Ursula Le Guin

This book explores the use of imaginative literature as persuasion, focusing on the science fiction of Ursula Le Guin and her rhetorical use of myth. The author concludes that Le Guin (like Emerson, Peirce, Thoreau, Whitman, and Dewey) is a romantic/pragmatic rhetorician. In that sense, she is arguing for what Vico argued for in the eighteenth century: that knowledge should be seen and studied as an integrated whole, and that Cartesian thinking is only part of how humans make meaning.

Unlike many classic works of fiction, literature of the fantastic enjoys mass popularity. Because the fantastic is so much a part of popular culture, fantasy literature can represent or address the racial attitudes of its audience. Representations of race in the fantastic provide a measure of the concern the culture has for racial matters. If a work is racist, whether consciously or not, it may perpetuate racist attitudes unless it is carefully examined. At the same time, literature of the fantastic is able to present possible worlds rather than real ones. It is thus a literature of possibility, in which racial matters may be addressed and exposed, so that readers may become more conscious of the evils of racist attitudes. This volume explores the significance of race and color in the works of a wide range of authors, including Octavia Butler, Robert Heinlein, Stephen King, and Robert Silverberg.

Dystopian literature is a potent vehicle for criticizing existing social conditions or political systems, and for warning against the potential negative consequences of utopian thought. This reference is a guide to dystopian theory and literature. It discusses the work of key theorists and summarizes several important utopian works to provide a background. The rest of the book summarizes and analyzes numerous dystopian novels, plays, and films.

Collings has selected the best of the conference proceedings reflecting the intent of the conference to discover aspects of the fantastic in every branch of the arts. The twelve essays commence with theoretical discussions of the fantastic as it relates to other genres and elements of life. The second section examines individual authors including Peter Beagle, French fantasists Alain Robbe-Grillet and Felix Labisse, and Spanish authors Amado Nervo and Jose Maria Merino. The third section discusses issues in contemporary science fiction as seen in the work of Samuel R. Delaney, Brian W. Aldiss, Ursula K. Le Guin, Frederik Pohl, and Gregory Shreve.

This study collects 25 essays on the fantastic as portrayed in literature and visual art. In five sections: "Discovery and Interpretation," "Inexplicable Reality," "Marvelous Beings," "Fantasy in Symbiosis with Other Forms," and "From Fantasy to Science Fiction: Critical Considerations," scholars examine fantasy in works by Mark Strand, Hawthorne, Kafka, and Tolkien, among others. Beasts, angels, grotesques, and more are analyzed and a selected bibliography of relevant criticism that complements each essay's bibliography completes the volume.

Utopian societies exhibit a variety of ways of organizing the financial, political and emotional relationships between people. For all this diversity, however, one thing that exhibits far less variation is the story, the framing narrative that accounts for how the narrator reaches the more perfect society and obtains the opportunity to witness its distinctive excellences. Narrating Utopia is about that story, the curious hybrid of the traveler�2s tale and the classical dialogue that emerges in the Renaissance, but whose outlines remain clearly apparent even in some of the most recent utopian writing. "�5 a well-written and worthy addition to the filed of utopian studies."--SFRA Review

"This collection will be of interest ... to those working in women's studies or gerontology." Publishers Weekly "Enables us to reimagine the possibilities for aging for women from a wide range of perspectives & experiences." Charlotte Bunch Executive director, Center for Women's Global Leadership, Rutgers University