Scotland as Science FictionOut of the mainstream but ahead of the tide, that is Scottish Science Fiction. Science Fiction emphasizes “progress” through technology, advanced mental states, or future times. How does Scotland, often considered a land of the past, lead in Science Fiction? “Left behind” by international politics, Scots have cultivated alternate places and different times as sites of identity so that Scotland can seem a futuristic fiction itself. This book explores the tensions between science and a particular society that produce an innovative science fiction. Essays consider Scottish thermodynamics, Celtic myth, the rigors of religious “conversion,” Scotland’s fractured politics yet civil society, its languages of alterity (Scots, Gaelic, allegory, poetry), and the lure of the future. From Peter Pan and Dr. Jekyll to the poetry of Edwin Morgan and the worlds of Muriel Spark, Ken Macleod, or Iain M. Banks, Scotland’s creative complex yields a literature that models the future for Science Fiction. |
Contents
Energy Transformation in MacDonald Stevenson Barrie and Spark | |
Didactic Fantasy from MacDonald and Lindsay to J Leslie Mitchell | |
Grays Lanark and Lindsays A Voyage to Arcturus | |
Stands Scotland Where it Did? in the Culture of Iain M Banks | |
Ken MacLeods Engines of Light | |
The Cosmic CosmoPolis in Naomi Mitchisons Science Fiction Novels | |
Margaret Elphinstones The Incomer and A Sparrows Flight | |
Matthew Fitt and Iain M Banks | |
Geddes MacDiarmid and Morgans A Home in Space | |
Science Fiction without Stereotypes in Fitt and Crumey | |
Alba Newton and Alasdair Gray | |
About the Editor and Contributors | |
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