Scotland As Science Fiction

Out of the mainstream but ahead of the tide.that is Scottish Science Fiction. Science Fiction emphasizes '¬Sprogress'¬ through technology, advanced mental states, or future times. How does Scotland, often considered a land of the past, lead in Science Fiction? '¬SLeft behind'¬ by international politics, Scots have cultivated alternate places and different times as sites of identity. so that Scotland can seem a futuristic fiction itself. This book explores the tensions between science and a particular society that produce an innovative science fi ction. Essays consider Scottish thermodynamics, Celtic myth, the rigors of religious '¬Sconversion,'¬ Scotland'¬"s fractured politics yet civil society, its languages of alterity (Scots, Gaelic, allegory, poetry), and the lure of the future. From Peter Pan and Dr. Jekyll to the poetry of Edwin Morgan and the worlds of Muriel Spark, Ken Macleod, or Iain M. Banks, Scotland'¬"s creative complex yields a literature that models the future for Science Fiction.

Caroline McCraeken-Flesher is Professor of English at the University of Wyoming. Her recent publications include Possible Scotland's: Walter Scott and the Story of Tomorrow (2005.),The Doctor Dissected: A Cultural Autopsy of the Burke and Hare Murders (2011), and the edited Bucknell volume, Culture, Nation; and the Hew Scottish Parliament (2007).