ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |101 pages
Modern Science Fiction
chapter |18 pages
New World, New Texts
chapter |16 pages
Generic Engineering
chapter |12 pages
Genre or Mode?
chapter |16 pages
The Uses of Otherness
chapter |12 pages
Reading the Episteme
chapter |14 pages
Dreams of Reason and Unreason
chapter |12 pages
The Stars My Dissertation
part |57 pages
Postmodern Science Fiction