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New publications from University of Minnesota Press
Free postage to UK customers
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/like-clockwork
Like
Clockwork
Steampunk Pasts, Presents, and Futures
Edited by Rachel A. Bowser & Brian Croxall
"A lively, engaging collection of essays about the past, present, future (and alternate versions thereof) of steampunk culture, literature and meaning, ranging from disability and queerness
to ethos and digital humanities."—Boing Boing
Co-winner, Ray & Pat Browne Award for Best Edited Collection in Popular Culture and American Culture
Once a small subculture, the steampunk phenomenon exploded in visibility during the first years of the twenty-first century, its influence and prominence increasing ever since. From its Victorian
and literary roots to film and television, video games, music, and even fashion, this subgenre of science fiction reaches far and wide within current culture. Here Rachel A. Bowser and Brian Croxall present cutting-edge essays on steampunk: its rise in popularity,
its many manifestations, and why we should pay attention.
Like Clockwork offers wide-ranging perspectives on steampunk’s history and its place in contemporary culture, all while speaking
to the “why” and “why now” of the genre. In her essay, Catherine Siemann draws on authors such as William Gibson and China Miéville to analyze steampunk cities; Kathryn Crowther turns to disability studies to examine the role of prosthetics within steampunk
as well as the contemporary culture of access; and Diana M. Pho reviews the racial and national identities of steampunk, bringing in discussions of British chap-hop artists, African American steamfunk practitioners, and multicultural steampunk fan cultures.
From disability and queerness to ethos and digital humanities,
Like Clockwork explores the intriguing history of steampunk to evaluate the influence of the genre from the 1970s through the twenty-first century.
Contributors: Kathryn Crowther, Perimeter College at Georgia State University; Shaun Duke, University of Florida; Stefania Forlini, University of Calgary (Canada); Lisa Hager, University
of Wisconsin–Waukesha; Mike Perschon, MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta; Diana M. Pho; David Pike, American University; Catherine Siemann, New Jersey Institute of Technology; Joseph Weakland, Georgia Institute of Technology; Roger Whitson, Washington
State University.
Rachel A. Bowser
is associate professor of English at Georgia Gwinnett College.
Brian Croxall is digital humanities librarian at Brown University.
University of Minnesota Press | December 2016 | 288pp | 9781517900632 | Paperback | £21.99*
20% discount with this code: CSL17TPOT**
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/the-perversity-of-things
The
Perversity of Things
Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction
Hugo Gernsback
Edited by Grant Wythoff
"Grant Wythoff's splendid work of scholarship dispels the dank, historic mists of a literary subculture with starkly factual archival research. An amazing vista of electronic media struggle
is revealed here, every bit as colorful and cranky as Hugo Gernsback's pulp magazines—even the illustrations and footnotes are fascinating. I'm truly grateful for this work and will never think of American science fiction in the same way again."—Bruce Sterling,
author, journalist, and critic
"Hugo Gernsback was one of the strangest and most weirdly influential minds of the twentieth century, and his story has never before been fully told. Grant Wythoff’s
The Perversity of Things is brilliant and beautiful—indispensible for anyone who wants to understand the collision of technology and culture in which science fiction was born."—James Gleick, author of
Time Travel
"The quality of Wythoff's editorial work is outstanding, and it is well served by the clever typographical presentation of the book, pleasant to read, well indexed, and nicely illustrated.
Thanks to this work, it should be possible to reframe the figure of Gernsback."—Leonardo Reviews
"Wythoff's indispensable account of Gernsback's understanding of the power of media is remarkable in many ways and is expected to reset people's understanding of SF. Wythoff uses examples
of Gernsback's writing – fiction stories, essays, articles, editorials…even the inventor's own blueprints – to show how a tinkerer launched a new era in written science fiction."—Kirkus Reviews
"Each page is a small feast for the intellect."—Paul Levinson’s Infinite Regress
In 1905, a young Jewish immigrant from Luxembourg founded an electrical supply shop in New York. This inventor, writer, and publisher Hugo Gernsback would later become famous for launching
the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926. But while science fiction’s annual Hugo Awards were named in his honor, there has been surprisingly little understanding of how the genre began among a community of tinkerers all drawn to
Gernsback’s vision of comprehending the future of media through making. In The Perversity of Things, Grant Wythoff makes available texts by Hugo Gernsback that were foundational both for science fiction and the emergence of media studies.
Wythoff argues that Gernsback developed a means of describing and assessing the cultural impact of emerging media long before media studies became an academic discipline. From editorials
and blueprints to media histories, critical essays, and short fiction, Wythoff has collected a wide range of Gernsback’s writings that have been out of print since their magazine debut in the early 1900s. These articles cover such topics as television; the
regulation of wireless/radio; war and technology; speculative futures; media-archaeological curiosities like the dynamophone and hypnobioscope; and more. All together, this collection shows how Gernsback’s publications evolved from an electrical parts catalog
to a full-fledged literary genre.
The Perversity of Things aims to reverse the widespread misunderstanding of Gernsback within the history of science fiction
criticism. Through painstaking research and extensive annotations and commentary, Wythoff reintroduces us to Gernsback and the origins of science fiction.
Hugo Gernsback (1884–1967) was a Luxembourgish-American inventor, writer, editor, and magazine publisher who founded the first
science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926. The annual Hugo Awards for the best works of science fiction and fantasy are named in his honor.
Grant Wythoff is a postdoctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities and a lecturer in the department of English
and comparative literature at Columbia University.
University of Minnesota Press | Electronic Mediations | November 2016 | 444pp | 9781517900854 | Paperback | £29.99*
20% discount with this code: CSL17TPOT**
*Price subject to change.
**Offer excludes the USA, South America and Australia.
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