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Winners: Classical Traditions in Science Fiction
Sorry for posting this so late but it took some time to gather all our contestant’s names. We had 282 retweets and blog comments total! To pick our winners we assigned each contestant a number then used a random number generator to pick out 2 winners.
Our first place winner is:
Cathy S @SeeCat42
who will receive a hardcover copy of CTSF.
Our second place winner is:
Marie&Jason @WholesomelySpun
who will get a paperback copy.
Our Congrats to you both!
Many thanks to Brett M. Rogers and Benjamin Eldon Stevens and to their publisher Oxford University Press for making this contest possible. If you did not win, never fear – Classical Traditions in Science Fiction is available for purchase as an eBook right now and will be out in dead tree form on February 9th. If you appreciate this kind of scholarly work in genre fiction please show that appreciation by buying a copy for yourself. Let the publishers out there know that there is a desire for these kinds of works in our community.
Thank you to everyone who participated in our retweet contest! Until next time, read on.
Book Giveaway: Classical Traditions in Science Fiction Edited by Brett M. Rogers & Benjamin Eldon Stevens
It’s been some time since we last ran a book giveaway contest but we’re back now with a doozy. Instead of our typical fiction offering we’ve got something a little more highbrow for you this time: Classical Traditions in Science Fiction edited by Brett M. Rogers & Benjamin Eldon Stevens from Oxford University Press. CTSF is the first collection dedicated to the rich study of science fiction’s classical heritage, offering a much-needed mapping of its cultural and intellectual terrain. Told you it was highbrow.
We have 2 copies to give away: our first place winner will receive a hardcover copy, worth $89.10, and our second place winner will receive a paperback copy. As always, we’ve made it super easy to enter. All you have to do is re-tweet this tweet:
Book Giveaway: Classical Traditions in Science Fiction http://t.co/Cf3VSjT5ce Retweet for your chance to win! pic.twitter.com/Va0g3cCexd
— Worlds Without End (@WWEnd) January 26, 2015
or comment here in the blog and you’re in – easy peasy. Do both and double your chances! We’ll have a random drawing and announce the winners next Monday so tweet away and don’t forget to tell your friends.
So now you know about the contest I’ll leave it for Brett and Ben to tell you about their book.
From its very beginning to its most recent moments, modern science fiction (SF) has looked back to Greek and Roman antiquity as a source of inspiration for ideas, images, and important questions. Classical Traditions in Science Fiction (CTSF) looks at some of the ways in which SF has looked to the future in part by looking back.
For example, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), arguably the starting point of SF, is subtitled “Or, The Modern Prometheus,” referring to the ancient myth of the Titan who stole fire, a symbol of technology, and gave it to humankind. The subsequent punishment of both Prometheus and humankind in the myth, like the consequences for creator and creature in Shelley’s haunting novel, suggests that our relationship to technology is a complicated one: even as we are awestruck by what we can do, we are asked to wonder how science and technology may affect our humanity. (Frankenstein is discussed at length in CTSF chapter two, while Prometheus is treated in the introduction, excerpted here, and in a related post on OUPblog.)
Likewise, nearly two hundred years later, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games Trilogy (2008-2010 as books, ongoing in films) asks how much we might give up so as to have access to technology of a different sort: in the pursuit of safety and security in society, are we sacrificing essential liberties? Collins invites us to ask this question by imagining a future version of the United States of America modeled on visions of ancient Imperial Rome, in which the ethically shallow excesses of a small libertine class are built on systems of oppressive, militaristic exploitation and control. Will our future thus resemble, in undesirable ways, the ancient past? (The Hunger Games are treated in CTSF chapter 13.)
In these two examples and many others, SF turns to ancient Greek and Roman mythology, literature, history, and art to raise questions about what it means to be human in an increasingly technoscientific world. At the deepest level, that connection matters because the methods by which we reconstruct the ancient past is much like how we speculate about the future: in both cases, we work to imagine a world in ways unlike our own… so as to see our own world, our present, more clearly.
We hope all of this is as fascinating to other readers of SF (and fantasy!) as it is for us. Check out the book, available now on sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes; visit the book’s facebook page for excerpts, related events, and more; and attend our upcoming conference on “The Once and Future Antiquity,” March 27th-29th at the University of Puget Sound. We’re also very happy to answer questions and have conversations at classicalreceptions@gmail.com!
Our thanks to Brett and Ben and the folks at Oxford University Press for the opportunity to bring this exciting new work to our fans attention. Best of luck to everyone!
