The Oxford Handbook Of Science Fiction

Author: Edited By Rob Latham

One of the best things that any book about science fiction can do is make you think again about what sf actually is. This book does it to an extraordinary degree. There are four sections in the book, each consisting of 11 chapters, and only the first of these sections deals with science fiction as literature. The next section looks at science fiction in everything from film and television to architecture and theme parks. After that, it takes us into areas where most books on sf just do not tread: body modification, advertising, religion, military culture, libertarianism and anarchism, and so on. By the end of the book, the world will be a very different place, and you'll begin to think that science fiction has little to do with science and even less to do with fiction. Okay, this isn't a book to buy, the price is ludicrous, but try and find it in a library and read the thing, it's well worth the effort. There is no other book that looks in such detail at all the ways science fiction affects the world around us. If you've ever said: we're living in a science fiction universe, this book will give you the evidence you need.