Modernism and Science Fiction

To what extent can the future-oriented narratives of science fiction, emerging alongside modernism during the last years of the nineteenth century, be described as 'modernist'? To what extent did modernism, responding to the scientific and technological breakthroughs of Darwin, Edison and Einstein, draw upon a grammar of ideas and images that we would call 'science fiction'? This book pursues these questions through a wide-ranging series of examples, drawn from literature, film and the visual arts in Britain, Eastern and Western Europe, and the Americas, from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race (1871) to J.G. Ballard's Crash (1973). Individual chapters examine key topics from within this period including scientific romance, utopia, pulp sf, and the New Wave. A coda brings the story up to date with writers such as William Gibson, China Mieville and Kim Stanley Robinson. The book challenges how high and low culture has been mapped in the twentieth century.

Paul March-Russell teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. He is Editor of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction and Commissioning Editor for SF Storyworlds. His previous publications include The Short Story: An Introduction (2009).