AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.
Create a link to this page
Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:
A MARVELLOUS ENTREE.(Review)
French Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Pulp Fiction: A Guide to Cinema, Television, Radio, Animation, Comic Books and Literature, by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier; McFarland and Company, 2000, US$95.
THIS HUGE and comprehensive book is an extraordinary achievement that deserves to be well own. It covers all the varieties of "speculative fiction" in France, in a variety of media, throughout the centuries, and what it demonstrates above all is just how pervasive and deep is its influence in French culture, despite a belief outside--and often inside--France that the French are "no good at" the speculative and the fantastical. People often seem to imagine that French "clarity and logic" militate against it; but nothing could be further from the truth. This is a deep undercurrent in French culture, and the two authors are to be commended for their exploration of it in all its minutiae.
France indeed could be said to have started at least one of the genres of speculative fiction: fantasy, which traces its roots directly back to the chanson de geste and the medieval romance, and the work of such writers as Chretien de Troyes and Marie de France. The romance was a unique development in the history of speculative fiction, because though it used folktale, fairytale and mythical elements, it combined them in new ways, and developed characters so that they became more than archetypes. The lightness of touch, freshness, worldly wit and psychological enquiry which the medieval authors also brought to their explorations of mostly Celtic motifs has stayed as an abiding characteristic of fantasy in France.
The great Charles Perrault and his cohort, Madame d'Aulnoy and so on, reintroduced also to high society the appeal of fairytales, which before then had been thought to be of only peasant interest, and in the nineteenth century, "le fantastique" combined with adventure and science fiction to produce a most extraordinary Golden Age of speculative fiction in France. Of course, in modern times heroic fantasy has rather taken a back seat in France, but, due mainly to the success of translated fantasy novels starting a small revival in French-language fantasy too, this has been changing in recent years, and today the ...
- Speculative fiction is now big business.
- Press release article from: PR Newswire September 16, 1988 700+ words
SPECULATIVE FICTION IS NOW BIG BUSINESS LOS ANGELES...American book publishing industry, speculative fiction has come of age. Science fiction...encompassed by the term speculative fiction -- have grown to form a significant...
- Ann Howey.(Special Section)(on speculative fiction studies)(Essay)
- Magazine article from: Extrapolation Howey, Ann March 22, 2009 700+ words
...of scholarship in the field of speculative fiction, then one aspect that particularly...reflection is the relationship between speculative fiction and young people's culture. Like speculative fiction, the study of young people...
- Zona Gale's Friendship Village: expanding the scope of feminist fabulation and...
- Magazine article from: Extrapolation Abate, Michelle Ann March 22, 2008 700+ words
...critics have connected her with either speculative fiction or feminist fabulation. In keeping...twentieth century sf deployments of speculative fiction. In the pages that follow, I seek...puts a new spin on the genres of speculative fiction and feminist fabulation. Traditionally...
- Graham Murphy.(Special Section)(on studies in speculative fiction)(Essay)
- Magazine article from: Extrapolation Murphy, Graham March 22, 2009 700+ words
...criticism in the field of speculative fiction." It sounds like a presupposition of a stable field--"speculative fiction"--around which scholarship...criticism in the field of speculative fiction" is its ability to address...
- Graham Sleight.(Special Section)(on studies in speculative fiction)(Essay)
- Magazine article from: Extrapolation Sleight, Graham March 22, 2009 700+ words
...criticism in the field of speculative fiction" is that, to an extent...to use that term. "Speculative fiction," rather than "science...excitement in the contemporary speculative fiction field. Secondly, I...
- Sharyn November, editor: Firebirds Soaring: An Anthology of Original...
- Magazine article from: The Horn Book Magazine Gross, Claire E. July 1, 2009 700+ words
...An Anthology of Original Speculative Fiction; illus. by Mike Dringenberg...School, High School) The "speculative fiction" label of this latest Firebirds...label-defying canon of speculative fiction.
- Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora.(Review)
- Magazine article from: African American Review Jenkins, Candice M. December 22, 2000 700+ words
...R. Thomas, ed. Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. New York: Warner...any being produced today. That Thomas uses "speculative" fiction, rather than science fiction, or SF, in her...
- Plagues, apocalypses, and bug-eyed monsters; how speculative fiction shows us...
- Magazine article from: Reference & Research Book News May 1, 2007 700+ words
...Plagues, apocalypses, and bug-eyed monsters; how speculative fiction shows us our nightmares. Urbanski, Heather. McFarland...effects bonanzas. She evaluates the basic themes of speculative fiction and how they relate to modern human preoccupations, including...
Source: HighBeam Research, A MARVELLOUS ENTREE.(Review)