Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers

1983 ◽  
Vol 43 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Patrick G. Hogan ◽  
Curtis C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Century Science

scholarly journals Living with Speculative Infrastructures

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ziser
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Growth And Development ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ray Bradbury ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Century Science

This article looks at the California origins of much of Twentieth Century science fiction. It examines how the exploding growth and development of postwar California informed science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Philip K. Dick, and looks to their books for answers to twenty-first century dilemmas such as the uses of technology, the environment, and infrastructure.

scholarly journals Deceived by orchids: sex, science, fiction and Darwin

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
JIM ENDERSBY
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
New Science ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
The Many

AbstractBetween 1916 and 1927, botanists in several countries independently resolved three problems that had mystified earlier naturalists – including Charles Darwin: how did the many species of orchid that did not produce nectar persuade insects to pollinate them? Why did some orchid flowers seem to mimic insects? And why should a native British orchid suffer ‘attacks’ from a bee? Half a century after Darwin's death, these three mysteries were shown to be aspects of a phenomenon now known as pseudocopulation, whereby male insects are deceived into attempting to mate with the orchid's flowers, which mimic female insects; the males then carry the flower's pollen with them when they move on to try the next deceptive orchid. Early twentieth-century botanists were able to see what their predecessors had not because orchids (along with other plants) had undergone an imaginative re-creation: Darwin's science was appropriated by popular interpreters of science, including the novelist Grant Allen; then H.G. Wells imagined orchids as killers (inspiring a number of imitators), to produce a genre of orchid stories that reflected significant cultural shifts, not least in the presentation of female sexuality. It was only after these changes that scientists were able to see plants as equipped with agency, actively able to pursue their own, cunning reproductive strategies – and to outwit animals in the process. This paper traces the movement of a set of ideas that were created in a context that was recognizably scientific; they then became popular non-fiction, then popular fiction, and then inspired a new science, which in turn inspired a new generation of fiction writers. Long after clear barriers between elite and popular science had supposedly been established in the early twentieth century, they remained porous because a variety of imaginative writers kept destabilizing them. The fluidity of the boundaries between makers, interpreters and publics of scientific knowledge was a highly productive one; it helped biology become a vital part of public culture in the twentieth century and beyond.

Body Parts: Twentieth-Century Science Fiction Short Stories by Women

PMLA ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 119 (3) ◽  
pp. 474-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Donawerth
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Cosmetic Surgery ◽  
South American ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Domestic Technology ◽  
Modern Business ◽  
American Author ◽  
Century Science

This essay is a feminist, historical exploration of body parts in short science fiction stories by women. In early-twentieth-century stories about prostheses, blood transfusion, and radioactive experiments, Clare Winger Harris, Kathleen Ludwick, and Judith Merril use body parts to explore fears of damage to masculine identity by war, of alienation of men from women, and of racial pollution. In stories from the last quarter of the twentieth century, the South American author Angélica Gorodischer depicts a housewife's escape from oppressive domestic technology through time travel in which she murders male leaders, while Eileen Gunn offers a critique of bioengineering and sociobiology, satirizing fears of women in modern business and of erasure of identity in global corporate structures. An end-of-the-century fiction by the African American Akua Lezli Hope imagines a black woman altered through cosmetic surgery to become a tenor sax and critiques technologies that transform women's bodies into cultural signifiers of social function and class.

Recognition

Metagnosis ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 165-199
Author(s):  
Danielle Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
Blade Runner ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Literature And Film ◽  
Century Science

This chapter begins Part III: Seeing Metagnosis, which explores the narrative arc of metagnosis itself, including the stages of recognition, subversion, and renegotiation. Here the subject is recognition, the first metagnostic stage. Beginning with the model of passing, it traces experiences and forms of recognition through real-world examples as well as those drawn from speculative fiction literature and film, particularly Blade Runner. Drawing upon recognition’s conceptualization—from Aristotle to twentieth-century science fiction editors to literary theory and criticism—it describes a form of misrecognition which characterizes, too, the experience of metagnosis, in which the terms of knowledge have shifted.

scholarly journals Cities in Flight: A Descriptive Examination of the Tropical City Imagined in Twentieth Century Science Fiction Cover Art

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Benjamin Menadue
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Tropical Environments ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Cover Art ◽  
The Tropics ◽  
Century Science

A search for imaginary cities and city-like objects portrayed in twentieth century science fiction magazine cover art employed digital tools and followed a PRISMA methodology for systematic analysis. The findings include a correlation between indigenous peoples being portrayed as possessing less advanced technology than human visitors or human city builders in the tropics. Human cultural tropes are identified in the depiction of indigenous peoples, and trends over time in the increasing sophistication of portrayals, and a decline in gratuitously sexual artwork are visible, which supports findings of other work on changing cultural perceptions of the tropics found in science fiction. Notable themes were the tropics as a place of conflict, simplistic depictions of women, the difference between the portrayal of jungle and desert environments and the colonial mythology perpetuated in cover art over this period. Science fiction cities of the tropics were often still or devoid of life, rather than vibrant, active places. An intriguing finding was that building a filtering model for tropical environments in a science fiction setting leads naturally to a consideration of how the concept of the tropics is based on arbitrary, Earthly, cartographic conventions, which do not exist on other worlds. This difference highlights the value-laden meaning of tropical environments and societies applied by the ‘alien,’ whether European colonist or visiting Earthling, and that the inhabitants of the tropics are not bound by these conventions.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document