This Companion shows how literature and science inform one another and that they're more closely aligned than they typically appear.

Table of contents

This Companion explores the relationship between the ideas and themes of American science fiction and their roots in the American cultural experience.

The first ever companion to theatre and science brings together research on key topics, performances, and new areas of interest.

This book gathers diverse critical treatments from fifteen scholars of the posthuman and posthumanism together in a single volume.

Since the publication of Thomas More's genre-defining work Utopia in 1516, the field of utopian literature has evolved into an ever-expanding domain. This Companion presents an extensive historical survey of the development of utopianism, from the publication of Utopia to today's dark and despairing tendency towards dystopian pessimism, epitomised by works such as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Chapters address the difficult definition of the concept of utopia, and consider its relation to science fiction and other literary genres. The volume takes an innovative approach to the major themes predominating within the utopian and dystopian literary tradition, including feminism, romance and ecology, and explores in detail the vexed question of the purportedly 'western' nature of the concept of utopia. The reader is provided with a balanced overview of the evolution and current state of a long-standing, rich tradition of historical, political and literary scholarship.

Diverse, vibrant, and challenging as the city itself, this Companion is the definitive guide to LA in literature.