Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction

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Psychology Press, 1995 - Fiction - 197 pages
Reading by Starlight explores the characteristics in the writing, marketing and reception of science fiction which distinguish it as a genre.
Damien Broderick explores the postmodern self-referentiality of the sci-fi narrative, its intricate coded language and discursive `encyclopaedia'. He shows how, for perfect understanding, sci-fi readers must learn the codes of these imaginary worlds and vocabularies, all the time picking up references to texts by other writers.
Reading by Starlight includes close readings of paradigmatic cyberpunk texts and writings by SF novelists and theorists including Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Patrick Parrinder, Kim Stanley Robinson, John Varley, Roger Zelazny, William Gibson, Fredric Jameson and Samuel R. Delaney.

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Contents

NEW WORLD NEW TEXTS
3
GENERIC ENGINEERING
21
GENRE OR MODE?
38
THE USES OF OTHERNESS
49
READING THE EPISTEME
64
DREAMS OF REASON AND UNREASON
75
THE STARS MY DISSERTATION
89
MAKING UP WORLDS
103
23
125
SF AS A MODULAR CALCULUS
128
THE MULTIPLICITY OF WORLDS OF OTHERS
137
THE AUTUMNAL CITY
153
Notes
159
29
162
Bibliography
180
Index
193

ALLOGRAPHY AND ALLEGORY
117

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About the author (1995)

Damien Broderick, author of The Architecture of Babel: Discourses of Literature and Science, is an award-winning writer who sold his first collection of stories at 20, has published eight novels and holds a PhD in the semiotics of science, literature and science fiction.