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Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination
Drawing on a wide range of examples from the literary and visual canons—short stories, novels, films, television programs, video games, graphic novels, artworks, and more—in both cult and popular culture, this extensively illustrated book examines how science fiction has provided a human response to science, exploring every reaction from complacency to exhilaration, and from hope to terror. Across five chapters, this volume reviews the role played by science fiction in exploring our world and a multitude of ideas about our relationship with the human condition. Science Fiction encompasses a fascinating range of themes: machines, travel, aliens (the Other), communication, threats, and anxiety. Edited by Glyn Morgan and featuring a range of essays by experts on the subject, as well as interviews with well-known science fiction authors and reproductions of classic ephemera, graphics, and objects throughout, it also focuses on the darker elements of this fascinating genre: the anxieties, fears, dystopias, monsters, and apocalypses that have populated science fiction from the beginning.
Ultimately, science fiction asks what makes us human, and what lies in the future to test, threaten, and even destroy humanity. This publication has these questions at its core, making it especially relevant for contemporary readers in an age preoccupied with climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, the development of nuclear missiles and military technologies, and other global challenges.
Ultimately, science fiction asks what makes us human, and what lies in the future to test, threaten, and even destroy humanity. This publication has these questions at its core, making it especially relevant for contemporary readers in an age preoccupied with climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, the development of nuclear missiles and military technologies, and other global challenges.
- GenresNonfictionScience
288 pages, Hardcover
Published September 29, 2022
7 people are currently reading
78 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 7, 2022
There are two ways to write a non-fiction book on science fiction - for the fans, or for those who don't currently read SF. Being as big science fiction fan I’m not sure I’m the ideal audience for this book, which is very much aimed at persuading those who think they don’t like SF that it’s actually acceptably cool. It's technically an accompaniment to an exhibition at London's Science Museum, though I believe it takes a different and more sophisticated tack.
We get a bit of introduction, including an essay on 'What is science fiction for?' - this only briefly touches on the usual spiel that it's not about predicting the future, and rather sadly never says it's for enjoyment, or getting insights into people and their response to changes in their world and worldview - in fact, it's quite difficult to elicit anything from this rather obscure piece of writing.
Editor Glyn Morgan then divides the SF writing-scape into five areas: people and machines, travelling the cosmos, communication and language, aliens and alienation and somewhat vaguely, anxieties and hopes, which proves to be primarily about nuclear war and climate change. This means there's not much feel of a contiguous structure to the book, which has a multiplicity of authors. Each section darts around in time, trying to get across the message the author of that segment feels is important, rather than the perhaps more enlightening approach of systematically telling us the history of science fiction and how it has developed.
There are certainly some serious gaps here. Although we get an image from Doctor Who (the pictures here, in typical museum style, don't really illustrate the text but give us sometimes relevant, sometimes confusing, imagery that often wastes about three quarters of the space available for text), there is pretty much nothing about time travel, or about the Brandon Sanderson-style military SF that follows in the tradition of Heinlein and was so successfully countered by Joe Haldeman. There is a real problem with the approach, which is driven by the authors' pet topics, rather than what real world SF has been about.
Equally, some big names in science fiction history either get a one line mention or nothing at all - names such as John Wyndham, Ray Bradbury, James Blish, Iain M. Banks or Alastair Reynolds. Even Adam Roberts, who should be more to the taste of these authors, only gets a reference to one novel. Instead, I think the person who gets most coverage is 'Sun Ra', apparently an experimental musician and hardly a significant contributor to the SF canon. This reflects a relentless 'right on' attitude, which results, for example, in far too much weight being given to twenty-first century authors.
I presume the way the book seems aimed at a certain segment of potential readership is why it never explores the literary elite's habitual disdain for science fiction. They don't mention that a certain author (who amusingly they label as an SF writer) claimed she didn't write science fiction, as it was limited to 'talking squids from outer space.' Although the contributors rightly celebrate Ursula K. LeGuin, they don't point out that LeGuin commented that the aforementioned author's rejection of SF was 'designed to protect her novels from being relegated to a genre still shunned by hidebound readers, reviewers and prize-awarders.'
Overall then, a nicely produced book, with some interesting material - but distinctly flawed in the balance of content, and in not mentioning the disdain of many in the literary world.
We get a bit of introduction, including an essay on 'What is science fiction for?' - this only briefly touches on the usual spiel that it's not about predicting the future, and rather sadly never says it's for enjoyment, or getting insights into people and their response to changes in their world and worldview - in fact, it's quite difficult to elicit anything from this rather obscure piece of writing.
Editor Glyn Morgan then divides the SF writing-scape into five areas: people and machines, travelling the cosmos, communication and language, aliens and alienation and somewhat vaguely, anxieties and hopes, which proves to be primarily about nuclear war and climate change. This means there's not much feel of a contiguous structure to the book, which has a multiplicity of authors. Each section darts around in time, trying to get across the message the author of that segment feels is important, rather than the perhaps more enlightening approach of systematically telling us the history of science fiction and how it has developed.
There are certainly some serious gaps here. Although we get an image from Doctor Who (the pictures here, in typical museum style, don't really illustrate the text but give us sometimes relevant, sometimes confusing, imagery that often wastes about three quarters of the space available for text), there is pretty much nothing about time travel, or about the Brandon Sanderson-style military SF that follows in the tradition of Heinlein and was so successfully countered by Joe Haldeman. There is a real problem with the approach, which is driven by the authors' pet topics, rather than what real world SF has been about.
Equally, some big names in science fiction history either get a one line mention or nothing at all - names such as John Wyndham, Ray Bradbury, James Blish, Iain M. Banks or Alastair Reynolds. Even Adam Roberts, who should be more to the taste of these authors, only gets a reference to one novel. Instead, I think the person who gets most coverage is 'Sun Ra', apparently an experimental musician and hardly a significant contributor to the SF canon. This reflects a relentless 'right on' attitude, which results, for example, in far too much weight being given to twenty-first century authors.
I presume the way the book seems aimed at a certain segment of potential readership is why it never explores the literary elite's habitual disdain for science fiction. They don't mention that a certain author (who amusingly they label as an SF writer) claimed she didn't write science fiction, as it was limited to 'talking squids from outer space.' Although the contributors rightly celebrate Ursula K. LeGuin, they don't point out that LeGuin commented that the aforementioned author's rejection of SF was 'designed to protect her novels from being relegated to a genre still shunned by hidebound readers, reviewers and prize-awarders.'
Overall then, a nicely produced book, with some interesting material - but distinctly flawed in the balance of content, and in not mentioning the disdain of many in the literary world.
August 21, 2024
Such a great book, such great articles 🥹
December 12, 2022
I am not sure what I was expecting from this book, I think I thought it would explain more of the science behind some SF and how some older SF either got it right or wrong, it does to an extent but is rather limited in its themes and is very much based in the now. It is a companion book to the current exhibition at the Science Museum but can stand alone, although it has made me think that a visit to the exhibition might be in order. The illustrations throughout the book are sumptuous and there are interviews to cover the subject matter of the chapters. I don't know why I am not too enthusiastic about this book, I rather suspect that it may be a generational thing as it deals in the main with very modern SF, not something that I have really managed to engage with and I must be honest the tenor of the book is rather 'worthy' and on the whole a tad depressing. This is just my take, I must admit that it was very much a skim read as I had difficulty engaging with the book.
March 30, 2024
Gostaria de ter tido oportunidade de visitar esta exposição. Fico-me pela sorte de ter encontrado o catálogo na loja do Science Museum, ainda por cima a preço de desconto (tê-lo-ia levado comigo mesmo ao preço original). Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination reuniu nesse museu uma exposiçáo antológica que olhou para a história e temáticas da Ficção Científica.
O catálogo reúne um conjunto de textos, profusamente ilustrados, que se focam nas várias temáticas da FC, desde a sua perspetiva histórica, a relação entre ciência, tecnologia e ficção especulativa, os temas da exploração espacial e contactos com alienígenas. Mostra a FC como um género vibrante (uma das razões para ter sido, a par com o policial, uma das ficções de género que sobreviveu ao teste dos tempos, ao contrário dos restantes géneros que faziam as delícias dos leitores dos pulps), reflexivo, que aceita a sua herança cultural e não tem medo de evoluir, aceitando novas temáticas e perspectivas.
O catálogo reúne um conjunto de textos, profusamente ilustrados, que se focam nas várias temáticas da FC, desde a sua perspetiva histórica, a relação entre ciência, tecnologia e ficção especulativa, os temas da exploração espacial e contactos com alienígenas. Mostra a FC como um género vibrante (uma das razões para ter sido, a par com o policial, uma das ficções de género que sobreviveu ao teste dos tempos, ao contrário dos restantes géneros que faziam as delícias dos leitores dos pulps), reflexivo, que aceita a sua herança cultural e não tem medo de evoluir, aceitando novas temáticas e perspectivas.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews