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American Science Fiction TV
Star Trek, Stargate, and Beyond
Sales Date: 2005-01-10
304 Pages, 5.50 x 8.50 in
Science fiction TV and the American psyche.
From "The Next Generation" and "The X-Files" to "Farscape" and "Enterprise," science fiction television shows have millions of devoted fans. American Science Fiction TV is the first full-length study of this popular genre. Writing with the clarity of a scholar and the enthusiasm of a fan, Jan Johnson-Smith shows how science fiction television has displaced the Western in the American cultural imagination. As advances in special effects have made science fiction television technically feasible on a more lavish scale than ever before, visual style has become as important as narrative—sometimes even more important—in expressing the meaning of the genre. The main part of the book uses case studies of several key science fiction series, including "Space: Above and Beyond," "StarGate SG-1," and "Babylon 5," to exemplify particular narrative patterns and visual styles. The case studies explore themes such as politics, ideology, race and ethnicity, gender difference, militarism, and the use of science fiction narratives as allegories of present-day social and political concerns. American Science Fiction TV opens an important new area of genre studies and will be of interest to scholars and fans alike.
PART ONE Chapter One: Science Fiction in Context
Origins
Questions of Genre
Creating New Worlds
Formalism and Realism
Science Fiction and Estrangement
The Novum
Post Modernism
The Language of Science Fiction
Themes
Speculative Epics
The Gothic and the Sublime
Chapter Two: Histories: The Frontier, Television, and Televisuality
American History
Creating a Destiny
Mise-en-scence and Special Effects
Television
Location Television
Repetition and Mass Media
Narrative Forms
Suspense
Science Fiction and Television
Televisuality
PART TWO Chapter Three: Yesterday's Enterprise: Representation, Ideology, and Language in Star Trek
Chapter Four: The Sacrifices of Angels: Military History and Ideology
Chapter Five: Wormhole X-Treme! Images of Space and Time
Chapter Six: Between the Darkness and the Light: Babylon 5
JAN JOHNSON-SMITH is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Theory at Bournemouth University's Media School in the U.K.
"An original and significant study. American Science Fiction TV is the first thoroughgoing analysis of the genre. Johnson-Smith writes with both the authority of a scholar and the passion of a genre fan. The book is to be welcomed as an important contribution to TV studies."
~James Chapman, author of Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films
"An original and significant study. American Science Fiction TV is the first thoroughgoing analysis of the genre. Johnson-Smith writes with both the authority of a scholar and the passion of a genre fan. The book is to be welcomed as an important contribution to TV studies."
~James Chapman, author of Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films