University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press
Pages: 208
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-61148-374-1 • Hardback • November 2011 • $105.00 • (£81.00)
978-1-61148-426-7 • Paperback • October 2011 • $57.99 • (£45.00)
978-1-61148-375-8 • eBook • October 2011 • $55.00 • (£42.00)
Caroline McCracken-Flesher is professor of English at the University of Wyoming. Her recent publications include Possible Scotlands: Walter Scott and the Story of Tomorrow (2005), The Doctor Dissected: A Cultural Autopsy of the Burke and Hare Murders (2011), and the edited Bucknell volume, Culture, Nation, and the New Scottish Parliament (2007).
Chapter 1 Acknowledgements
Chapter 2 Introduction
Chapter 3 Scotland's Fantastic Physics: Energy Transformation in MacDonald, Stevenson, Barrie, and Spark
Chapter 4 The Other Otherworld: Didactic Fantasy from MacDonald and Lindsay to J. Leslie Mitchell
Chapter 5 Allegory and Cruelty: Gray's Lanark and Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus
Chapter 6 Speculative Nationality: "Stands Scotland Where it Did?" in the Culture of Iain M. Banks
Chapter 7 Between Enlightenment and the End of History: Ken MacLeod's Engines of Light
Chapter 8 The Cosmic (Cosmo)Polis in Naomi Mitchison's Science Fiction Novels
Chapter 9 Non-Violence, Gender, and Ecology: Margaret Elphinstone's The Incomer and A Sparrow's Flight
Chapter 10 Past and Future Language: Matthew Fitt and Iain M. Banks
Chapter 11 Scottish Poetry as Science Fiction: Geddes, MacDiarmid, and Morgan's "A Home in Space"
Chapter 12 Brave New Scotland: Science Fiction without Stereotypes in Fitt and Crumey
Chapter 13 Alba Newton and Alasdair Gray
Chapter 14 Bibliography
Chapter 15 Notes on Contributors
Chapter 16 Index
Scottish writers' concern with fantastic otherworlds goes back to Celtic mythology. The Scottish philosophers of the 18th century and the scientists and inventors of the 19th century were worlds ahead of their time. Today this tiny country survives in the shadow of nuclear subs, Trident missiles, and nuclear reactors, all the stuff of contemporary science fiction. This interesting study, which was born out of an MLA conference, includes work by seven Scotland-based senior scholars and three Americans in addition to McCracken-Flesher (Univ. of Wyoming). Two of the top Scottish sci-fi authors (Iain M. Banks and Matthew Fitt) receive two chapters each; Robert Louis Stevenson, J. M. Barrie, Muriel Spark, Alasdair Gray, Naomi Mitchison, et al. are also treated. Edwin Morgan even managed to write Scottish poetry as sci fi in "A Home in Space." The problem with studying this speculative genre is how to reconcile science fiction with a regional culture and an obsolescent Scots language. This provocative study meets the challenge head-on. With a mixture of science and fantasy, myth and technology, the land of Dolly the cloned sheep has created a "brave new Scotland" in rewriting the genre of science fiction. Good bibliography and notes (devalued by tiny print). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers.
— Choice Reviews
Insightful and innovative from a Scottish-studies point of view….Many of the chapters offer lively commentary….a merit of this collection is that it will encourage such further conversation and connection.
— Science Fiction Studies