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OverviewGiven the extensive influence of the 'transport revolution' on the past two centuries (a time when trains, trams, omnibuses, bicycles, cars, airplanes, and so forth were invented), and given science fiction’s overall obsession with machines and technologies of all kinds, it is surprising that scholars have not paid more attention to transportation in this increasingly popular genre. Futuristic Cars and Space Bicycles is the first book to examine the history of representations of road transport machines in nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century American science fiction. The focus of this study is on two machines of the road that have been locked in a constant, often bitter, struggle with one another: the automobile and the bicycle. With chapters ranging from the early science fiction of the pulp magazine era in the 1920s and 1930s, to the postcyberpunk of the 1990s and more recent media of the 2000s such as web television, zines, and comics, this book argues that science fiction by and large perceives the car as anything but a marvelous invention of modernity. Rather, the genre often scorns and ridicules the automobile and instead promotes more sustainable, more benign, more restrained technologies of movement such as the bicycle. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Jeremy Withers (Department of English, Iowa State University (United States))Publisher: Liverpool University Press Imprint: Liverpool University Press Volume: 66 ISBN: 9781802078343ISBN 10: 1802078347 Pages: 272 Publication Date: 01 March 2023 Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , General , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print  This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Perfectibility and Techno-Optimism in the Pulp Era 2. Murderous Cars, Space Bikes, and Alien Bicycles in the Golden Age 3. Electric Cars, Auto-Dueling, and Bike Shares in the New Wave 4. Messenger Skateboards and Messenger Bikes in Postcyberpunk 5. Staying Mobile in the Post-Apocalyptic World 6. Kids on Bikes in 1980s Nostalgia Texts ConclusionReviews‘With its broad historic reach, its synthesis of a variety of disparate types of research from a variety of scholarly disciplines, its lucid prose, and its welcome readability, Withers' Futuristic Cars and Space Bicycles offers a significant contribution to both ecocritical discourse and the study of science fiction as a genre.’ - Lisa Swanstrom, University of Utah 'With its broad historic reach, its synthesis of a variety of disparate types of research from a variety of scholarly disciplines, its lucid prose, and its welcome readability, Withers' Futuristic Cars and Space Bicycles offers a significant contribution to both ecocritical discourse and the study of science fiction as a genre.' - Lisa Swanstrom, University of Utah Author InformationJeremy Withers is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Iowa State University. His previous publications include Culture on Two Wheels: The Bicycle in Literature and Film (edited with Daniel P. Shea, University of Nebraska Press) and The War of the Wheels: H. G. Wells and the Bicycle (Syracuse University Press). Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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