The Routledge Companion To Science Fiction

Author: Edited By Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts &sherrylvint)

Every major non-fiction publisher now seems to have a Companion to science fiction. In some respects, inevitably, they plough the same furrow, there are invariably essays on the history of the genre and on various theoretical approaches. Still, taken together they form the nucleus of a very respectable science fiction reference library, and there are important differences between them. The Oxford Handbook concentrates on how sf shapes the real world, the Cambridge Companion looks primarily at sf as a literary medium, and this volume tends to consider issues raised. There are essays on such topics as animal studies, environmentalism, ethics, digital games, psychoanalysis, language and music alongside more traditional topics such as space opera, hard sf, dystopia, space and so forth. You are probably not going to read these companions through from beginning to end; they are books you'll dip into from time to time to pursue a theme or follow an interest. But whenever the mood does take you to find out a little more about television since 1980 or posthumanism, this really is the perfect companion.