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Novi val v znanstveni fantastiki ali eksplozija žanra = New wave in science fiction or the explosion of the genre : doktorska disertacijaSteble, JanezThis doctoral dissertation explores the period of New Wave science fiction. The study traces the effects of the period in various literary works from its initial breakthroughs in the 1960s up to the ... beginning of the 21st century, thus attempting to demonstrate that New Wave SF brought about an explosion of the genre that is still ongoing. Our investigations begin with the theoretical framework of the genre, mostly focusing on Darko Suvin's structuralist approach (SF text as an artefact) and Samuel R. Delany's hermeneutical or reader-oriented method (SF text as an interplay between the text and the reader). Both aspects form a dynamic whole which helps us comprehend the fluid nature of the genre and its turbulent developments from the Golden Age of SF to postmodern slipstream. After establishing the important theoretical aspects of SF, we directly confront the Golden Age of SF, primarily interested in the foregrounding of the respective works of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein " the most influential authors of the period" as the pinnacle of the Golden Age ideology. The philosophical background of the period reveals technocratic and "hard" SF tendencies, which are antithetical to the subsequent New Wave. Furthermore, the Golden Age effectively started to undermine the pulp magazine medium with paperback books written in the style of the then mainstream bestseller novels. Robert Heinlein, Kurt Vonnegut, Theodore Sturgeon, and many more wrote novels which represent the germ of New Wave subversions and breakthroughs; therefore, the Golden Age of SF is both the antithesis to and precursor of New Wave. The central chapter of the dissertation is concerned with the analysis of the New Wave phenomenon in its entirety, ranging from the stylistics to thematics. The former is related to the proliferation of writing techniques in New Wave SF, which are directly influenced by the world literary movements of modernism and postmodernism. How fiction was written indeed became just as important as what was written. On the other hand, New Wave greatly expanded the genre's subject matter, freely speculating upon the themes which had been, by then, either suppressed or neglected, namely sexuality and psychology. However, the revolutionary period is most commonly associated with the British authors Michael Moorcock, J. G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss and their magazine New Worlds, the only official platform of the New Wave movement. These authors were among the first to consciously oppose the Golden Age of SF mentality, improve the style of the genre by adapting the modernist epistemological framework (especially Ballard), and expand the range of SF speculation. Their works are the crux of the movement's expansion of the genre. New Wave SF of the 1960s and 1970s also welcomed the sociological and feminist writers such as Ursula Le Guin, James Tiptree, Jr., as well as the militant Joanna Russ. A plethora of New Wave works comprise pessimism, decadence, and an overall negative reaction towards the relentless changes of the post-WWII era; however, as opposed to the entropic dissolutions in the works of Moorcock, Ballard, Aldiss, and many others, feminist authors revived the utopian fiction and updated it with the advances of modern social sciences and the capacity for critical thought. Le Guin's The Dispossessed (1974), for instance, uses the category of utopia as a certain socio-political horizon we should strive for, and not as a mere portrayal of a place which does not exist. Thus, New Wave SF not only improved the literary quality of the genre, but also expanded its political voice. New Wave SF still clung to the literary influences of the past, namely modernism, and was cautious of the world-changing effects of technology and corporate capitalism; the cyberpunk of the 1980s, on the other hand, fully embraced a "postmodernized" reality. As close reading of William Gibson "the most renowned practitioner of cyberpunk" reveals, the movement discarded the critical capacity of numerous New Wave works (especially feminists) and accepted the late-capitalist world as the only possible reality. Subversive and status-quo shattering characters were replaced by hackers, individualists whose sole interest is survival in the postmodern urban jungle. Cyberpunk appears as a total break with the literary and political advances of New Wave SF, yet further analysis of Gibson's Sprawl trilogy and of the next famous cyberpunk author, Bruce Sterling, informs us of the continuation of the New Wave critical trends. Concepts like cyberspace and cyborg not only continue and update the ontological and epistemological concerns of New Wave, but also offer unique solutions to past predicaments (Ballard's aversion to the Space Age, for instance). After cyberpunk the New Wave subversion and radicalism undergo further mitigation and dispersion. However, the elements of New Wave can be detected in postmodern literary streams of the 1990s and the 21st century such as slipstream, Avant-pop, transrealism, and interstitial fiction. This mélange of literature which emerges after the exhausted ontology of postmodernism seeks not to undermine central categories of Western thought, but to find new meanings, realities, and creative impulses amidst the cultural bric-à-brac of late capitalism. Similar to utopia in New Wave, certain concepts become transvaluated. In a representative slipstream novel like Jeff Noon's Vurt (1993), the concept of chaos is used in a creative manner to find new levels of order as multiple realities now co-exist and do not cancel each other out. SF and other genres of the fantastic freely intermingle in the postmodern literary streams of the 20th century and beyond. The New Wave project to extend the genre boundaries, and, in the final analysis, erode the divide between the genre and mainstream literature continues unabatedly in slipstream and other forms of postmodern genre miscegenation.Type of material - dissertation ; adult, seriousPublication and manufacture - Ljubljana : [J. Steble], 2014Language - englishCOBISS.SI-ID - 55923554
Author
Steble, Janez
Other authors
Krevel, Mojca
Topics
Gibson, William, 1948- |
Sterling, Bruce, 1954- |
Moorcock, Michael, 1939- |
Ballard, James Graham, 1930-2009 |
znanstvena fantastika |
ZF |
angleška književnost |
ameriška književnost |
novi val v znanstveni fantastiki |
modernizem |
postmodernizem |
kiberpank |
slipstream |
doktorske disertacije |
science fiction |
SF |
English literature |
American literature |
modernism |
postmodernism |
cyberpunk |
slipstream |
New Wave science fiction |
dissertations
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Faculty of Arts, Lj. | OHK - Germanistika Diss STEBLE J. Novi |
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Steble, Janez | ![]() |
Krevel, Mojca | 18156 |
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