State of the Fantastic: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Fantastic Literature and Film

Nicholas Ruddick

Bloomsbury Academic, Jul 22, 1992 - Literary Criticism - 210 pages

This collection of twenty essays originally presented at the Eleventh International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts contains five parts: on fantasists and their work, contemporary fantastic theory and practice, studies in the British and European fantastic, studies in American fantasy and science fiction, and sex and techno-horror in fantastic literature and film.

What all the essays here have in common is that their authors are all aware of the tremendous latent power, for good and ill, of the fantastic text. We are given timely reminders of the dangers, as well as the appeal, of elves and how narrators in fantastic fictions take advantage of our desire to be part of a narrative community. We learn how some contemporary fantasists assimilate literary and scientific theory, while others seem in their fiction to require a new sociology to account for it.

Contents

• Fantasy and the Narrative Transaction: 15
• Postmodern Allegory: 29
• Some Instances of Gnostic Science Fiction: 49

About the author

NICHOLAS RUDDICK is Associate Professor of English at the University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. He has two books forthcoming from Greenwood Press: Ultimate Island: On the Nature of British Science Fiction and British Science Fiction: A Chronology.

Bibliographic information

• Title: State of the Fantastic: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Fantastic Literature and Film; Issue 50 of Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy, ISSN 0193-6875
• Editor: Nicholas Ruddick
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 1992
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: Mar 26, 2008
• ISBN: 0313278539, 9780313278532
• Length: 210 pages
• Subjects: Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / Science Fiction & Fantasy