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No Cure for the Future Disease and Medicine in Science Fiction and Fantasy
Gary Westfahl, George Slusser
ISBN: 0-313-31707-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-31707-1
192 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 9/30/2002
List Price: $102.95 (UK Sterling Price: £71.95)
Availability: Print on demand
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: Speculations about new medical advances have been a crucial aspect of science fiction since its origins in the 19th century, when such novels as Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau provided powerful mythic images of doctors with godlike abilities to create and transform human life. This book is the first full-length study of the speculative literature of medicine, with contributions by two science fiction novelists and several noted scholars. Chapters examine how science fiction stories have commented on and influenced the medical establishments of the past and present. But the volume also considers the strangely marginalized status of medical science fiction, concluding that the doctor's traditional focus on maintaining the health of the human body conflicts at a fundamental level with the genre's desire to transcend the human body.

The first section provides broad surveys of the history of medical science fiction, ranging from 19th-century classics to major films of the 1990s. The second offers detailed examinations of important texts and series, including Guy de Maupassant's Le Horla, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, James White's Sector General stories, the Alien films, and the Terminator films. A concluding bibliography lists more than 500 science fiction and fantasy novels, stories, films, and television programs involving disease and medicine as well as relevant nonfiction works and critical studies.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: Of Plagues, Predictions, and Physicians by Gary Westfahl
    Population Studies
    The Science Fiction of Medicine by H. Bruce Franklin
    The Missionary Physician, from Asclepius to Kevorkian by Frank McConnell
    No Cure for the Future: How Doctors Struggle to Survive in Science Fiction by Kirk Hampton and Carol MacKay
    From Dr. Frankenstein to Dr. McCoy: M.D.s and Ph.D.s in Science Fiction by Joseph D. Miller
    Case Histories
    The Immunology of Science Fiction: Maupassant's "Horla," The Medical Frame, and the Evolution of Genres by George Slusser
    Surgical Evolution, or, The Scalpel as Shortcut: The Doctor as Interface between Science Fiction and Horror by David Hinckley
    Sickness unto Death: Heart of Darkness and Journey to the End of the Night by David K. Kanow
    Big Brother as Doctor: Curing the Disease of Thoughtcrime in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four by Robert Van Cleave
    Doctor's Ordeals: The Sector General Stories of James White by Gary Westfahl
    Doctors of the Mind: Effective Mental Therapy and Its Implications by Greg Bear
    1950s Science Fiction Film Doctors and the Battle between Individualism and Conformity by Susan A. George
    Synthetics, Humanity, and the Life Force in the Alien Quartet by Mary Pharr
    The Body Apocalyptic: Theology and Technology in Films and Fictions of the MIME Era by Howard V. Hendrix
    Bibliography of Science Fiction Works Involving Disease and Medicine
About the Author: GARY WESTFAHL teaches at the University of California, Riverside. His previous books include Science Fiction, Canonization, Marginalization, and the Academy (2002), Unearthly Visions: Approaches to Science Fiction and Fantasy Art (2002), and Worlds Enough and Time: Explorations of Time in Science Fiction and Fantasy (2002), all available from Greenwood Press.

GEORGE SLUSSER is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Riverside. He has written several books about science fiction authors and coedited numerous scholarly studies.
LCC Class: 823
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