Age and Ageing in Contemporary Speculative and Science Fiction - (Bloomsbury Studies in the Humanities, Ageing and Later Life) (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Focusing on the contemporary period, this book brings together critical age studies and contemporary science fiction to establish the centrality of age and ageing in dystopian, speculative and science-fiction imaginaries. Analysing texts from Europe, North America and South Asia, as well as television programmes and films, the contributions range from essays which establish genre-based trends in the representation of age and ageing, to very focused studies of particular texts and concerns. As a whole, the volume probes the relationship between speculative/science fiction and our understanding of what it is to be a human in time: the time of our own lives and the times of both the past and the future.

Review Quotes

"Bringing together the critical perspectives of scholars from both SF studies and aging studies, Age and Ageing in Contemporary Science and Speculative Fiction tackles a gap in the study of representations of age, by exploring the possibilities that SF aesthetics afford to capture and reconceive the human experience of time. The variety of theoretical approaches that the contributors employ opens the book up to be used across a range of scholarship, which may further show the centrality of age and aging, rejuvenation, and immortality to SF... It lays a foundation for scholars who would like to further explore SF as a source of new and subversive visions of aging" --Mariana Batista da Cruz, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, Utopian Studies

About the Author

Sarah Falcus is a Reader in Contemporary Literature at the University of Huddersfield, UK. She is interested in the intersection of ageing studies and literary studies, and is the co-author (with Katsura Sako) of Contemporary Narratives of Dementia: Ethics, Ageing, Politics (Routledge, 2019). She has published in journals such as Feminist Review, Women: A Cultural Review and Ageing and Society. She co-edited a special issue of the European Journal of English Studies (2018), focussed on the intersection of English Studies and Ageing Studies. Her current work centres on two main areas: children's literature and ageing; and ageing/the lifecourse in science and speculative fiction. She is the Primary Collaborator on the project 'Ageing and Illness in British and Japanese Children's Picturebooks 1950-2000: Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives', funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. She is the co-director of the Dementia and Cultural Narrative Network.

Maricel Oró-Piqueras is Associate Professor at the Department of English and Linguistics, Universitat de Lleida, Spain. She has been a member of research group Dedal-Lit since it started working on the representation of fictional images of ageing and old age in 2002. Her research interests include ageing and old age in contemporary fiction and representations of gender and ageing in film and TV series. She has co-edited two collections of essays entitled Serializing Age: Aging and Old Age in TV Series (2015, with Anita Wohlmann) and Narratives of Mentorship: Rediscovering (Age)ing (2019, with Núria Casado-Gual and Emma Domínguez-Rué) and a special issue of the European Journal of English Studies with Sarah Falcus (2018). Moreover, she has published her research in national and international journals such as English Studies, The Gerontologist and Journal of Aging Studies.