The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas

The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas provides novel insight into the rapidly developing genre of science fiction. In contemporary film, science fiction is a key locus both for displaying and for imaginatively addressing social and cultural issues. Today, popular modes of this cinema have transformed the nature of the genre, directly incorporating pressing concerns about racial tensions, the environment, and gender inequality, among other cultural and social issues. This volume defines these new modes as slant forms of science fiction, changing a genre most often associated with the icons of science and technology into a substantially new range of science fiction cinemas.

This handbook presents two groups of essays, both of which explore what these new science fiction cinemas address and how viewers can better navigate these films. The first group of essays provides a contextual and historical definition for a selection of slant types, featuring analyses of examples such as Afrofuturism, biopunk cinema, feminist science fiction, heterotopic spaces, and superhero cinema. The second group offers a broader theoretical vantage on some of the critical and revolutionary slants informing contemporary science fiction, including topics like bioethics, cult behaviors, gender and queer theory, and posthumanism. From exploring new theoretical approaches to highlighting new cultural attitudes, this volume presents the science fiction cinema not only as a flexible and adaptable process, but also as a reflection of contemporary culture's own evolution.

J. P. Telotte is Professor Emeritus of Film and Media Studies at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the co-editor of the journal Post Script, and has published widely on film and television, with a special emphasis on science fiction media. His most recent publications include Robot Ecology, Animating the Science Fiction Imagination, and Movies, Modernism, and the Science Fiction Pulps.

I. Introduction
1. Slant Screens, Slant Screenings, J. P. Telotte

II. The Slant Screens of New Science Fiction Cinema
2. Afrofuturist Cinema, De Witt Douglas Kilgore
3. Biopunk, Lars Schmeink
4. Cli-Fi Film, Mark Bould
5. Ethno-Gothic Cinema, Susana Morris
6. Femspec Science Fiction, Susan George
7. Heterotopias, Joan Gordon
8. Kaiju Film, Bradley Schauer
9. Magical Realism Science Fiction, Gerald Duchovnay
10. Steampunk, Thomas Lamarre
11. Superhero Science Fiction, Angela Ndalianis

III. New Slants on the Science Fiction Film
12. The Anthropocene/Ecosophy, Gerry Canavan
13. Bioethics/Biopolitics, Sherryl Vint
14. Cult Behaviors, Jeffrey Weinstock
15. Digital Science Fictions, Charles Tryon
16. Feminist Materialism, Frances McDonald
17. Object-Oriented Ontology, Levi R. Bryant
18. Posthumanism, J. P. Telotte
19. Queer Cinema, Catherine Constable and Matt Denny
20. Utopianism, Caroline Edwards

IV. A Select Slant Screens Filmography