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This book is about the human desire to experiment with empire. In the past it was done with real soldiers and expeditions and slaves and trade and misery and force. In the future it will be done with generation ships and off-world pioneers, robots and invasion, electronic sheep and people who just don’t want to be pushed around any more. Beginning with a discussion of who ‘we’ are (hopefully, the good guys) and who ‘they’ are (anyone who isn’t us), this narrative scans the lights of science fiction looking at the places where humans try to touch a variety of futures. Is SF designed to purge our dark imperialistic fantasies, or is it a laboratory of mind-experiments: carefully considered trials of political, social and economic scenarios? Which tomorrow are we more likely to accept – where the blood of empire is red or read ? Examining such classic SF texts as Lasswitz’s Two Planets and Wells’ The War of the Worlds, this book investigates Asimov’s Robots and Heinlein’s Moon, as well as Robinson’s Mars and Banks’ postcolonial Culture. We see the rise-and-fall of empire through the eyes of Miller, Clarke and Wyndham, and the apparently inevitable failure of the imperial project as discussed in Solaris, The Dispossessed and The Forever War. This book offers an insight into the darkest power abuses of mankind; where the oppression, silencing and marginalisation of those who are not-us continues and flourishes. Who are the monsters of our future – the Others invading from another planet, or the unseen and unrecognised Other within?

Science fiction, English --- Science fiction, American --- Imperialism in literature. --- History and criticism.

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British imperialism's favorite literary narrative might seem to be conquest. But real British conquests also generated a surprising cultural obsession with suffering, sacrifice, defeat, and melancholia. "There was," writes John Kucich, "seemingly a different crucifixion scene marking the historical gateway to each colonial theater." In Imperial Masochism, Kucich reveals the central role masochistic forms of voluntary suffering played in late-nineteenth-century British thinking about imperial politics and class identity. Placing the colonial writers Robert Louis Stevenson, Olive Schreiner, Rudyard Kipling, and Joseph Conrad in their cultural context, Kucich shows how the ideological and psychological dynamics of empire, particularly its reorganization of class identities at the colonial periphery, depended on figurations of masochism. Drawing on recent psychoanalytic theory to define masochism in terms of narcissistic fantasies of omnipotence rather than sexual perversion, the book illuminates how masochism mediates political thought of many different kinds, not simply those that represent the social order as an opposition of mastery and submission, or an eroticized drama of power differentials. Masochism was a powerful psychosocial language that enabled colonial writers to articulate judgments about imperialism and class. The first full-length study of masochism in British colonial fiction, Imperial Masochism puts forth new readings of this literature and shows the continued relevance of psychoanalysis to historicist studies of literature and culture.

English fiction --- Masochism in literature. --- Social classes in literature. --- Imperialism in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Great Britain --- Colonies --- History --- Imperialism in literature --- Masochism in literature --- Social classes in literature --- History and criticism

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In this innovative study Julia M. Wright addresses rarely asked questions: how and why does one colonized nation write about another? Wright focuses on the way nineteenth-century Irish writers wrote about India, showing how their own experience of colonial subjection and unfulfilled national aspirations informed their work. Their writings express sympathy with the colonised or oppressed people of India in order to unsettle nineteenth-century imperialist stereotypes, and demonstrate their own opposition to the idea and reality of empire. Drawing on Enlightenment philosophy, studies of nationalism, and postcolonial theory, Wright examines fiction by Maria Edgeworth and Lady Morgan, gothic tales by Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde, poetry by Thomas Moore and others, as well as a wide array of non-fiction prose. In doing so she opens up new avenues in Irish studies and nineteenth-century literature.

Colonies in literature --- English literature --- Imperialism in literature --- Nationalism in literature --- British literature --- Inklings (Group of writers) --- Nonsense Club (Group of writers) --- Order of the Fancy (Group of writers) --- Irish authors&delete& --- History and criticism --- India --- Ireland --- In literature. --- Nationalism in literature. --- Colonies in literature. --- Imperialism in literature. --- Irish authors --- History and criticism. --- Arts and Humanities --- Literature

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"This book considers the shifts in aesthetic representation over the period 1885-1930 that coincide both with the rise of literary Modernism and imperialism's high point. If it is no coincidence that the rise of the novel accompanied the expansion of empire in the eighteenth-century, then the historical conditions of fiction as the empire waned are equally pertinent. Peter Childs argues that modernist literary writing should be read in terms of its response and relationship to events overseas and that it should be seen as moving towards an emergent post-colonialism instead of struggling with a residual colonial past. Beginning by offering an analysis of the generational and gender conflict that spans art and empire in the period, Childs moves on to examine modernism's expression of a crisis of belief in relation to subjectivity, space, and time. Finally, he investigates the war as a turning point in both colonial relations and aesthetic experimentation. Each of the core chapters focuses on one key writer and discuss a range of others, including: Conrad, Lawrence, Kipling, Eliot, Woolf, Joyce, Conan Doyle and Haggard."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

English fiction --- Modernism (Literature) --- Literature and history --- Imperialism in literature. --- Colonies in literature. --- Postcolonialism in literature. --- History and literature --- History and poetry --- Poetry and history --- History --- Crepuscolarismo --- Literary movements --- History and criticism.

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British --- British --- Colonies in literature. --- English literature --- Imperialism in literature. --- Politics and literature --- Politics and literature --- Renaissance --- Travel in literature. --- Travel writing --- Travelers' writings, English --- History --- History --- History and criticism --- History --- History --- History. --- History and criticism.