THE STARS MY DISSERTATION
89
MAKING UP WORLDS
103
ALLOGRAPHY AND ALLEGORY
117
SF AS A MODULAR CALCULUS
128
THE MULTIPLICITY OF WORLDS OF OTHERS
137
THE AUTUMNAL CITY
153
Notes
159
Bibliography
180
Index
193
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction
Damien Broderick
Limited preview - 1995
Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction
Damien Broderick
No preview available - 1995
Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction
Damien Broderick
No preview available - 1995

Common terms and phrases

aesthetic alien allegory Asimov Brian Aldiss Brooke-Rose Chapter Cioffi Clute codes cognitive constituted constructed contemporary context conventional critical culture cyberpunk Darko Suvin deconstruction Delany Delany's Dhalgren Disch discourse dreams Einstein Intersection episteme especially estrangement fantasy fictive figure Flight from Nevčr˙on foreground formula Fredric Fredric Jameson future genre Gibson Guin Heinlein Heinlein's Helliconia human ibid icons ideological images imagination intertextual invented Jameson Joanna Russ kind Korga language literary literature Lobey mapping Marq metaphor metonymy mode modern modular calculus myth narrative Neuromancer Nevčr˙on notion novel object paradigm paraliterary paraliterature Parrinder perhaps play postmodern poststructural poststructuralist precisely reading reality Samuel schemata science fiction scientific semiotic sense sexual sf readers sf texts sf writers sf's signifiers Sobchack social space specific Stanislaw Lem Stars story strategies structure subjunctivity Suvin Sygn syntagms textual theory Todorov traditional trilogy tropes universe Ursula Le Guin words writing

About the author (2005)

Damien Broderick, author of The Architecture of Babel: Discourses of Literature and Science, is an award-winning writer who sold his first collection of stories at 20, has published eight novels and holds a PhD in the semiotics of science, literature and science fiction.

Bibliographic information

TitleReading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction
Popular Fictions Series
AuthorDamien Broderick
PublisherRoutledge, 2005
ISBN1134860056, 9781134860050
Length216 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Literary Criticism / General
Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social
  
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