Synopses & Reviews
From one of science fiction's most acclaimed novelists comes this engrossing journey through the books, movies, and television programs that have shaped our perspective of both the present and the future. In an uncompromising, often irreverent survey of the genre from Edgar Allan Poe to Philip K. Dick to
Star Trek, Thomas M. Disch analyzes science fiction's impact on technological innovation, fashion, lifestyle, military strategy, the media, and much more.
An illuminating look at the art of science fiction (with a practitioner's insight into craft), as well as a work of pointed literary and cultural criticism, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of reveals how this "pulp genre" has captured the popular imagination while transforming the physical and social world in which we live.
Review
"Thomas Disch, always ruefully wise and exuberantly visionary, gives us a superbly disturbing meditation on the triumph of science fiction over our expiring (or is it expired?) culture." Harold Bloom
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"Mr. Disch's lively and provocative new book is a science-fiction insider's brilliant attempt to come to terms with the bizarre morphing of our civilization in the past fifty years into something that might well have leaped out of the archetypical tales of yesterday's SF masters." Robert Silverberg, The Wall Street Journal
Review
"Sharp, provocative....More than just a history, Disch gives us a sense
of the events and moods that are so much a part of science-fiction....[Disch] has covered the vital aspects of the field in a highly readable book." Robert Sheckley, San Francisco Chronicle
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"Entertaining and provocative....Long overdue a pioneering look at what other cultural observers have ignored....Disch convinces us that any cultural study of our century which does not deal seriously with the genre is or will be fatally flawed." Dick Allen, The Hudson Review
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"[Disch speaks] for the entire genre with admirable authority and grace." Newsday
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"Thomas M. Disch's tough love survey of America's most characteristic pulp genre is one of those rare birds an authentic critical work that's muscular, smart, chatty, and a pleasure to read. If you want to find out what's been happening to our weirdly imagined future for the past century or so, don't bother watching the skies they're filled with the same big-screen nonsense and billboard bull as always. Just read this book and find out what's been really going on." Scott Bradfield, author of The History of Luminous Motion
Review
"Disch is one of the Secret Masters of science fiction: knowing, masterful, sly, hilarious, and profound. This bible of SF insight, this devil's dictionary of sharp wisdom is the best book on SF ever written by a practicing writer in the field." John Clute, co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
Review
"Brilliant....It's a wonderful book, and no one who cares about science fiction, or about American culture, should miss reading it." Frank McConnell, San Jose Mercury News
About the Author
Thomas M. Disch is the author of such classic works of science fiction as Camp Concentration, 334, The Brave Little Toaster, and On Wings of Song, all of which are cited in David Pringle's Science Fiction: 100 Best Novels. His criticism has appeared in the country's leading magazines and newspapers. His book The Castle of Indolence was a nominee for the National Book Critic Circle's Award in Criticism.
Table of Contents
ContentsIntroduction
1 The Right to Lie
2 Poe, Our Embarrassing Ancestor
3 From the Earth to the Moon -- In 101 Years
4 How Science Fiction Defused the Bomb
5 Star Trek, or the Future as a Lifestyle
6 Can Girls Play Too? Feminizing Science Fiction
7 When You Wish Upon a Star -- Science Fiction as a Religion
8 Republicans on Mars -- Science Fiction as Military Strategy
9 The Third World and Other Alien Nations
10 The Future of an Illusion -- Science Fiction Beyond the Year 2000
Notes And References
Acknowledgments
Index