Science Fiction

What would you do if someone you trusted asked you to believe what you thought was impossible? When high school science teacher and pragmatic realist Mark is inexplicably drawn to renting a cheesy sc-fi flick, it sets in motion a chain of events that makes him rethink everything he has ever believed. After a hysterical breakdown while watching the movie, he reveals to Sue, his longtime girlfriend, that he suddenly remembers being abducted as a child... by aliens. He becomes obsessed with alien-abduction chat rooms and stops leaving the house. As Mark becomes more heavily immersed in his inner world, their relationship slowly disintegrates. All he wants is for her to believe him. But how can she believe him, when it's just science fiction after all? Joe Ollmann, winner of a Doug Wright Award, has created another page-turner of a graphic novel - a book that is not science fiction, but at the same time asks us to believe.

What would you do if someone you trusted asked you to believe what you thought was impossible? When high school science teacher and pragmatic realist Mark is inexplicably drawn to renting a cheesy sc-fi flick, it sets in motion a chain of events that makes him rethink everything he has ever believed. After a hysterical breakdown while watching the movie, he reveals to Sue, his longtime girlfriend, that he suddenly remembers being abducted as a child... by aliens. He becomes obsessed with alien-abduction chat rooms and stops leaving the house. As Mark becomes more heavily immersed in his inner world, their relationship slowly disintegrates. All he wants is for her to believe him. But how can she believe him, when it's just science fiction after all? Joe Ollmann, winner of a Doug Wright Award, has created another page-turner of a graphic novel - a book that is not science fiction, but at the same time asks us to believe.

The world today seems to be slipping into a science fiction future. We have phones that speak to us, cars that drive themselves, and connected devices that communicate with each other in languages we don't understand. Depending the news of the day, we inhabit either a technological utopia or Brave New World nightmare. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge surveys the uses of science fiction. It focuses on what is at the core of all definitions of science fiction- a vision of the world made otherwise and what possibilities might flow from such otherness.

The world today seems to be slipping into a science fiction future. We have phones that speak to us, cars that drive themselves, and connected devices that communicate with each other in languages we don't understand. Depending the news of the day, we inhabit either a technological utopia or Brave New World nightmare. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge surveys the uses of science fiction. It focuses on what is at the core of all definitions of science fiction- a vision of the world made otherwise and what possibilities might flow from such otherness.

From its beginnings in the works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne to the virtual worlds of William Gibson's Neuromancer and The Matrix, Science Fiction: A Guide to the Perplexed helps students navigate the often perplexing worlds of a perennially popular genre. Drawing on literature as well as example from film and television, the book explores the different answers that criticism has offered to the vexed question, 'what is science fiction?' Each chapter of the book includes case studies of key texts, annotated guides to further reading and suggestions for class discussion to help students master the full range of contemporary critical approaches to the field, including the scientific, technological and political contexts in which the genre has flourished. Ranging from an understanding of the genre through the stereotypes of 1930s pulps through more recent claims that we are living in a science fictional moment, this volume will provide a comprehensive overview of this diverse and fascinating genre.

From its beginnings in the works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne to the virtual worlds of William Gibson's Neuromancer and The Matrix, Science Fiction: A Guide to the Perplexed helps students navigate the often perplexing worlds of a perennially popular genre. Drawing on literature as well as example from film and television, the book explores the different answers that criticism has offered to the vexed question, 'what is science fiction?' Each chapter of the book includes case studies of key texts, annotated guides to further reading and suggestions for class discussion to help students master the full range of contemporary critical approaches to the field, including the scientific, technological and political contexts in which the genre has flourished. Ranging from an understanding of the genre through the stereotypes of 1930s pulps through more recent claims that we are living in a science fictional moment, this volume will provide a comprehensive overview of this diverse and fascinating genre.