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Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings. Ed. by Rob Latham, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 54, Issue 3, July 2018, Pages 377–378, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqy014
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Extract
While there are a number of significant recent books in the field of science fiction studies which provide academic overviews (particularly exhaustive are the Routledge Companion to Science Fiction and the Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, also edited by Latham) this collection is helpful in providing original writing from science fiction’s history, presenting essays by the likes of H. G. Wells and Mary Shelley alongside commentary by knowledgeable editors from the field and contemporary writing from the academy. Such a range of writing recognizes how science fiction as a genre and as a community is created at the interstices of literature, fan communities, and the marketplace. The book is split into sections which cover various aspects of science fiction studies, from definitions of the field, to formalist interrogations of the genre as literature, to more recent interventions that argue for science fiction’s role as a discourse that can intervene in a number of different topics, such as postcolonialism and race studies, anti-capitalism, and feminism. Alongside much-anthologized articles like Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, there are more recent articles dealing with topics that are of increasing importance to science fiction studies, such as Kodwo Eshun’s article on Afrofuturism. Each topic is illustrated with key texts in the field and, in the case of contentious topics, with a number of texts offering different sides of critical debates. This approach makes the collection a very welcome addition to the bookshelves of scholars and students alike who will find it extraordinarily helpful to have such a range of critical interventions in one volume.
