Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Translations
- Introduction
- Part I The Great Discourse on the Future
- 1 Utopians and Utopian Thought
- 2 Futurists and Futures Studies
- 3 Utopian/Dystopian Writers and Utopian/Dystopian Fiction
- 4 Science Fiction: The Nexus of Utopianism, Futurism, and Utopian Fiction
- Part II German Science Fiction in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 5 Some Preliminary Thoughts on German Science Fiction
- 6 First Contact: Martians, Sentient Plants, and Swarm Intelligences
- 7 The Shock of the New: Mega Cities, Machines, and Rockets
- 8 Utopian Experiments: Island Idylls, Glass Beads, and Eugenic Nightmares
- 9 To the Stars! Cosmic Supermen and Bauhaus in Space
- 10 Visions of the End: Catastrophism and Moral Entropy
- 11 Virtual Realities: Caught in the Matrix
- 12 Alternative Histories: Into the Heart of Darkness
- 13 Big Brother Is Watching Us: Who Is Watching Big Brother?
- 14 Artificial Intelligences: The Rise of the Thinking Machines
- 15 Eternal Life: At What Cost?
- 16 Social Satires: Of Empty Slogans and Empty Hearts
- 17 Critical Posthumanism: Twilight of the Species or a New Dawn?
- 18 High Concept: Time, the Universe, and Everything
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Chronological List of German SF Novels—A Selection
- Appendix 2 Chronological List of German SF Films—A Selection
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Science Fiction: The Nexus of Utopianism, Futurism, and Utopian Fiction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Translations
- Introduction
- Part I The Great Discourse on the Future
- 1 Utopians and Utopian Thought
- 2 Futurists and Futures Studies
- 3 Utopian/Dystopian Writers and Utopian/Dystopian Fiction
- 4 Science Fiction: The Nexus of Utopianism, Futurism, and Utopian Fiction
- Part II German Science Fiction in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 5 Some Preliminary Thoughts on German Science Fiction
- 6 First Contact: Martians, Sentient Plants, and Swarm Intelligences
- 7 The Shock of the New: Mega Cities, Machines, and Rockets
- 8 Utopian Experiments: Island Idylls, Glass Beads, and Eugenic Nightmares
- 9 To the Stars! Cosmic Supermen and Bauhaus in Space
- 10 Visions of the End: Catastrophism and Moral Entropy
- 11 Virtual Realities: Caught in the Matrix
- 12 Alternative Histories: Into the Heart of Darkness
- 13 Big Brother Is Watching Us: Who Is Watching Big Brother?
- 14 Artificial Intelligences: The Rise of the Thinking Machines
- 15 Eternal Life: At What Cost?
- 16 Social Satires: Of Empty Slogans and Empty Hearts
- 17 Critical Posthumanism: Twilight of the Species or a New Dawn?
- 18 High Concept: Time, the Universe, and Everything
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Chronological List of German SF Novels—A Selection
- Appendix 2 Chronological List of German SF Films—A Selection
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
THE TASK OF DEFINING what SF might be has exercised scholars for generations, and it has not produced definitive answers. Much depends on a given author's or critic's attitude to speculative fiction and the fantastic. Many literary scholars are perfectly happy to seriously engage with “realistic” fictions (realism), but they react allergically to SF, even though both types of writing require a willingness to suspend disbelief. Both can be read for entertainment, for aesthetic pleasure, for information about the world, and for insight into the human condition. The worst accusation leveled at SF is that it is escapist, that it detracts from the seriousness of the real world. I agree with Tom Moylan, who declared:
Indeed, the infamous “escapism” attributed to sf does not necessarily mean a debilitating escape from reality because it can also lead to an empowering escape to a very different way of thinking about, and possibly of being in, the world.
SF is well known for its ability to shrug off the tethers of theory, its practitioners never being happier than when confounding prescriptive categorizations of their work. And yet, in order to gain some firm ground for this study, and to identify the distinctiveness of German SF, it is necessary to briefly rehearse the development of SF theory. Tellingly, anglophone studies on SF have tended to ignore SF texts or films not produced in the United Kingdom or the United States, contending that both its key progenitors (H. G. Wells in Britain) and its early formative years (the pulps in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s) created a distinct genre with an Anglo-American label, while conveniently ignoring Jules Verne and Kurd Laßwitz, the respective “fathers” of SF in France and Germany. To be sure, there is a certain hegemonial pride with which Edward James speaks of “The Victory of American Science Fiction” or when American SF writer James Gunn declares:
To consider Science Fiction in countries other than the United States, one must start from these shores. American Science Fiction is the base line against which all the other fantastic literatures other than English must be measured. That is because SF, as informed readers recognize it today, began in New York City in 1926.
Anglophone Science Fiction theory has developed significantly in the last four decades but, it should be stressed, it depends almost entirely on a canon of anglophone texts. And yet, some of its conclusions are so general that they can be universally applied.
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- Information
- Beyond TomorrowGerman Science Fiction and Utopian Thought in the 20th and 21st Centuries, pp. 61 - 74Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2020