The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction

Latham, Rob, editor. The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Reviewed by T.S. Miller, SFRA Review #323 (Winter 2018): pp. 17-19, our source for this entry.[1]

Latham's second group of essays

“Science Fiction as Medium” — [...] apotheosizes the decentering of literature in this book’s version of science fiction studies, covering an impressive and probably unprecedented range of media forms. Two fairly conventional chapters on “Film” (Mark Bould) and “Radio and Television” (J. P. Telotte) open the section, which then moves through comics, the visual arts more generally, digital narrative, video games, and music, only to conclude with unexpected but captivating chapters on “Performance Art” (Steve Dixon); “Architecture” (Nic Clear); and even “Theme Parks” (Leonie Cooper). (Miller p. 18)

So except for SF theater, The Oxford Handbook covers the varieties of works we have cited but have had difficulty pigeon-holing and finding contextualizing coverage.

Part III, is the "most dedicated to a strongly cultural studies-based approach to genre science fiction, emphasizing [...] interpenetration with aspects of culture such as military culture and the space race; scientific discourse itself, including cyberculture and automation; countercultural and new religious movements; and finally body modification and steampunk aesthetics" (Miller p. 18). This section "concludes with a [...] chapter by Elizabeth Guffey and Kate C. Lemay titled 'Retrofuturism and Steampunk.' The authors define 'retrofuturism' as how we choose to remember our anticipations of the future, and excavate the iconography of 'futurism' and other manifestations of a 'retro' aesthetics in order to argue that both steampunk and the wider phenomenon of retrofuturism negotiate “a present longing for a historical past” (439)." (Miller p. 19).

RDE, finishing, 11Oct21