Understand Video Games as Works of Science Fiction and Interactive Stories Science Fiction Video Games focuses on games that are part of the science fiction genre, rather than set in magical milieux or exaggerated versions of our own world. Unlike many existing books and websites that cover some of the same material, this book emphasizes critical a

 As video gaming and gaming culture became more mainstream in the 1970s, science fiction authors began to incorporate aspects of each into their work. This study examines how media-fueled paranoia about video gaming—first emerging almost fifty years ago—still resonates in modern science fiction. The author reveals how negative stereotypes of gamers and gaming have endured in depictions of modern gamers in the media and how honest portrayals are still wanting, even in the “forward thinking” world of science fiction.

This book provides students and other interested readers with a comprehensive survey of science fiction history and numerous essays addressing major science fiction topics, authors, works, and subgenres written by a distinguished scholar. This encyclopedia deals with written science fiction in all of its forms, not only novels and short stories but also mediums often ignored in other reference books, such as plays, poems, comic books, and graphic novels. Some science fiction films, television programs, and video games are also mentioned, particularly when they are relevant to written texts. Its focus is on science fiction in the English language, though due attention is given to international authors whose works have been frequently translated into English. Since science fiction became a recognized genre and greatly expanded in the 20th century, works published in the 20th and 21st centuries are most frequently discussed, though important earlier works are not neglected. The texts are designed to be helpful to numerous readers, ranging from students first encountering science fiction to experienced scholars in the field.

Science Fiction Hobby Games serves as a history and guide to tabletop gaming franchises set in original science-fictional milieux. Its subject is the pen and paper role playing games and model and counter based wargames that preceded modern videogames and still evolve alongside them, as well as the gamebooks, board games, card games and postal games that are their less famous cousins. Included are detailed critical overviews of more than a hundred fantastical universes published between 1969 and 2013, along with essays on popular types of tabletop game and the natures of their settings and stories. Throughout, sf games are treated as an integral part of the long history of science fiction, and as a new way of enabling its explorations of the future and other worlds. Based on the author's contributions to the Hugo Award winning third edition of the Clute and Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, this book contains an extra 20,000 words on additional games and other topics, specially written for this new version of the text.

The World is Born From Zero is an investigation into the relationship between video games and science fiction through the philosophy of speculation. Cameron Kunzelman argues that the video game medium is centered on the evaluation and production of possible futures by following video game studies, media philosophy, and science fiction studies to their furthest reaches. Claiming that the best way to understand games is through rigorous formal analysis of their aesthetic strategies and the cultural context those strategies emerge from, Kunzelman investigates a diverse array of games like The Last of Us, VA-11 Hall-A, and Civilization VI in order to explore what science fiction video games can tell us about their genres, their ways of speculating, and how the medium of the video game does (or does not) direct us down experiential pathways that are both oppressive and liberatory. Taking a multidisciplinary look at these games, The World is Born From Zero offers a unique theorization of science fiction games that provides both science fiction studies and video game studies with new tools for thinking how this medium and mode inform each other.