Mesmerists, Monsters, and Machines: Science Fiction and the Cultures of Science in the Nineteenth CenturyKent State University Press, 2006 - 272 pages A cultural history of science and science fiction Using key canonical science fiction narratives, Mesmerists, Monsters, and Machines examines the intersection of the literary and scientific cultures of the nineteenth century. In this original and refreshing approach to the study of early science fiction, author Martin Willis maintains that science fiction was just as important in defining the culture of the nineteenth century as other critics maintain it was in shaping the twentieth century. Mesmerists, Monsters, and Machines interrogates the cultural implications of scientific development as articulated, challenged, and reformulated by science fiction. Each chapter demonstrates that both science and fiction were vital parts of a culture of imaginative and empirical practices that were continually reacting to, arguing with, and influencing one another throughout the nineteenth century. In an engrossing narrative that cites classic science fiction texts, Willis establishes a timeline for the reader so that the cultural significance of science fiction is understood and its complexity and relevance to the nineteenth century is demonstrated. Those interested in nineteenth-century history and literature, cultural studies, the history of science, and science fiction will welcome this addition to the scholarship. |
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... narration , the deepening mental crisis of Nathaniel , yet another college student , who becomes infatuated by Olympia , another automaton . Beginning with Nathaniel's childhood recollection of his father's alchemical experiments with ...
... narrator describes it : " Vincent , opposite me , with the others , around a little table ; and they were all staring , stiff and mo- tionless like so many statues , in the profoundest silence up at the ceil- ing . The lights were on a ...
... narrator describes them as stiff and statuesque in language that prefigures both the later descriptions of the Talking Turk and of Olympia in " The Sandman . " While there is no suggestion here that the narrator's gathered friends are ...
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Contents
1 | |
28 | |
Mary Shelleys Electric Imagination | 63 |
The Human Experiments of Edgar Allan Poe | 94 |
Vernes DeepSea Investigations on Dry Land | 133 |
Villiers de LIsleAdams Invention of Psychical Research | 169 |
H G Wells in the Laboratory | 201 |
Conclusion The Progress of Literature and Science or A Refrain on Interdisciplinarity | 235 |
Notes | 241 |
Bibliography | 254 |
Index | 265 |