Metamorphoses of Science Fiction

Returning to print for the first time since the 1980s, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction is the origin point for decades of literary and theoretical criticism of science fiction and related genres. Darko Suvins paradigm-setting definition of SF as «the literature of cognitive estrangement» established a robust theory of the genre that continues to spark fierce debate, as well as inspiring myriad intellectual descendants and disciples. Suvins centuries-spanning history of the genre links SF to a long tradition of utopian and satirical literatures crying out for a better world than this one, showing how SF and the imagination of utopia are now forever intertwined. In addition to the 1979 text of the book, this edition contains three additional essays from Suvin that update, expand and reconsider the terms of his original intervention, as well as a new introduction and preface that situate the book in the context of the decades of SF studies that have followed in its wake.

Darko Suvin, scholar, critic and poet, was born in Yugoslavia, studied at the universities of Zagreb, Bristol, the Sorbonne and Yale and has taught in Europe and North America. He is Professor Emeritus of McGill University and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the author of numerous books and articles on literature and dramaturgy, culture, utopian and science fiction and political epistemology, as well as three volumes of poetry. In recent years he has been writing mainly about SFR Yugoslavia and communism. Gerry Canavan is Assistant Professor of English at Marquette University, specializing in twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature. His research focuses on the relationship between science fiction and the political and cultural history of the post-war period, with special emphasis on ecology and the environment. He is an editor at Extrapolation and Science Fiction Film and Television, as well as the author of Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Octavia E. Butler (2016).

Contents: Estrangement and Cognition – SF and the Genological Jungle – Defining the Literary Genre of Utopia: Some Historical Semantics, Some Genology, a Proposal, and a Plea – SF and the Novum – The Alternative Island – The Shift to Anticipation: Radical Rhapsody and Romantic Recoil – Liberalism Mutes the Anticipation: The Space-Binding Machines – Anticipating the Sunburst: Dream, Vision – or Nightmare? – Wells as the Turning Point of the SF Tradition – versus as Structural Models for SF – Russian SF and Its Utopian Tradition – Karel ?apek, or the Aliens Amongst Us – Science Fiction, Metaphor, Parable, and Chronotope (with the Bad Conscience of Reaganism) – Considering the Sense of «Fantasy» or «Fantastic Fiction»: An Effusion* – Circumstances and Stances: A Retrospect.