Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Reading Science: SF and the Uses of Literature

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Palgrave Handbook of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature and Science

Part of the book series: Palgrave Handbooks of Literature and Science ((PAHALISC))

  • 850 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter pulls together theoretical and epistemological resources for thinking about science fiction (SF) as a site of contemporary engagement with technoscience. SF can be read as a method for tracing popular constructions of science’s stories about collective futures. But just as importantly SF can function as a site at which to examine how publics critically engage with scientific ideas through narrative. In this chapter, we also set out concepts and methods for exploring what SF readers do with science and its futures through critical, creative reading. We supplement and challenge the tendency of studies of science and literature to focus on the science in literature by considering how readers navigate narrative and science together through the social act of reading.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 189.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 249.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 249.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Bibliography

  • Broderick, Damien. 1995. Reading by Starlight: Post-Modern Science Fiction. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • brown, adrienne maree, and Walidah Imarisha (eds.). 2015. Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Chico, CA: AK Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan. 2008. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delany, Samuel R. 1980. Generic Protocols: Science Fiction and Mundane. In The Technological Imagination: Theories and Fiction, ed. Teresa de Lauretis, Andreas Huyssen, and Kathleen Woodward, 175–193. Madison, WI: Coda Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dincher, Andrew. 2017. On the Origins of Solarpunk. In Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation, ed. Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland, 7–9. Nashville, TN: Upper Rubber Boot Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fayter, Paul. 1997. Strange New Worlds of Space and Time: Late Victorian Science and Science Fiction. In Victorian Science in Context, ed. Bernard Lightman, 256–280. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Felski, Rita. 2008. Uses of Literature. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Freedman, Carl. 2000. Critical Theory and Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fuller, Danielle, and DeNel Rehberg Sedo. 2013. Reading Beyond the Book: The Social Practices of Contemporary Literary Culture. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2014. “And Then We Went to the Brewery”: Reading as a Social Activity in a Digital Era. World Literature Today 88 (3–4): 14–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gruzd, Anatoly, and DeNel Rehberg Sedo. 2012. #1b1t: Investigating Reading Practices at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Mémoires du livre/Studies in Book Culture 3 (2): n.p. http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1009347ar. Accessed 28 July 2018.

  • Guillory, John. 2000. The Ethical Practice of Reading: The Example of Modernity. In The Turn to Ethics, ed. Marjorie Garber, Beatrice Hanssen, and Rebecca Walkowitz, 29–46. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gunn, James. 2006. The Protocols of Science Fiction. In Inside Science Fiction, ed. James Gunn, 141–148. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haran, Joan. 2017. Instantiating Imaginactivism: Le Guin’s The Dispossessed as Inspiration. Ada: A Journal of Media, New Media, and Technology 12: n.p. https://adanewmedia.org/2017/10/issue12-haran/. Accessed 20 July 2019.

  • Hartley, Jenny. 2001. Reading Groups. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heise, Ursula, and Kim Stanley Robinson. 2016. Realism, Modernism and the Future: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson. ASAP/Journal 1 (1): 17–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iossifidis, Miranda. 2018. Uses of Science Fiction. Paper presented in the Visual Cultures Public Programme, Goldsmiths College, London, November 15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Iser, Wolfgang. 1978. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1989. Prospecting: From the Reader Response to Literary Anthropology. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jameson, Fredric. 1982. Progress Versus Utopia, or, Can We Imagine the Future. Science Fiction Studies 9 (2): 147–158.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jasanoff, Sheila. 2004. States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and the Social Order. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. Future Imperfect: Science, Technology, and the Imaginations of Modernity. In Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power, ed. Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, 1–33. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. Imagined and Invented Worlds. In Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power, ed. Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, 321–342. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins, Henry. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2013. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Steve. 1999. Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Long, Elizabeth. 1986. Women, Reading, and Cultural Authority: Some Implications of the Audience Perspective in Cultural Studies. American Quarterly 38: 591–612.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1987. Reading Groups and the Postmodern Crisis of Cultural Authority. Cultural Studies 1: 306–327.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1992. Textual Interpretation as Collective Action. In The Ethnography of Reading, ed. Jonathan Boyarin, 180–211. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2003. Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luckhurst, Roger. 2005. Science Fiction. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moylan, Tom. 1986. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. New York: Methuen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicholls, Peter. 2011. Soft SF. In The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ed. John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls, and Graham Sleight. London: Gollancz. Updated December 20. http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/soft_sf. Accessed 18 July 2019.

  • Oleszczuk, Anna. 2017. Sad and Rabid Puppies: Politicization of the Hugo Award Nomination Procedure. New Horizons in English Studies 2 (1): 127–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Penley, Constance. 1997. NASA/TREK: Popular Science and Sex in America. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Proctor, James, and Bethan Benwell. 2015. Reading Across Worlds: Transnational Book Groups and the Reception of Difference. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Radin, Joanna. 2019. The Speculative Present: How Michael Crichton Colonized the Future of Science and Technology. OSIRIS 34 (2019): 297–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Radway, Janice. 1984. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1986. Reading Is Not Eating: Mass-Produced Literature and the Theoretical, Methodological, and Political Consequences of a Metaphor. Book Research Quarterly 2: 7–29.

    Google Scholar 

  • Recuber, Timothy. 2017. Digital Discourse Analysis: Finding Meaning in Small Online Spaces. In Jessie Daniels, Karen Gregory, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, ed. Digital Sociologies, 47–60. London: Policy Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rees, Amanda, and Iwan Rhys Morus. 2019. Introduction: Presenting Futures Past: Science Fiction and the History of Science. OSIRIS 34: 1–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ricoeur, Paul. 1991. What Is a Text? Explanation and Understanding. In A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J. Valdés, 43–64. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roberts, Adam. 2006. Science Fiction. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 2001. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sobchack, Vivian. 1987. Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. New York: The Ungar Publishing Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suvin, Darko. 1972. On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre. College English 34 (3): 372–382.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1979. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Unsettling Scientific Stories: Expertise, Narratives, and Future Histories (AHRC 2016–2018). Online at: unsettlingscientificstories.co.uk. Accessed 10 Sept 2019.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vint, Sherryl. 2014. Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolfe, Gary K. 2010. The Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature and Sightings. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

    Amy C. Chambers

  2. Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    Lisa Garforth

Authors
  1. Amy C. Chambers
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Lisa Garforth
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Neel Ahuja

  2. University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Monique Allewaert

  3. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Lindsey Andrews

  4. Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Gerry Canavan

  5. Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX, USA

    Rebecca Evans

  6. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Nihad M. Farooq

  7. University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA

    Erica Fretwell

  8. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Nicholas Gaskill

  9. University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Patrick Jagoda

  10. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Erin Gentry Lamb

  11. Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Jennifer Rhee

  12. University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA

    Britt Rusert

  13. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Matthew A. Taylor

  14. Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Aarthi Vadde

  15. Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Priscilla Wald

  16. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Rebecca Walsh

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Chambers, A.C., Garforth, L. (2020). Reading Science: SF and the Uses of Literature. In: Ahuja, N., et al. The Palgrave Handbook of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature and Science. Palgrave Handbooks of Literature and Science. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48244-2_14

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation