Tag: 2017
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Bowler, Peter J., A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H. G. Wells to Isaac Asimov
Peter J. Bowler, A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H. G. Wells to Isaac Asimov (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) 298 p. $20.00 PDF, £59.99 Hb. £19.99 Pb. ISBN: 9781107148734 Peter Bowler starts A History of the Future by making two key arguments in the opening two chapters. Firstly, that it is…
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Haynes, Roslynn D., From Madman to Crime Fighter: The Scientist in Western Culture
Roslynn D. Haynes, From Madman to Crime Fighter: The Scientist in Western Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017) 424 pp. 23 halftones. $34.95 Pb. ISBN: 9781421423043 From Madman to Crime Fighter is actually a version of a book that first appeared in 1994 under the title From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature.…
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McDowell, Paula, The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Paula McDowell, The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017) 368 pp. 25 halftones. $45.00 Hb. ISBN:9780226456966 The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain is a wide-ranging and well-grounded investigation into the impact of print on eighteenth-century understandings of orality. McDowell…
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Quiroga, Rodrigo Quian, The Forgetting Machine: Memory, Perception, and the Jennifer Aniston Neuron
Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, The Forgetting Machine: Memory, Perception, and the Jennifer Aniston Neuron (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, Inc., 2017) 170 pp. $14.95 Pb. ISBN: 9781944648541 Quiroga begins his exploration of memory by relating a key scene from the film Bladerunner (1982) which posits a world with synthetic humans, known as replicants. They are gifted with…
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Calvert, Bronwen, Being Bionic: The World of TV Cyborgs
Bronwen Calvert, Being Bionic: The World of TV Cyborgs (London: I. B. Tauris 2017 ) £14.99 Pb. ISBN 978-1-78453-648-0 In Being Bionic, Bronwen Calvert, an associate lecturer with the Open University, begins by introducing us to a famous cyborg example, that of the Borg in the long-running TV series Star Trek. They were first introduced…
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Brant, Clare, Balloon Madness: Flights of Imagination in Britain, 1783-1786
Clare Brant, Balloon Madness: Flights of Imagination in Britain, 1783-1786 (Mantlesham: Boydell and Brewer 2017) 366 pp. £25.00 HB. ISBN: 9781783272532 Clare Brant’s Balloon Madness covers the years 1783-1786, when Britain became fascinated with aeronautical balloons. The ‘balloon madness’ spread through all levels of society and, seemingly, almost every sphere of British culture. Brant’s book…
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Lin, Lana, Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer
Lana Lin, Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017) 224 pp. £22.00 Pb. ISBN: 9780823277728 For years after its surgical removal, the literary theorist Roland Barthes retained a piece of his own rib in a drawer alongside other items of sentimental value (e.g., an…
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Tilley, Heather, Blindness and Writing: From Wordsworth to Gissing
Heather Tilley, Blindness and Writing: From Wordsworth to Gissing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) 294 p. £80.00 PDF, £75.00 Hb. ISBN: 9781107194212 Blindness and Writing: From Wordsworth to Gissing ushers in a new way of understanding ocularcentric constructs of blindness and new writing technologies for blind people during the nineteenth century. Heather Tilley’s study…
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Brown, Nathan, The Limits of Fabrication: Materials Science, Materialist Poetics
Nathan Brown, The Limits of Fabrication: Materials Science, Materialist Poetics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017) 312 pp. £30.00 Hb. ISBN: 9780823272990 Nathan Brown’s The Limits of Fabrication is based an analogy between poetics and material science. These practices are united, in Brown’s view, by a shared concern with ‘fabrication’ and material limits: in their…
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Morgan, Benjamin, The Outward Mind: Materialist Aesthetics in Victorian Science
Benjamin Morgan, The Outward Mind: Materialist Aesthetics in Victorian Science and Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017) 368 pp. £26.00 Pb. ISBN: 9780226462202 Benjamin Morgan’s The Outward Mind: Materialist Aesthetics in Victorian Science and Literature undertakes a compelling and persuasive analysis of the somewhat obscure but nonetheless engaging relationship between aesthetics and science in the Victorian period.…
