This paper draws on the letters and messages and newspaper clipping held by the BBC Written Archives Centre in relation to the 1954 adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four as a case study for considering how we understand the historical reception of programming. This production is particularly useful in this regard because it achieved a certain…[Read more]

This chapter asks whether science fiction (SF) has a predisposition to a particular ethical orientation. Rather than seek a single answer to this question of SF’s ethics, Kendal examines two classic SF texts and the traditions they represent: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (1951–1953), one of the most iconic series of SF’s American “golden…[Read more]

Depending on Stephen R. Donaldson’s use of genre, whether science fiction or fantasy, it modifies his essential humanism. In his science fiction, Donaldson accept a more socially embedded humanity. In his fantasy, he leans towards an interiority that is independent of social context.

Although Poul Anderson is best known for his prose, he dabbled in poetry all his life, and his historical interests led him to become a major—if unacknowledged—contributor to the twentieth-century alliterative revival. This revival, most often associated with British poets such as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis, attempted to ada…[Read more]

Although alliterative poetry—a medieval Germanic meter based on similar-sounding initial stressed syllables—first flourished in Old English and Old Norse literature, a resurgence of the meter has appeared within the twentieth century. The most famous modern practitioners have been J. R. R. Tolkien, Ezra Pound, and W. H. Auden, but a wholly neg…[Read more]

This paper examines the responses to the 1954 BBC adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, as held by the BBC Written Archives Centre, in the light of the British Horror Comics campaign of the mid-1950s.

As Prof. Dale Townsend has observed, the concept of the Gothic has had an association with fairies from its inception; even before Walpole’s 1764 Castle of Otranto (considered the first Gothic novel), eighteenth-century poetics talked of ‘the fairy kind of writing’ which, for Addison, ‘raise a pleasing kind of Horrour in the Mind of the Reader’…[Read more]

While there has been a growing acknowledgement of the existence of earlier examples of television science fiction, the typical history of the genre still privileges Nigel Kneale’s The Quatermass Experiment (1953) as foundational. This was a significant production, and an effective piece of television drama, but it was not the first piece of B…[Read more]

Tras el análisis de las tres novelas que Carlos Gardini publica en este siglo, se observa que la característica formal más notable es una trama concebida para conducir a un instante de revelación plena sobre el mundo, re-conocido ahora en un momento de luminosa anagnórisis. Esta anagnórisis consiste en la comprensión por parte de un protag…[Read more]

En el caso de cierta CF escrita en México, hay una doble invasión: espacial y temporal. Ocurre así, por ejemplo, en La destrucción de todas las cosas (1992), de Hugo Hiriart, y en “La catástrofe” (1984), recogido en La sangre de Medusa de José Emilio Pacheco.211 En estos textos, se emplea un género que se percibe como ajeno para abordar la disloca…[Read more]

No sólo la calidad une Trafalgar y Kalpa Imperial, o el hecho de que cierren un primer periodo de la obra de Gorodischer. En ambos libros la fi gura central es un narrador que relata aventuras y acontecimientos en lo que es, explícita o implícitamente, otro planeta, muchos en Trafalgar, uno solo en Kalpa Imperial. Estos planetas y estos ac…[Read more]

En el capítulo 1 se ofrece un modelo del funcionamiento del género de la ciencia ficción construido desde una cierta mirada del latinoamericanista. El capítulo 2 examina la práctica de la ciencia ficción en América Latina.

La ciencia ficción latinoamericana es, ante todo, ficción latinoamericana. Participa íntegramente de las corrientes culturales y artísticas que nutren la literatura de América Latina, al tiempo que constituye un específi co punto de articulación de éstas. Englobable en la literatura de lo insólito, la ciencia ficción (CF a partir de ahora) es…[Read more]

My purpose in this article is to analyze Bioy’s novel in terms of two concepts from two well-known studies on specters and haunting, and to connect this spectral dimension of the novel to current discussions of the concept of cosmopolitanism. The first idea I will use is Derrida’s njunction that one needs “to learn to live with ghosts” (Specte…[Read more]

You are cordially invited to a special event to celebrate ten years of the Open Graves, Open Minds project and to launch our new book In the Company of Wolves: Werewolves, Wolves and Wild Children.
In the Company of Wolves presents further research from the Open Graves, Open Minds Project. It connects together innovative research from a variety…[Read more]

This essay explores the ecoGothic resonances of Tales of the Black Freighter, a dark
pirate tale embedded within Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1986-87
postmodern DC graphic novel. By providing a grim prism for themes such as nuclear
paranoia, the monstrous transformation of the self, and the horrifying possibilities of
scientific…[Read more]

Because it is all too easy to (accidentally) make assumptions about what first-year students know about language, in 2019-2020 my lit and comp type courses will begin with a segment on language, before moving on to sentences, paragraphs, and essays.

Our exploration of language will start by jumping into a story, to help us identify the 8 parts…[Read more]

The recent popularity of the film version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has renewed interest in this widely read work set in the realm of Middle-earth. A careful study of Tolkien’s work can be used to raise several philosophical questions, particularly in the area of ethics. This course will examine such questions, also considering topics fro…[Read more]

Within the context of an increasingly dystopian sense of global crisis, how can the idea of Utopia help us galvanise political literary readings? This special session will present a roundtable discussion in which panelists consider how we can use utopian methods to understand different kinds of literary texts, reflecting upon the importance of the…[Read more]

Discussing the concept of cultural trauma and its role in popular television dramas such as 24 (FOX 2001-10, 2014-), Battlestar Galactica (Syfy 2004-9), Rubicon (AMC 2010) and Person of Interest (CBS 2011-16), this paper sets out to identify three distinct clusters that are part of what Newcomb and Hirsch once termed a “cultural forum”—a discu…[Read more]