Hard Reading
Learning from Science Fiction
Author(s)
Shippey, Tom
Collection
Knowledge Unlatched (KU)Number
102608Language
EnglishAbstract
The fifteen essays collected in Hard Reading argue that science fiction has its own internal rhetoric, relying on devices such as neologism, dialogism, semantic shifts, the use of unreliable narrators. It is a “high-information” genre which does not follow the Flaubertian ideal of le mot juste, “the right word”, preferring le mot imprévisible, “the unpredictable word”. Science fiction derives much of its energy from engagement with vital intellectual issues in the “soft sciences”, especially history, anthropology, the study of different cultures, with a strong bearing on politics. Both the rhetoric and the issues deserve to be taken much more seriously than they have been in academia, and in the wider world.
Hard Reading is also a memoir of what it was like to be a committed fan, from teenage years, and also an academic struggling to find a place, at a time when a declared interest in science fiction and fantasy was the kiss of death for a career in the humanities.
Keywords
Literature; literary studies; science fictionDOI
10.5949/liverpool/9781781382615.001.0001ISBN
9781781384398OCN
1100490178Publisher
Liverpool University PressPublisher website
https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/Publication date and place
Liverpool, 2016-02-23Series
Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies,Classification
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000