Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition, and the Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia

by Patrick Parrinder (Editor)

The title of this volume attempts to convey the essence of 'cognitive estrangement' in relation to SF and utopia: that by imagining strange worlds we learn to see our own world in a new perspective. The cognitive and political dimension of science-fictional estrangement raises the perennial question, debated or touched upon in most essays in the book, of the relationship between imaginative invention and allegory or fable.

Genres: Science Fiction, Utopia

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Patrick Parrinder took his MA and Ph.D. at Cambridge University, where he held a Fellowship at King's College and published his first two books on Wells, H. G. Wells (1970) and H. G. Wells: The Critical Heritage (1972). He has been Chairman of the H. G. Wells Society and editor of The Wellsian, and has also written on James Joyce, science fiction, literary criticism and the history of the English novel. His book Shadows of the Future (1995) brings together his interests in Wells, science fiction and literary prophecy. Since 1986 he has been Professor of English at the University of Reading.

Reviews

[Sarah Nolan]

Read only the sections I needed to so I can’t very well rate the book as a whole—but I do have to note yet again my disappointment that there is only one chapter by a female critique in the collection. Love that trend among SF critical texts. I did find Parrinder’s introduction valuable, though, and I’m sure that work will inflect some of my own.