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Science Fiction and the Future of Criticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Eric S. Rabkin
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Abstract

Science fiction, ranging from films to industrial design to world's fairs, is a cultural system no more confined to literature than love is to love letters. From its self-recognition in 1926, science fiction has involved commercial and social realities most obviously visible in fandom and the hundreds of annual science fiction conventions. This system includes many types of consumers and producers, even collaboratively self-correcting volunteer bibliographers. Collectively, science fiction fandom, the first organized fandom, has created vast informational resources that allow not only reference but also statistical inquiry. The Genre Evolution Project (http://www.umich.edu/~genreevo/) shows that these social structures and resources potentiate, in an age of widespread computer networking, the transformation of criticism from acts of isolated scholars working with narrowly defined subjects to collaborative projects drawing on human and informational resources across disciplinary boundaries. Science fiction points to a future in which criticism will be more systematic, collaborative, and quantitative.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 119 , Issue 3: Special Topic: Science Fiction and Literary Studies: The Next Millennium , May 2004 , pp. 457 - 473
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2004

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