Alternate history is a genre of fiction that, although connected to science fiction, has its own rich history and lineage. With its roots in the writings of ancient Rome, alternate history matured into something close to its current form in the essays and novels of the nineteenth century. In more recent years a number of highly acclaimed novels have been published as alternate histories, by authors ranging from bestselling science fiction writers to Pulitzer prize-winning literary icons. The popularity of the genre is reflected in its success on television, where original concepts have been developed alongside adaptations of classic texts such as Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle.

This collection of essays, by both leading scholars in the field and rising stars, seeks to redress an imbalance between the importance and quality of alternate history texts and the available critical scholarship on the genre. The essays acknowledge the long and distinctive history of alternate history whilst also revelling in its vitality, adaptability, and contemporary relevance.

Sport and Monstrosity in Science Fiction examines fantastic representations of sport in science fiction, both cataloguing this almost entirely unexamined literary tradition and arguing that the reason for its neglect reflects a more widespread social suspicion of the athletic body as monstrous. Combining scholarship of monstrosity with a biopolitically focused philosophy of embodiment, this work plumbs the depths of our abjection of the athletic body and challenges us to reconsider sport as an intersectional space. In this latter endeavour it contradicts the image presented by both the most dystopian films such as Deathrace and Rollerball as well as social criticism of sport that limits its focus to an essentially violent masculinity. The book traces an alternative tradition of sport sf through authors as diverse as Arthur C. Clarke, Steven Barnes, and Joan Slonczewski, exploring the way the intersectional categories of gender, race, and age in these works are negotiated in, for example, a solar wind sailing race or futuristic anti-gravity boxing. These complex athletic bodies display the social mobility that sport allows and challenge us to acknowledge our own monstrously animal bodies and our place in a "cycle of living and dying."

Ranging across novels and poetry, critical theory and film, comics and speeches, Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War: Representations of Nuclear Weapons and Post-Apocalyptic Worlds explores how writers, thinkers, and filmmakers have answered the following question: are nuclear weapons "white"? Many texts respond in the affirmative, and arraign nuclear weapons for defending a racial order that privileges whiteness. They are seen as a reminder that the power enjoyed by the white western world imperils the whole of the Earth. Furthermore, the struggle to survive during and after a speculated nuclear attack is often cast as a contest between races and ethnic groups. Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War listens to voices from around the Anglophone world and the debates followed do not only take place on the soil of the nuclear powers. Filmmakers and writers from the Caribbean, Australia, and India take up positions shaped by their specific place in the decolonizing world and their particular experience of nuclear weapons.The texts considered in Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War encompass the many guises of representations of nuclear weapons: the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic weapons, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear tests taking place around the world, and the anxiety surrounding the superpowers' devastating arsenals. Of particular interest to SF scholars are the extensive analyses of films, novels, and short stories depicting nuclear war and its aftermath. New thoughts are offered on the major texts that SF scholars often return to, such as Philip Wylie's Tomorrow! and Pat Frank's Alas Babylon, and a host of little known and under-researched texts are scrutinized too.An Open Access edition of this work is available on the OAPEN Library.