Anthologies, awards, journals, and works in translation have sprung up to reflect science fiction's increasingly international scope. Yet scholars and students alike face a problem. Where does one begin to explore global SF in the absence of an established canon? Lingua Cosmica opens the door to some of the creators in the vanguard of international science fiction. Eleven experts offer innovative English-language scholarship on figures ranging from Cuban pioneer Daína Chaviano to Nigerian filmmaker Olatunde Osunsanmi to the Hugo Award-winning Chinese writer Liu Cixin. These essays invite readers to ponder the themes, formal elements, and unique cultural characteristics within the works of these irreplaceable—if too-little-known—artists. Dale Knickerbocker includes fantasists and genre-benders pushing SF along new evolutionary paths even as they draw on the traditions of their own literary cultures. Includes essays on Daína Chaviano (Cuba), Jacek Dukaj (Poland), Jean-Claude Dunyac (France), Andreas Eschbach (Germany), Angélica Gorodischer (Argentina), Sakyo Komatsu (Japan), Liu Cixin (China), Laurent McAllister (Yves Meynard and Jean-Louis Trudel, Francophone Canada), Olatunde Osunsanmi (Nigeria), Johanna Sinisalo (Finland), and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (Russia). Contributors: Alexis Brooks de Vita, Pawel Frelik, Yvonne Howell, Yolanda Molina-Gavilán, Vibeke Rützou Petersen, Amy J. Ransom, Hanna-Riikka Roine, Hanna Samola, Mingwei Song, Tatsumi Takayuki, Juan Carlos Toledano Redondo, and Natacha Vas-Deyres.| Cover Title Copyright Contents Introduction / Dale Knickerbocker Daína Chaviano's Science-Fiction Oeuvre: Fables of an Extraterrestrial Grandmother / Juan Carlos Tole Jacek Dukaj's Science Fiction as Philosophy / Paweł Frelik Jean-Claude Dunyach, Poet of the Flesh / Natacha Vas-Deyres Andreas Eschbach's Futures and Germany's Past / Vibeke Rützou Petersen Angélica Gorodischer: Only a Storyteller / Yolanda Molina-Gavilán Sakyo Komatsu's Planetary Imagination: Reading Virus and The Day of Resurrection / Tatsumi Takayuki Liu Cixin's Three-Body Trilogy: Between the Sublime Cosmos and the Micro Era / Mingwei Song Laurent McAllister: Rhizomatic Space and the Posthuman / Amy J. Ransom Olatunde Osunsanmi and Living the Transatlantic Apocalypse: The Fourth Kind / Alexis Brooks de Vita Johanna Sinisalo and the New Weird: Genres and Myths / Hanna-Riikka Roine and Hanna Samola Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: The Science-Fictionality of Russian Culture / Yvonne Howell Contributors Index | "Comprising contributions by recognized critics, Lingua Cosmica is an excellent addition to the current scholarship on non-Anglo-American sf." —Science Fiction Studies
"Highly recommended." —Choice

"Knickerbocker has done a service with this collection of essays not only to fans of science fiction eager to explore new frontiers, but perhaps more importantly to academic at large, which historically has been reluctant to embrace speculative fiction as a serious subject of scholarly study." —Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
|Dale Knickerbocker is Distinguished Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures at East Carolina University. He is the author of Juan José Millás: The Obsessive-Compulsive Aesthetic.