À l’occasion de la sortie de l’anthologie d’articles Vintage Visions réunie par Arthur B. Evans, le carnet propose une page de ressources sur l’étude du merveilleux scientifique et de la proto-science-fiction. Avant l’apparition du terme forgé par Hugo Gernsback, les romans de Jules Verne, de H. G. Wells et d’autres auteurs pavent la voie du genre, notamment à travers le  merveilleux scientifique théorisé par Maurice Renard. Parfois regroupé sous le nom de science-fiction archaïque ou de proto-science-fiction, cette science-fiction avant la lettre, déjà bien étudiée, continue de susciter les recherches et faire naître les travaux d’érudition. Cette page présente ainsi une bibliographie et une sitographie, dont la richesse témoigne de la vitalité de ces études. Vous pouvez réparer les oublis ou erreurs dans les commentaires.

Dans sa collection « Early Classics of Science Fiction », Wesleyan University Press publie le 24 juin 2014 Vintage Visions: Essays on Early Science Fiction, 448 p.

En pré-lecture, l’écrivain Bruce Sterling avait déjà partagé quelques citations fascinantes d’auteurs anciens, dans un premier billet puis un second de sa chronique dans la revue Wired.

Présentation de l’éditeur :

Vintage Visions is a seminal collection of scholarly essays on early works of science fiction and its antecedents. From Cyrano de Bergerac in 1657 to Olaf Stapledon in 1937, this anthology focuses on an unusually broad range of authors and works in the genre as it emerged across the globe, including the United States, Russia, Europe, and Latin America. The book includes material that will be of interest to both scholars and fans, including an extensive bibliography of criticism on early science fiction—the first of its kind—and a chronological listing of 150 key early works. Before Dr. Strangelove, future-war fiction was hugely popular in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Before Terminator, a French author depicted Thomas Edison as the creator of the perfect female android. These works and others are featured in this critical anthology.

Table des matières :

• Preface
• Sylvie Romanowski, Cyrano de Bergerac’s Epistemological Bodies: “Pregnant with a Thousand Definitions” (1998, with an afterword by Ishbel Addyman)
• Paul K. Alkon, Samuel Madden’s Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1985)
• William B. Fischer, German Theories of Science Fiction: Jean Paul, Kurd Lasswitz, and After (1976)
• Josh Bernatchez, Monstrosity, Suffering, Subjectivity, and Sympathetic Community in Frankenstein and “The Structure of Torture” (2009)
• Arthur B. Evans, Science Fiction vs. Scientific Fiction in France: From Jules Verne to J.-H. Rosny Aîné (1988)
• I.F. Clarke, Future-War Fiction: The First Main Phase, 1871–1900 (1997, with an afterword by Margaret Clarke)
• Allison de Fren, The Anatomical Gaze in Tomorrow’s Eve (2009)
• Andrea Bell, Desde Júpiter: Chile’s Earliest Science-Fiction Novel (1995)
• Rachel Haywood Ferreira, The First Wave: Latin American Science Fiction Discovers Its Roots (2007)
• Nicholas Ruddick, “Tell Us All About Rosebery”: Topicality and Temporality in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine (2001)
• Kamila Kinyon, The Phenomenology of Robots: Confrontations with Death in Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. (1999)
• Patrick A. McCarthy, Zamyatin and the Nightmare of Technology (1984)
• Gary Westfahl, “The Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe Type of Story”: Hugo Gernsback’s History of Science Fiction (1992)
• William J. Fanning, Jr., The Historical Death Ray and Science Fiction in the 1920s and 1930s (2010)
• Susan Gubar, C.L. Moore and the Conventions of Women’s Science Fiction (1980, with an afterword by Veronica Hollinger)
• Stanislaw Lem, On Stapledon’s Star Maker (1987, with an afterword by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.)
• 150 Key Works of Early Science Fiction
• Bibliography of Criticism on Early Science Fiction
• Contributors

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