Product Description

Since its emergence in the seventeenth century, science fiction has been a sustained, coherent and subversive check on the promises and pitfalls of science. In their turn, invention and discovery have forced fiction writers to confront the nature and limits of reality. Different Engines traces the way in which we've imagined the future.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #202946 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 250 pages

Review

'An excellent starting point for passionate arguments on fascinating subjects.' www.asimovs.com 
 
'In Different Engines, Professor Mark Brake and Reverend Neil Hook take us on a tour of science fiction through the ages. They show how the genre extends far beyond mere entertainment and often provides a profound exploration of the interface between science and society and the impact that new technologies or discoveries, such as that of alien life, are likely to have.' - Lewis Dartnell, The Astrobiology Society of Britain

From the Author
Revolutions in science, and their reciprocal relationship with science fiction, drive the narrative of The Different Engines. For the first time, discovery and invention delineate the evolution of science fiction:

A Plurality of Habitable Worlds: The Age of Discovery (1500 - 1800); Remembrance of Things To Come: The Mechanical Age (C19th); Pulp Fiction: The Astounding Age (1900 - 1940); Cold War and Heat Death: The Atomic Age (1940s, 1950s); Stranger in a Strange Land: The New Age (1960s, 1970s); Information Wants to be Free: The Computer Age (1980s, 1990s); The Frankenstein Century: The Age of Biology (C21st). Uniquely, each chapter showcases the evolutionary symbiosis of science fiction and science: their common origins identified in The Age of Discovery; the mutual influence of machine, evolution and fiction in The Mechanical Age; the reciprocal refuelling of emergent cosmologies, space opera and real-life space travel anticipated in The Astounding Age; the evolution of bombs and apocalyptic fiction in The Atomic Age; the many worlds, multiverses and alternative histories of quantum theory in The New Age; the prophesised liberating power of the web, and the virtual and tangible realities of AIs, robots and cyborgs in The Computer Age; and fictional projections of our troubled genetically-modified future in The Age of Biology.

About the Author
Professor Mark Brake holds a chair in science communication at the University of Glamorgan where he founded a unique degree program on the historical interplay between space, science and culture. As an astrobiology and science fiction expert, he appears on and writes for TV and radio most weeks, including BBC, Sky Movies and the Discovery Channel; he is a consultant to the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle and the Australian Centre for Astrobiology. A founder member of NASA's Astrobiology Institute Communication Group, Mark feels we'll only settle the life on Mars debate by visiting the surface with a shovel.

Reverend Neil Hook is Associate Lecturer in Science Fiction at the University of Glamorgan and an Anglican priest in the Welsh mountains. Neil's research focuses on 17th and 18th century science fiction. His international lecturing and writing on these subjects was recently profiled in the BBC's Science Fiction Britannia series. He spends his academic life reminding people that science fiction is fun and shouldn't be taken seriously and his parish work reminding people that God is fun and should be taken seriously.

Customer Reviews

A great overview of the crossovers between science and fiction
If you want an informative, pacy book about the crossovers and influences that have focussed science and literature since the 18th century, this is it. Written in a flowing easy to read style with an injection of humour and wit, Different Engines is an ideal introduction for savants of SF, whether academics or the occasional reader, to the way both fields have exchanged information or fed directly across cultural boundaries.

Each chapter looks at a particular revolution in science or technology and examines how both fields have approached common problems and extrapolated their potential and outcomes into the larger human experience. Many of these "what if" scenarios are useful indicators of the fears of their age in addition to being a guide to some of the best literature and media dealing with the problems of those times.

I would thoroughly recommend this book.

It's science, but not as we know it
I agree with NewScientist, 'Different Engines' is not meant to be a dry encyclopedic or academic book. The book has taken all the best bits of science fiction's speculations on science and bottled them in a book. It's a great romp, a page-turner which is meant to be thought-provoking and entertaining. It does the job very well.

Good but jumbled
I liked this book, however there were elements that really annoyed me, once you've been told something has happened (ie to a person, or in history) you don't need to be told again and again, however this book does, maybe it's because it's written by more than one author and possibly not reviewed very well by the publisher et al.
That said, the information itself is good, there were definitely lots of things I didn't know about with reference to science and science fiction and lots of references that gave me food for thought and a want to learn more.

Berni