Böcker av Patrick Parrinder

This book, first published in 1979, presents a portrait of science fiction as a distinct form of serious and creative literature. Contributors are drawn from Britain, America and Europe, and range from well-known academic critics to young novelists. The essays establish the common properties of science fiction writing, and assess the history and significance of a field in which critical judgements have often been unreliable. The material ranges from the earliest imaginative journeys to the moon, to later developments of British, American and European science fiction.

This book offers pioneering insights into Wells's contribution to 20th century European literature and to modern political ideas, including the idea of European union.

Scientific progress is usually seen as a precondition of modern utopias, but science and utopia are frequently at odds. Ranging from Galileo's observations with the telescope to current ideas of the post-human and the human-animal boundary, this study brings a fresh perspective to the paradoxes of utopian thinking since Plato.

This book is an original and well-informed survey of the whole of Joyce's work. It offers close readings of his early writings such as Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and an extended examination of his masterpiece, Ulysses.