Science Fiction – Page 3 – Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Perhaps the greatest literary rendition of ‘rock, paper, scissors’ ever written, ‘The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind’ is a 1953 short story by the American writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012). The story tells of two cities ruled by Mandarins or emperors, who continually seek to destroy each other by building their city walls into different shapes which will ‘beat’ the other.

‘The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind’ is an allegory for the Cold War, so its signs and symbols need some unpicking and analysis to be fully appreciated and understood. Before we come to the analysis, however, it might be worth sketching out the plot of the story.

10 of the Best Science-Fiction Short Stories Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

What are the best places to begin exploring the wonderful world of science fiction? Some of the classic novels of the genre, from Frank Herbert’s Dune to Asimov’s Foundation series (which eventually stretched to seven volumes), might appear daunting because of their sheer size and scope.

Below, we introduce ten short science fiction stories which offer the perfect way in to the imaginative wonders of science fiction.

A Summary and Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Sound of Thunder’ is one of the best-known short stories by the American writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012). A time-travel story about how changing the past could bring about momentous and catastrophic changes to the future, ‘A Sound of Thunder’ is often taught and studied in schools and remains a classic of 1950s science fiction.

The story was first published in Collier’s magazine in 1952 and then collected a year later in Bradbury’s short-story collection, The Golden Apples of the Sun.

The Author Who Foresaw Lockdown: J. G. Ballard’s Myths of the Near Future

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the prophetic visions of a highly original writer

Say ‘Myths of the Near Future’ to many people and they will think of the album by the Klaxons, but the Klaxons named their 2007 debut after a 1982 collection of short stories by J. G. Ballard (1930-2009), a writer who has joined the ranks of such visionaries as Kafka and Orwell by having an adjective named after him: ‘Ballardian’ is defined by Collins Dictionary as ‘resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels and stories, esp. dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes, and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.’

A Summary and Analysis of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The War of the Worlds is one of H. G. Wells’s early scientific romances: books which helped to lay the groundwork for modern science fiction. One adaptation was supposedly mistaken for a real news broadcast reporting an actual invasion, although we will come to that later on.

The War of the Worlds is probably Wells’s most famous and influential novel, so a few words of analysis are called for to explain precisely why it has become, in some ways, his most defining work.