Star Warriors of the Modern Raj

Star Warriors of the Modern Raj
Author: Sami Ahmad Khan
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2021-06-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1786837633

India is mutating – and its Science Fiction with it. Star Warriors of the Modern Raj is a critical catalogue of contemporary India’s anglophone SF, a path-breaking work that flits between texts, vantage points and frameworks. An alternative to a Eurocentric perspective of SF, this study avoids essentialising definitions and delves into how the world of SF (text) intersects with that of the writer/reader. Fusing paradigms of Science Fiction Studies, South Asian Studies and Postcolonial Studies, among others, the book explicates how India and its SF negotiate one another. It evolves a ‘transMIT thesis’ to analyse how mythology (M), ideology (I) and technology (T) contour Indian SF and its fictional reimaginings. This study identifies the manifestations of divine beings within SF as differing epistemological categories, locates the modes of marginalisation within Indian popular imagination as altars of alterity, before proceeding to analyse how newer technologies engage with socio-political anxieties in and through SF. Interested in learning about Science Fiction and South Asia? Click on the link below to read Mithila Review interview with Sami Ahmad Khan where he discusses his upcoming volume Star Warriors of the Modern Raj. https://mithilareview.com/ahmad_03_21/

Star Warriors of the Modern Raj Hb

Star Warriors of the Modern Raj Hb
Author: KHAN
Publisher:
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-06-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9781786837622

A path-breaking study of India's Science Fiction, which investigates how mythology, ideology and technology shape contemporary SF.

Indian Science Fiction

Indian Science Fiction
Author: Suparno Banerjee
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2020-10-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 178683667X

This study draws from postcolonial theory, science fiction criticism, utopian studies, genre theory, Western and Indian philosophy and history to propose that Indian science fiction functions at the intersection of Indian and Western cultures. The author deploys a diachronic and comparative approach in examining the multilingual science fiction traditions of India to trace the overarching generic evolutions, which he complements with an analysis of specific patterns of hybridity in the genre’s formal and thematic elements – time, space, characters and the epistemologies that build the worlds in Indian science fiction. The work explores the larger patterns and connections visible despite the linguistic and cultural diversities of Indian science fiction traditions.

Warrior Race

Warrior Race
Author: Lawrence James
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 582
Release: 2007-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1429975822

Modern Britain is a nation shaped by wars. The boundaries of its separate parts are the outcome of conquest and resistance. The essence of its identity are the warrior heroes, both real and imagined, who still capture the national imagination: from Boadicea to King Arthur, Rob Roy to Henry V, the Duke of Wellington to Winston Churchill. It is a sense of identity that grew under careful cultivation during the global struggles of the eighteenth century, and found its most powerful expression during the world wars of the twentieth. In Warrior Race, Lawrence James investigates the role played by war in the making of Britain. Drawing on the latest historical and archaeological research, as well as numerous unfamiliar and untapped resources, he charts the full reach of British military history: the physical and psychological impact of Roman military occupation; the monarchy's struggle for mastery of the British Isles; the civil wars of the seventeenth century; the "total war" experience of twentieth-century conflict. But Warrior Race is more than just a compelling historical narrative. Lawrence James skillfully pulls together the momentous themes of his subject. He discusses how war has continually been a catalyst for social and political change, the rise, survival, and reinvention of chivalry, the literary quest for a British epic, the concept of birth and breeding as the qualifications for command in war, and the issues of patriotism and Britain's antiwar tradition. Warrior Race is popular history at its very best: incisive, informative, and accessible; immaculately researched and hugely readable. Balancing the broad sweep of history with an acute attention to detail, Lawrence James never loses sight of this most fascinating and enduring of subjects: the question of British national identity and character.

The New Routledge Companion to Science Fiction

The New Routledge Companion to Science Fiction
Author: Mark Bould
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2024-06-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1040042953

The New Routledge Companion to Science Fiction provides an overview of the study of science fiction across multiple academic fields. It offers a new conceptualisation of the field today, marking the significant changes that have taken place in sf studies over the past 15 years. Building on the pioneering research in the first edition, the collection reorganises historical coverage of the genre to emphasise new geographical areas of cultural production and the growing importance of media beyond print. It also updates and expands the range of frameworks that are relevant to the study of science fiction. The periodisation has been reframed to include new chapters focusing on science fiction produced outside the Anglophone context, including South Asian, Latin American, Chinese and African diasporic science fiction. The contributors use both well- established critical and theoretical approaches and embrace a range of new ones, including biopolitics, climate crisis, critical ethnic studies, disability studies, energy humanities, game studies, medical humanities, new materialisms and sonic studies. This book is an invaluable resource for students and established scholars seeking to understand the vast range of engagements with science fiction in scholarship today.

Arab and Muslim Science Fiction

Arab and Muslim Science Fiction
Author: Hosam A. Ibrahim Elzembely
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2022-03-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1476685231

How is science fiction from the Arab and Muslim world different than mainstream science fiction from the West? What distinctive and original contributions can it make? Why is it so often neglected in critical considerations of the genre? While other books have explored these questions, all have been from foreign academic voices. Instead, this book examines the nature, genesis, and history of Arabic and Muslim science fiction, as well as the challenges faced by its authors, in the authors' own words. These authors share their stories and struggles with censors, recalcitrant publishers, critics, the book market, and the literary establishment. Their uphill efforts, with critical contributions from academics, translators, and literary activists, will enlighten the sci-fi enthusiast and fill a gap in the history of science fiction. Topics covered range from culture shock to conflicts between tradition and modernity, proactive roles for female heroines, blind imitation of storytelling techniques, and language games.

Worlds Ending. Ending Worlds

Worlds Ending. Ending Worlds
Author: David Eisler, Jenny Stümer, Michael Dunn
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2023-12-04
Genre:
ISBN: 3110787075

Uneven Futures

Uneven Futures
Author: Ida Yoshinaga
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2022-12-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0262370166

Essays on speculative/science fiction explore the futures that feed our most cherished fantasies and terrifying nightmares, while helping diverse communities devise new survival strategies for a tough millennium. The explosion in speculative/science fiction (SF) across different media from the late twentieth century to the present has compelled those in the field of SF studies to rethink the community’s identity, orientation, and stakes. In this edited collection, more than forty writers, critics, game designers, scholars, and activists explore core SF texts, with an eye toward a future in which corporations dominate both the means of production and the means of distribution and governments rely on powerful surveillance and carceral technologies. The essays, international in scope, demonstrate the diversity of SF through a balance of popular mass-market novels, comics, films, games, TV shows, creepypastas, and more niche works. SF works explored range from Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi, 2084: The End of the World by Boualem Sansal, Terra Nullius by Claire Coleman, Watchmen and X-Men comics, and the Marvel film Captain America: The Winter Soldier, to the MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin, and the Wormwood trilogy by Tade Thompson. In an era in which ecological disaster and global pandemics regularly expose and intensify deep political-economic inequalities, what futures has SF anticipated? What survival strategies has it provided us? Can it help us to deal with, and grow beyond, the inequalities and injustices of our times? Unlike other books of speculative/science fiction criticism, Uneven Futures uses a think piece format to make its critical insights engaging to a wide audience. The essays inspire visions of better possible futures—drawing on feminist, queer, and global speculative engagements with Indigenous, Latinx, and Afro- and African futurisms—while imparting important lessons for political organizing in the present. Contributors: Ben Abraham, Emmet Asher-Perrin, Brent Ryan Bellamy, Gerry Canavan, Andrew Ferguson, Fabio Fernandes, Dexter Gabriel, M. Elizabeth Ginway, Sean Guynes, Ouissal Harize, David M. Higgins, Veronica Hollinger, Allanah Hunt, Nicola Hunte, Nathaniel Isaacson, Ayana Jamieson, Darshana Jayemanne, Gwyneth Jones, Brendan Keogh, Sami Ahmad Khan, Cameron Kunzelman, Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada, Isiah Lavender III, Caryn Lesuma, Karen Lord, Sarah Marrs, Farah Mendlesohn, Cathryn Merla-Watson, Hugh Charles O’Connell, B. Pladek, John Rieder, Lysa Rivera, Kim Stanley Robinson, Steven Shaviro, Rebekah Sheldon, Alison Sperling, Alfredo Suppia, Bogi Takács, Taryne Jade Taylor, Sherryl Vint, Kirin Wachter-Grene, Ida Yoshinaga.

Science Fiction in India

Science Fiction in India
Author:
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2022-05-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9354351697

Nominated, 2023 Teaching Literature Book Award Indian Science Fiction has evolved over the years and can be seen making a mark for itself on the global scene. Dalit speculative fiction writer and editor Mimi Mondal is the first SF writer from India to have been nominated for the prestigious Hugo award. In fact, Indian SF addresses themes such as global climate change. Debates around G.C.C are not just limited to science fiction but also permeate in critical discussions on SF. This volume seeks to examine the different ways by which Indian SF narratives construct possible national futures. For this looking forward necessarily germinates from the current positional concerns of the nation. While some work has been done on Indian SF, there is still a perceptible lack of an academic rigor invested into the genre; primarily, perhaps, because of not only its relative unpopularity in India, but also its employment of futuristic sights. Towards the same, among other things, it proposes to study the growth and evolution of science fiction in India as a literary genre which accommodates the duality of the national consciousness as it simultaneously gazes ahead towards the future and glances back at the past. In other words, the book will explore how the tensions generated by the seemingly conflicting forces of tradition and modernity within the Indian historical landscape are realized through characteristic tropes of SF storytelling. It also intends to look at the interplay between the spatio-temporal coordinates of the nation and the SF narratives produced within to see, firstly, how one bears upon the other and, secondly, how processes of governance find relational structures with such narratives. Through these, the volume wishes to interrogate how postcolonial futures promise to articulate a more representative and nuanced picture of a contemporary reality that is rooted in a distinct cultural and colonial past.