We Modern People (Early Classics of Science Fiction (Hardcover)) - Hardcover

Banerjee, Anindita

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0819573337 ISBN 13: 9780819573339

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Science fiction emerged in Russia considerably earlier than its English version and instantly became the hallmark of Russian modernity. We Modern People investigates why science fiction appeared here, on the margins of Europe, before the genre had even been named, and what it meant for people who lived under conditions that Leon Trotsky famously described as """"combined and uneven development."""" Russian science fiction was embraced not only in literary circles and popular culture, but also by scientists, engineers, philosophers, and political visionaries. Anindita Banerjee explores the handful of well-known early practitioners, such as Briusov, Bogdanov, and Zamyatin, within a much larger continuum of new archival material comprised of journalism, scientific papers, popular science texts, advertisements, and independent manifestos on social transformation. In documenting the unusual relationship between Russian science fiction and Russian modernity, this book offers a new critical perspective on the relationship between science, technology, the fictional imagination, and the consciousness of being modern.

About this title

Review:

"Banerjee uncovers the secret history of early Russian science fiction, and how SF tied in with Russians' obsessions with modernity...."--io9

Science"

LA Review of Books"

We Modern People uses a breathtaking variety of sources, including everything from political pamphlets to portraits of Lenin, scientific and philosophical treatises, cinema, popular journals, and political pronouncements to expand not only the concept of science fiction itself but also its role in the evolution of modern social and political thought. Banerjee s selection of fascinating novels, poetry, film, and art combines with her discussion of some of the scientific work and political thought going on in that period. This approach effectively illuminates her provocative main theme: that Russian science fiction of this period was in many ways not only richer and more exciting than its contemporary Western equivalents but also dynamically linked with the formation of modern Russian consciousness in general. Susan Napier, "LA Review of Books""

Banerjee is eloquent on the Western cultural and scientific influences including Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Georges Cuvier, Lord Kelvin, Friedrich Nietzsche and Henri Bergson, and not least the Lumiere brothers and Georges Melies who informed this shift in consciousness. Banerjee s genuinely valuable contention is that science fiction unified the traditional discourse of Orthodox utopianism with modernism s radical spiritual potential. She convincingly traces the continuities between Enlightenment scientists such as Mikhail Lomonosov and avant-garde irrationalists like Velimir Khlebnikov, marshaling in support an impressive battery of Western critical theorists, from Foucault to Lefebvre. Muireann Maguire, Times Literary Supplement"

We Modern Peopleuses a breathtaking variety of sources, including everything from political pamphlets to portraits of Lenin, scientific and philosophical treatises, cinema, popular journals, and political pronouncements to expand not only the concept of science fiction itself but also its role in the evolution of modern social and political thought. Banerjee s selection of fascinating novels, poetry, film, and art combines with her discussion of some of the scientific work and political thought going on in that period. This approach effectively illuminates her provocative main theme: that Russian science fiction of this period was in many ways not only richer and more exciting than its contemporary Western equivalents but also dynamically linked with the formation of modern Russian consciousness in general. Susan Napier, LA Review of Books"

Banerjee s book does much to challenge preconceptions about Russian science fiction and science in Russian culture more generally. In particular, it rightly cautions against the binary division of SF scenarios into utopias and dystopias or seeing early Russian SF through the prism of its post-war Soviet equivalent. Michael Froggatt, Slavonica"

Cornell University Professor Anindita Banerjee uncovers the secret history of early Russian science fiction, and how SF tied in with Russians' obsessions with modernity, in her new book We Modern People: Science Fiction and the Making of Russian Modernity. We're lucky enough to feature this exclusive excerpt, dealing with the founding of Nature and People and early writers such as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Yevgeny Zamyatin. io9"

162 pages of chiseled thinking and no padding. ...We Modern People...does the hard work of a path-breaking book. ... In short, Banerjee s book is a very, very smart one, and it is right on time. Yvonne Howell, Times Higher Education Supplement"

A book of substantial scholarship, We Modern People is an important book for both science fiction studies and Russian studies, with major elements that will appeal to those who study utopia, the development of the early twentieth century, and literature. Clifford Cunningham, Sun News Network"

About the Author:

ANINDITA BANERJEE is an associate professor of comparative literature at Cornell University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0819573337
• ISBN 13: 9780819573339
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 230