British Science Fiction

The article discusses how the emerging genre of American and British science fiction symbolised and expressed Cold War anxieties after 1949. 
It begins by briefly showing how a popular Western symbolised the Berlin Airlift, then considers how several new Sci Fi novels, including "The Martian Chronicles," "The Day of the Triffids," "I am Legend," and "The Bodysnatchers" each respond more precisely to changing Soviet aggression. 
The chief writers explored are Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, John Wyndham, Richard Matheson, Jack Finney, and the television writer Terry Nation.  Connections are drawn between key science fiction novels and public concerns about possible atomic war, espionage fears, future Soviet invasion, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It then suggests a shift in meaning affecting British science fiction from the mid-1950s, with rising fears about the demise of empire, and concerns that European civilisation is waning.  The chief writers discussed in this regard are John Christopher, whose work is linked with the Suez Crisis, & J.G. Ballard's "The Drowned World."  Strong links are also established between several British science fiction novels and William Golding's "Lord of the Flies."
9pp.

Who writes sf and fantasy? How do they perceive their work, and how is it received? The two surveys collected here, carried out in 1989 and 2009, answer these questions, and many more. With in-depth responses from over 120 writers, and detailed analysis, British Science Fiction and Fantasy: Twenty Years, Two Surveys offers a comprehensive view of the state of British science fiction and fantasy, and charts the changes that have taken place in the field over the last two decades.

Analysis of John Christopher's The Death of Grass and John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids as two dystopian, 1950s British SF novels inextricably linked to the time and place in which they were written, and how this affects their portrayals of the disaster's impact on their characters.

This article presents a comparative reading of Egyptian playwright Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm's play Poet on the Moon (1972) and British science-fiction author H. G. Wells' novel The First Men in the Moon (1901). It reveals new insights on al-Ḥakīm's familiarity with Wells and examines his contribution to transnational drama through a discussion of his theater of the mind in the framework of his "intellectual popular non-realism." This article argues that both authors employ allegories of representation to question the limits of scientific knowledge and artistic expression, yet al-Ḥakīm asserts a transnational aesthetics inspired by Sufism to challenge colonial epistemologies. تقدم المقالة مقارنة ببن مسرحية شاعر على القمر (١٩٧٢) للكاتب المسرحي ﺍﻟﻤﺼﺮﻱ توفيق الحكيم ورواية أول رجال على سطح القمر (١٩٠١) لكاتب الخيال العلمي الإنجليزي ﻫ. ج. ويلز. تكشف المقالة أبعاداً جديدة عن إلمام الحكيم بأعمال ويلز، كما تتناول إسهاماته في مجال الدراما عبر -القومية من خلال تحليل مسرحه الذهني في إطار «اللاواقعية الشعبية الفكرية» . ترى المقالة أن كلا الكاتبين ﻳﺴﺘﺨﺪﻡ مجازات التمثيل لمساءلة حدود المعرفة العلمبة والإبداع الفني . ومع ذلك تتحدى جماليات الحكيم المتأثرة بالصوفية الأفكار الاستعمارية من منظور عبر-قومي .

Why study television acting? While works focusing on cinema performance have increased in recent years, small screen drama has been largely neglected – despite the fact that developments in acting style provide as valuable an index of the times and places in which they were created as any other aspect of production. The Changing Spaces of Television Acting addresses this lack by providing an overview of historical changes in performance style from the live era to the present day.

Utilised as case studies are programmes from three diverse eras of television production: The Quatermass Experiment (BBC, 1953), which was transmitted live; Doctor Who (BBC, 1963-89), pre-recorded ‘as live’ on videotape; and Survivors (BBC, 1975-77), which swiftly adopted an Outside Broadcast ‘rehearse/record’ model. Each was also re-made in the 2000s, allowing for both a chronological study and a ‘then-and-now’ comparison of television acting. Archive research into production and reception is combined with textual analysis and interviews with actors and production personnel to examine the effects of the shift from multi-camera studio production to single camera film location work.

The result is the first book to investigate not only changes in acting style for television drama, but also the underlying factors which influenced them, from production process and technology to direction, actor training and experience. Only by fully comprehending the conditions under which performances are produced can we understand and appreciate the resulting acting style; The Changing Spaces of Television Acting is the first book to comprehensively address this neglected area of research.