James Gunn--one of the founding figures of science fiction scholarship and teaching--wrote in 1951 what is likely the first master's thesis on modern science fiction. Portions were in the short-lived pulp magazine Dynamic but it has otherwise remained unavailable. Here in its first full publication, the thesis explores many of the classic Golden Age stories of the 1940s and the critical perspective that informed Gunn's essential genre history Alternate Worlds and his anthology series The Road to Science Fiction. The editor's introduction and commentary show the historical significance of Gunn's work and its relevance to today's science fiction studies.

The History of Science Fiction traces the origin and development of science fiction from Ancient Greece up to the present day. The author is both an academic literary critic and acclaimed creative writer of the genre. Written in lively, accessible prose it is specifically designed to bridge the worlds of academic criticism and SF fandom.

Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year. This innovative cultural critique offers valuable insights into science fiction, thus enlarging our understanding of critical theory. Carl Freedman traces the fundamental and mostly unexamined relationships between the discourses of science fiction and critical theory, arguing that science fiction is (or ought to be) a privileged genre for critical theory. He asserts that it is no accident that the upsurge of academic interest in science fiction since the 1970s coincides with the heyday of literary theory, and that likewise science fiction is one of the most theoretically informed areas of the literary profession. Extended readings of novels by five of the most important modern science fiction authors illustrate the affinity between science fiction and critical theory, in each case concentrating on one major novel that resonates with concerns proper to critical theory. Freedman's five readings are: Solaris: Stanislaw Lem and the Structure of Cognition; The Dispossessed: Ursula LeGuin and the Ambiguities of Utopia; The Two of Them: Joanna Russ and the Violence of Gender; Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand: Samuel Delany and the Dialectics of Difference; The Man in the High Castle: Philip K. Dick and the Construction of Realities.

No descriptive material is available for this title.

Through case studies, other contributors relate science fiction to other forms of "underground" literature, consider the continual cycle of illegitimate art replacing legitimate art, look at young readers of science fiction, chart the rising and falling "stock" of science fiction writers' reputations, and consider the influence of editors on a writer's work.

Essays by John W. Campbell, Jr., Anthony Boucher, Don Fabun, Fletcher Pratt, Rosalie Moore, L. Sprague de Camp, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip Wylie, Gerald Heard, and Reginald Bretnor. The original 1953 edition was the first serious discussion of modern science fiction as literature. The San Francisco Chronicle said: "The book is very likely to recruit a whole host of new readers. . . A freely argued, objective, highly individualistic study by ten writers of the origins, advances and future prospects of science fiction as a spontaneous living literature." The essays are grouped in three sections: "Science Fiction Today," "Science Fiction as Literature," and "Science Fiction, Science, and Modern Man." This classic symposium is a fit companion to Mr. Bretnor's later books Science Fiction, Today and Tomorrow and The Craft of Science Fiction. Our new edition adds a preface by the editor, a chapter of notes and corrections, and a complete index.