Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Ultimate Island: On the Nature of British Science Fiction

Ultimate Island: On the Nature of British Science Fiction

Ruddick, Nicholas

Hardcover

Series: Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction & Fantasy, Book 55

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 0313273731
ISBN13: 9780313273735
Publisher: Praeger
Published: Jan 26 1993
Pages: 216
Weight: 1.08
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

This study confronts current influential theories that science fiction is either an American phenomenon or an international one. The study rejects the idea that British science fiction is distinguishable only by its pessimistic outlook--while also rejecting the idea that other designations, such as scientific romance or speculative fiction, better fit the British product. Instead, the study traces the evolution of British science fiction, showing how H. G. Wells synthesized various strains in English literature, and how later writers, conscious of this Wellsian tradition, built upon Wells's literary achievement.

An introduction defines what might reasonably be placed under the heading British science fiction, and why. Chapter 1 examines previous critical ideas about the nature of British science fiction, revealing that most of them are based on untested assumptions. Chapter 2 explores the significance of the dominant motif of the island in British SF --a motif that suggests that British SF and mainstream English literature have been long and fruitfully intertwined. Chapters 3 and 4 deal respectively with British disaster fiction before and after the Second World War. They focus on why British science fiction has so frequently seemed obsessed with catastrophe. Chapter 5, a polemical conclusion, deals with the future of British science fiction based on its current predicament. Ultimate Island forms a theoretical counterpart to the author's recently-published British Science Fiction: A Chronology 1478-1990 (Greenwood 1992), which defines the historical scope of the field.

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