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

(Hardback)

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This collection of 20 essays originally presented at the 11th 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.

Reviews

As a critical collection about fantasy this collection belongs on every fiction authors reading list. It proposes some important views about practice and levels of believability. Recommended for libraries.-Reader's Review
"As a critical collection about fantasy this collection belongs on every fiction authors reading list. It proposes some important views about practice and levels of believability. Recommended for libraries."-Reader's Review

Author Bio

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.