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karnakjr's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
3.25
Vint’s essays here are fine. If anything, they probably need some room to breathe. Divided into 20ish page chapters by theme, Vint sometimes has to breeze by important works in a sentence or two. The sentences are also overtly academic, academic in a way sometimes droll and sometimes dry. I think I might assign some of the chapters for extra credit in my high school sf class next semester, but it’s still not the text book I’ve been looking for.
Vint also gives some works the benefit of the doubt, and others not. She presumes that some stories perpetuate racist, sexist, colonialist, et al. histories, while presuming others are critical of these legacies. Maybe she has criteria for determine this, but if so, it is unclear.
I wish her analysis included more works outside of prose and live action film. Video games get a few brief mentions. Comics, graphic novels, and manga largely ignored. Music has one or two mentions. Animation for children and animation for adults are absent. Sf (of any kind) for children is basically never even mentioned.
Maybe she was just squeezed by the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Format? This is the first of the series I’ve read. I’m not interested in continuing, but I’d check out one of Vint’s more specific books.
claire_e_hutch's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
litprof's review against another edition
informative
fast-paced
4.5
Clear, smart, informative, helpful overview of science fiction. I assigned it in a master's seminar on AI in SF, and the students responded very well.
cythera15's review against another edition
5.0
Wow, I've actually learned so much from reading this book. I started reading this book just so that I can be more prepared to teach a course on science fiction next term. But I am now genuinely interested in pursuing sf as my dissertation topic. Vint explores the history of "sf" (both science and speculative), how the genre changed and grew over time, and gives a lot of interesting theoretical tools to think about the ways that science fiction affects our understanding of the world, ideology, and even the notion of literature/fiction itself. I am thrilled to go read the works that she analyzes/summarizes in this book. Yay!!
elysareadsitall's review against another edition
4.0
This book was informative and interesting. Vint does a great job of discussing a good mix of movies and TV. This book is not a book of recommendations. Instead, Vint explores the themes of sci-fi and how it reflects and predicts society.
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