New Perspectives on Contemporary German Science Fiction

New Perspectives on Contemporary German Science Fiction demonstrates the variety and scope of German science fiction (SF) production in literature, television, and cinema. The volume argues that speculative fictions and explorations of the fantastic provide a critical lens for studying the possibilities and limitations of paradigm shifts in society. Lars Schmeink and Ingo Cornils bring together essays that study the renaissance of German SF in the twenty-first century. The volume makes clear that German SF is both global and local―the genre is in balance between internationally dominant forms and adapting them to Germany’s reality as it relates to migration, the environment, and human rights. The essays explore a range of media (literature, cinema, television) and relevant political, philosophical, and cultural discourses.    

Lars Schmeink is Research Fellow at the Europa-Universität Flensburg, Germany. For 2022, he has received a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship at the University of Leeds, UK. He is a researcher in the FutureWork research project of the German Ministry of Education at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He is the founder of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung and has served as president of the board from 2010 to 2019. He has published widely on science fiction, the fantastic, and popular culture, including The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture (co-editor, 2020); Cyberpunk and Visual Culture (co-editor, 2018); Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society, and Science Fiction (2016), Collision of Realities (co-editor, 2012), and Fremde Welten (co-editor, 2012).

Ingo Cornils is Professor of German Studies at the University of Leeds, UK. He has published widely onscience fiction, edited two special issues of the academic journal literatur für leser on German language science fiction co-edited, with Ricarda Vidal, the volume Alternative Worlds: Blue-Sky Thinking since 1900 (2015), and authored of the monograph Beyond Tomorrow: German Science Fiction and Utopian Thought in the 20th and 21st Century (2020).