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Shadows of Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction, and Prophecy
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Shadows of Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction, and Prophecy Hardcover - 1995

by Patrick Parrinder


From the publisher

H.G. Wells - inventor of the concept of the time machine and the phrase the shape of things to come - described his life's work as one of critical anticipation. This book unravels the complex layers of meaning in The Time Machine, and shows how, throughout his life, he sought to exploit the potential of literary and cultural prophecy in new ways. Described by John Middleton Murry as the last prophet of bourgeois Europe, he was its first futurologist.

From the rear cover

In Shadows of the Future Wells's assumption of the prophet's role is related to his championship of the modern scientific outlook, and to the theory and practice of science fiction and utopian literature. Professor Parrinder explores the connections between novelty and repetition, between imagining the future and imagining the past, and between prophecy and parody as literary modes. Wells's science fiction is reexamined both as a projection of the cosmology implicit in the writings of Darwin and Huxley, and as a new variation on the Romantic and Enlightenment themes of such earlier authors as Blake, Gibbon, and Mary Shelley. Later chapters relate Wells's fiction to his nonfiction and look at the uneasy relationship of his utopianism to literary prophecy, and at the paradoxes inherent in the militant internationalism of the "prophet at large". Finally, Wells's influence is traced in a study of the antiutopian fictions of Zamyatin and Orwell, and in a broad account of the connections between science fiction and the scientific outlook down to our own time.

Details

  • Title Shadows of Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction, and Prophecy
  • Author Patrick Parrinder
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition 1st
  • Pages 170
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Syracuse University Press
  • Date 1995-09-01
  • Features Bibliography, Index
  • ISBN 9780815626916 / 0815626916
  • Weight 0.95 lbs (0.43 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.46 x 6.29 x 0.72 in (24.03 x 15.98 x 1.83 cm)
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: British
  • Library of Congress subjects Science fiction, English - History and, Future in literature
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 95021827
  • Dewey Decimal Code 823.912
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Shadows of Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction, and Prophecy (Utopianism & Communitarianism)
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Shadows of Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction, and Prophecy (Utopianism & Communitarianism)

by Parrinder, Patrick

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780815626916 / 0815626916
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Description:
Syracuse University Press. Hardcover. New. 9x6x0.
Item Price
£46.81
£12.11 shipping to USA