Science Fiction Literary Criticism

The tales of The Silmarillion are set in an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels containing the pure light of Valinor. Included on the recording are several shorter works. The Ainulindalë is a myth of the Creation and in the Valaquenta the nature and powers of each of the gods is described. The Akallabêth recounts the downfall of the great island kingdom of Númenor at the end of the Second Age, and Of the Rings of Power tells of the great events at the end of the Third Age.

Poststructuralism changes the way we understand the relations between human beings, their culture, and the world. Following a brief account of the historical relationship between structuralism and poststructuralism, this Very Short Introduction traces the key arguments that have led poststructuralists to challenge traditional theories of language and culture.

There's more to writing a successful fantasy story than building a unique world or inventing a new type of magic. From the writing of strong, action-packed scenes to the creation of dynamic, multi-dimensional characters, fantasy author Deborah Chester guides novices and intermediate writers through a step-by-step process of story construction. Whether offering tips on how to test a plot premise or survive what she calls the dark dismal middle, Chester shares the techniques she uses in writing her own novels.

An astonishing work of cultural criticism, this book is widely recognized as a brilliant and devastating challenge to conventional views of literature, anthropology, religion, and psychoanalysis. In its scope and interest it can be compared with Freud's Totem and Taboo, the subtext Girard refutes with polemic daring, vast erudition, and a persuasiveness that leaves the listener compelled to respond, one way or another. This is the single fullest summation of Girard's ideas to date, the book by which they will stand or fall.

In Bodyminds Reimagined Sami Schalk traces how Black women's speculative fiction complicates the understanding of bodyminds - the intertwinement of the mental and the physical - in the context of race, gender, and (dis)ability. Bridging Black feminist theory with disability studies, Schalk demonstrates that this genre's political potential lies in the authors' creation of bodyminds that transcend reality's limitations.

Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers' experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr's own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told - and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.)

Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection - a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades.

Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age is an edited volume of eight essays that look at how the cinematic versions of the seven Harry Potter novels represent an unprecedented cultural event in the history of cinematic adaptation.

Although humankind today can peer far deeper into the universe than ever before, we still find ourselves surrounded by the unknown and perhaps the unknowable. All great science fiction has used the human imagination to explore that realm beyond the known, just as theistic religions have done since long before the genre existed. As Hugo Award-winning author Robert Charles Wilson argues, the genre’s freewheeling speculation and systematic world-building make it a unique lens for understanding, examining, and assessing the truth claims of religions in general and Christianity in particular.

Le Guin’s sharp and witty voice is on full display in this collection of twenty-four essays, revised by the author a decade after its initial publication in 1979. The collection covers a wide range of topics and Le Guin’s origins as a writer, her advocacy for science fiction and fantasy as mediums for true literary exploration, the writing of her own major works such as A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, and her role as a public intellectual and educator.

Questions of what happens after death were vital in Shakespeare's time, as it is today. And, like today, the answers were by no means universally agreed upon. Exploring how particular texts and characters answer these questions, Shakespeare and the Afterlife showcases the vitality and originality of the author's language and thinking. We encounter characters with very personal visions of what awaits them after death, and these visions reveal new insights into these individuals' motivations and concerns as they navigate the world of the living.

In The Genius of Judy, her remarkable story is revealed as never before, beginning with her as a mother of two searching for purpose outside of her home in 1960s suburban New Jersey. The books she wrote starred regular children with genuine thoughts and problems. But behind those deceptively simple tales, Blume explored the pillars of the growing women’s rights movement, in which girls and women were entitled to careers, bodily autonomy, fulfilling relationships, and even sexual pleasure.

One treat a day! A 23-volume series of 365 treats: stories, facts, questions and answers, and science experiments for young listeners.

Bordertown: a city on the Border between the human world and the elfin realm. A place where neither magic nor technology can be counted on, where elf and human kids run away to find themselves…. Here are 13 interconnected stories and eight poems - all new work by some of today's best urban fantasy, fantasy, and slipstream writers.

More than two centuries after his birth, Ralph Waldo Emerson remains one of the presiding spirits in American culture. Yet his reputation as the starry-eyed prophet of self-reliance has obscured a much more complicated figure who spent a lifetime wrestling with injustice, philosophy, art, desire, and suffering. James Marcus introduces listeners to this Emerson, a writer of self-interrogating genius whose visionary flights are always grounded in Yankee shrewdness.

George Orwell devoted his career to exposing social injustice and political duplicity, urging his readers to face hard truths about Western society and politics. Now, the uncanny parallels between the interwar era and our own-rising inequality, censorship, and challenges to traditional social hierarchies—make his writing even more of the moment. In Orwell's Ghosts, historian Laura Beers considers Orwell's full body of work—his six novels, three nonfiction works, as well as his brilliant essays—to examine what "Orwellian" means and to take it out of the hands of political pundits.

Go deeper into the home of the Hunger Games with the creator of the best-known fan map of Panem. The Panem Companion gives fresh insight into Suzanne Collins’ trilogy by looking at the world of the Hunger Games and the forces that kept its citizens divided since the First Rebellion. With a blend of academic insight and true fan passion, V. Arrow explores how Panem could have evolved from the America we know today and uses textual clues to piece together Panem’s beliefs about class, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, and more.

Joan Didion es una de las cronistas fundamentales de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. En una edición a cargo de Claudio López de Lamadrid, Los que sueñan el sueño dorado reúne por primera vez en castellano una selección de artículos y ensayos de sus libros.

The End of the End of the Earth is a collection of Jonathan Franzen's essays and speeches from the past five years, in which he grapples with the most important and heated ethical subjects of the day: environmentalism, capitalism, wealth inequality, race, technology, and the role of art. He challenges us to ask difficult questions: What is our civic responsibility in the face of climate change, the greatest ever threat to our planet and species? Does technology give us a sense of control or community or is it stripping these from us?

Moby-Dick as Philosophy is at base a chapter-by-chapter commentary on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The commentary form of the audiobook subserves a higher end, the presentation of an ideal of the type "philosopher". Superimposing portraits of Plato, Melville, and Nietzsche - the thinkers themselves, their ideas, and their lives - it generates a composite image from the overlaying and interblending of figures. At a higher level still, the audiobook is a meditation on the nature of philosophy and its relation to wisdom and the relation of creative artistry to both.