"The critical vocabulary of the mainstream often give short shrift to the fantastic, and scholars of the fantastic have often had to look elsewhere for their critical termionology. Such scholars will find Wolfe's work an excellent resource." Choice

Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Glossary and Guide to Scholarship

Literature & Fiction

Wolfe, Gary K.

History & Criticism

Greenwood

Harlan Ellison : The Edge of Forever

Weil, Ellen

United States

Ohio State University Press

Harlan Ellison: The Edge of Forever is the first book-length critical study of the short stories, novels, and TV and movie scripts of Harlan Ellison, a widely honored contemporary fantasist who has attained near legendary status in the science fiction and fantasy communities. Although Ellison has published over 1,100 short stories and several volumes of criticism and commentary since his career began in the 1950s, and is among the most widely anthologized of living writers (including Best American Short Stories), critical attention to his work has been surprisingly sparse. This study explores all aspects of Ellison's career, examining his various stories and screenplays in the context or their times and of the genres in which he worked, from his early crime stories and gang fiction, to his much honored work in science fiction and television (including Star Trek, The Outer Limits, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour), to his later mature fantasies and narrative experiments. The authors also examine Ellison's relationship to the science fiction genre, which both gave him his widest fame and entrapped him in many ways as both a writer and a public figure. Gary K. Wolfe is professor of Humanities and English and director of the Bachelor of General Studies at Roosevelt University, Chicago. Prior to becoming a successful consultant specializing in the development of corporate retiree volunteer programs, Ellen Weil taught humanities and Holocaust Studies courses at Roosevelt University and the Newberry Library in Chicago.

Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature

In this wide-ranging series of essays, an award-winning science fiction critic explores how the related genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror evolve, merge, and finally "evaporate" into new and more dynamic forms. Beginning with a discussion of how literary readers "unlearned" how to read the fantastic during the heyday of realistic fiction, Gary K. Wolfe goes on to show how the fantastic reasserted itself in popular genre literature, and how these genres themselves grew increasingly unstable in terms of both narrative form and the worlds they portray. More detailed discussions of how specific contemporary writers have promoted this evolution are followed by a final essay examining how the competing discourses have led toward an emerging synthesis of critical approaches and vocabularies. The essays cover a vast range of authors and texts, and include substantial discussions of very current fiction published within the last few years.

Wesleyan University Press

Genre Fiction

In this wide-ranging series of essays, an award-winning science fiction critic explores how the related genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror evolve, merge, and finally "evaporate" into new and more dynamic forms. Beginning with a discussion of how literary readers "unlearned" how to read the fantastic during the heyday of realistic fiction, Gary K. Wolfe goes on to show how the fantastic reasserted itself in popular genre literature, and how these genres themselves grew increasingly unstable in terms of both narrative form and the worlds they portray. More detailed discussions of how specific contemporary writers have promoted this evolution are followed by a final essay examining how the competing discourses have led toward an emerging synthesis of critical approaches and vocabularies. The essays cover a vast range of authors and texts, and include substantial discussions of very current fiction published within the last few years.

Wesleyan

For perhaps two decades, a small group of writers rooted in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror have been simultaneously exploring and erasing the boundaries of those genres by creating fiction of remarkable depth and power. Their connections to the genres they have been radically redefining have, for many of these writers, limited the appreciation of their accomplishments to a specialized readership. For example, though John Crowley and Jonathan Carroll have massive underground reputations, and Peter Straub has written two books with Stephen King and other bestselling novels such as Ghost Story, Koko, and The Throat, many if not most readers of Conjunctions will be unfamiliar with their work. In this haunting and beautiful collection of tales, Crowley, Carroll and Straub join Elizabeth Hand, China Mieville, M. John Harrison, Neil Gaiman and Kelly Link to demonstrate precisely how science fiction, fantasy and horror have been unobtrusively colonizing serious literature during the past 20 years. As an added bonus, science fiction and fantasy experts Gary K. Wolfe and John Clute offer a critical perspective and explain everything in sight. With original cover art by master cartoonist Gahan Wilson.

Conjunctions: 39, The New Wave Fabulists

CLUTE, John

Hand, Elizabeth

Harrison, John

Carroll,Jonathan

Crowley, John.

Straub,Peter

Literary

Bard College

Sightings: Reviews 2002-2006

Beccon Publications

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wolfe, Gary K.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wolfe, Gary K.