Plants in Science Fiction
Speculative Vegetation
Published on 1. May 2020
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-1-78683-559-8 (ISBN)
Description
Plants have played key roles in science fiction novels, graphic novels and film. John Wyndham's triffids, Algernon Blackwood's willows and Han Kang's sprouting woman are just a few examples. Plants surround us, sustain us, pique our imaginations and inhabit our metaphors - but in many ways they remain opaque. The scope of their alienation is as broad as their biodiversity. And yet, literary reflections of plant-life are driven, as are many threads of science fictional inquiry, by the concerns of today. Plants in Science Fiction is the first-ever collected volume on plants in science fiction, and its original essays argue that plant-life in SF is transforming our attitudes toward morality, politics, economics and cultural life at large - questioning and shifting our understandings of institutions, nations, borders and boundaries; erecting and dismantling new visions of utopian and dystopian futures.
Reviews / Votes
"Science fiction teaches us to 'be-with others better.' This is the core argument of Plants in Science Fiction, captured in one of its chapters and suffused throughout. Readers will come away with a profound and challenging understanding of what it means to be human, as well as a deep appreciation for the critical function of science fiction in a threatened world."-- Eric Otto, Florida Gulf Coast University "Plants in Science Fiction demonstrates that science fiction and ecocriticism have much to say to each other. By considering 'speculative vegetation,' of course, we learn much about our own lives in the present moment on Earth.'
-- Scott Slovic, Editor-in-Chief, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Wales
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
Not illustrated
Dimensions
Height: 219 mm
Width: 141 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
456 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78683-559-8 (9781786835598)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Katherine E. Bishop | David Higgins | Jerry Maeaettae
Plants in Science Fiction
Speculative Vegetation
E-Book
05/2020
1st Edition
University of Wales Press
€80.49
Available for download
Persons
Katherine E. Bishop PhD is Assistant Professor at Miyazaki International College. David Higgins PhD teaches English at Inver Hills College in Minnesota. Jerry Maatta PhD is Associate Professor (Docent) at the Department of Literature, Uppsala University, Sweden
Content
Contributors
Introduction - Katherine E. Bishop
Abjection
Weird Flora: Plant Life in the Classic Weird Tale - Jessica George
'Bloody unnatural brutes': Anthropomorphism, Colonialism and the Return of the Repressed in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids - Jerry Maeaettae
Botanical Tentacles and the Chthulucene- Shelley Saguaro
Affinity
Between the Living and the Dead: Vegetal Afterlives in Evgenii Iufit's and Vladimir Maslov's Silver Heads - Brittany Roberts
Vegetable Love: Desire, Feeling, and Sexuality in Botanical Fiction - T. S. Miller
Alternative Reproduction: Plant-time and Human/Arboreal Assemblages in Holdstock and Han - Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook
Accord
Sunlight as a Photosynthetic Information Technology: Becoming Plant in Tom Robbins's Jitterbug Perfume - Yogi Hale Hendlin
The Question of the Vegetal, the Animal, the Archive in Kathleen Ann Goonan's Queen City Jazz - Graham J. Murphy
Queer Ingestions: Weird, Vegetative Bodies in Jeff VanderMeer's Fiction - Alison Sperling
The Botanical Ekphrastic and Ecological Relocation - Katherine E. Bishop
Selected Bibliography
Index
Introduction - Katherine E. Bishop
Abjection
Weird Flora: Plant Life in the Classic Weird Tale - Jessica George
'Bloody unnatural brutes': Anthropomorphism, Colonialism and the Return of the Repressed in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids - Jerry Maeaettae
Botanical Tentacles and the Chthulucene- Shelley Saguaro
Affinity
Between the Living and the Dead: Vegetal Afterlives in Evgenii Iufit's and Vladimir Maslov's Silver Heads - Brittany Roberts
Vegetable Love: Desire, Feeling, and Sexuality in Botanical Fiction - T. S. Miller
Alternative Reproduction: Plant-time and Human/Arboreal Assemblages in Holdstock and Han - Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook
Accord
Sunlight as a Photosynthetic Information Technology: Becoming Plant in Tom Robbins's Jitterbug Perfume - Yogi Hale Hendlin
The Question of the Vegetal, the Animal, the Archive in Kathleen Ann Goonan's Queen City Jazz - Graham J. Murphy
Queer Ingestions: Weird, Vegetative Bodies in Jeff VanderMeer's Fiction - Alison Sperling
The Botanical Ekphrastic and Ecological Relocation - Katherine E. Bishop
Selected Bibliography
Index