Contours of the Fantastic

Addressing the world of the imaginary the dream the uncanny the paranormal and all forms of speculative fiction Contours of the Fantastic is a collection of twenty-two essays that were originally presented at the Eighth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts at Houston in 1987. The volume gives valuable perspectives on the territory covered by the fantastic showing the diversity of the field and the variety of approaches used to survey and comprehend it. Each essay brings its own method of investigation--phenomenological theoretical historical sociological psychological textual--in an effort to situate the border between reality and fantasy and the passage from one to the other. Authors and works discussed in the volume include Balzac Dickens Poe Aldous Huxley C. S. Lewis Tolkien Muriel Spark Mary Shelley Albee''s The Zoo Story Pynchon Coleridge''s Christabel Le Fanu''s Carmilla and Stephen Donaldson''s Thomas Covenant trilogies. Following the editor''s introductory essay the work is divided into 7 sections: Fantasy and Discontinuity Theory of National Fantasy--Tradition and Invention Fantastic Vision in Children''s Literature Science Fiction and Fantasy Films Fusion Transfusion and Transgression in the Fantastic The Fantastic and Science and The Fantastic World--Space and Time. Individual essays within these major divisions zero in on specific works of fantasy; offer a psychology of fantasy writers; analyze language; assess fantasy from a national perspective; and investigate Christian horror in fiction. The final two sections delineate the border between fantasy and reality--in science and in relation to space and time.Among the outstanding contributors are Brian Aldiss novelist poet and critic author of more than two dozen books-- many of which are considered science fiction classics; Vivian Sobchack science fiction film critic and writer on semiotics and phenomenology; and Nancy Willard author of prize-winning novels collected stories poetry and children''s books. Generalists in literature and the arts sociology the natural sciences engineering and aeronautics as well as students and scholars aestheticians and critics of the fantasy/science fiction genres in literature film and art will find this collection both a useful and fascinating volume.