Contemporary Trends in Science Fiction Criticism, 1980-1999

Bibliographic Data

ID11060163
AuthorsVeronica Hollinger (corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume26
IssuePart 2
Pages232-262
Publication date1999-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Fiction Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0091-7729 • E-ISSN: 2327-6207
PublisherUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1525/sfs.26.2.0232
OpenAlexW4409428270
LanguageEN
Citations received4

This overview of sf criticism from 1980 to 1999 is divided into three sections: 1) “Mapping the Field,” which recommends some histories, genre studies, media sf studies, and reference guides; 2) “Sf Writers on Sf,” which calls attention to a number of non¬fiction and critical works by sf authors, as well as to some author interviews; 3) and “When It Changed,” which discusses a variety of both feminist and postmodern studies of sf. While this overview does not claim to be a complete listing of every significant study which has appeared in the past twenty years, it does aim to develop the sense of a scholarly field in the middle of an unprecedented expansion, and to indicate some of the ways in which sf, itself an arena of cultural production undergoing various unexpected metamorphoses, is currently being appropriated by other scholarly disciplines for whom it provides a source of important cultural material. Sf studies itself has branched out into many new directions, been influenced by many complex political and theoretical perspectives, and achieved some legitimacy within academia, due in part to the postmodern turn away from high culture/popular culture distinctions. A review of the critical work published over the last twenty years suggests that sf studies is flourishing as never before, even as efforts to define what sf is/is becoming are being challenged as never before. (VH)

Art · Criticism · Literature · Digital Games and Media · History · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction

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