Science Fiction and Postmodern Fiction: A Genre Study (American University Studies)

In the years after 1950 a new generation of authors began to expand the thematic scope of Science Fiction, while also extending its narrative conventions by introducing ideas from modern psychology and surrealism. Science Fiction shares the new themes - the quest of identity, the relativity of time and consciousness, the overlapping of illusion and reality - with works of modern and especially postmodern fiction. On the other hand, the innovative postmodern fiction of Pynchon, Borges, Vonnegut, and William Burroughs incorporates Science Fiction motifs, thereby blending the two genres. This book, in a series of juxtapositions and contrastive literary analyses, clarifies and questions existing genre borderlines and breaks new ground in the literary theory of postmodern fiction and of Science Fiction.