Defined by a Hollow

This volume incorporates Darko Suvin's thinking on utopian horizons in fiction and on eutopian and dystopian readings of historical reality since the 1970s. While the focus is on the United States and the United Kingdom, the essays also draw on French, German and Russian sources. The book is composed of eighteen chapters, including four sets of poems. The chapters include heretic reflections on utopian fiction, science fiction and utopian studies, explorations of dystopias, and epistemological examinations of political standpoint. Throughout, plebeian history is the stance from which all the author's value judgements are made. The essays and poems engage with the empirical world and identify areas of hope. In a dark dystopian time, they reaffirm eutopia, the radically better place to be striven for in every here and now.

The Author: Darko Suvin is Professor Emeritus of McGill University and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has written thirteen books and hundreds of essays in the areas of utopian and science fiction, comparative literature, dramaturgy, theory of literature, theatre and cultural theory. He has also published three award-winning volumes of poetry.