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Title The seven beauties of science fiction / Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.
Author Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr.
Publisher Middletown, Connecticut : Wesleyan University Press, [2011]
Copyright ©2008

Status Loan Type Location Shelf-mark
 In Library  Standard  Library Level 9 Annexe  Gen Lit J470.S3 CSI  
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Description xi, 323 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN 9780819568892 cloth
9780819570925 paperback
Note Originally published: 2008.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-315) and index.
Contents Introduction: Science fiction and this moment -- First beauty : fictive neology -- Second beauty : fictive novums -- Third beauty : future history -- Fourth beauty : imaginary science -- Fifth beauty : the science-fictional sublime -- Sixth beauty : the science-fictional grotesque -- Seventh beauty : the Technologiade -- Concluding unscientific postscript: The singularity and beyond.
Summary As the world undergoes daily transformations through the application of technoscience to every aspect of life, science fiction has become an essential mode of imagining the horizons of possibility. However much science fiction texts vary in artistic quality and intellectual sophistication, they share in a mass social energy and a desire to imagine a collective future for the human species and the world. At this moment, a strikingly high proportion of films, commercial art, popular music, video and computer games, and non-genre fiction have become what Csicsery-Ronay calls science fictional, stimulating science-fictional habits of mind. We no longer treat science fiction as merely a genre-engine producing formulaic effects, but as a mode of awareness, which frames experiences as if they were aspects of science fiction. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction describes science fiction as a constellation of seven diverse cognitive attractions that are particularly formative of science-fictionality, These are the "seven beauties" of the title: fictive neology, fictive novums, future history, imaginary science, the science-fictional sublime, the science-fictional grotesque, and the Technologiade, or the epic of technsocience's development into a global regime.
Library Class Gen Lit J470.S3
Subject Science fiction -- History and criticism.
Science fiction -- Philosophy.
Alt Title 7 beauties of science fiction

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