M. Keith Booker

Since the first Superman film came to the screen in 1978, films adapted from comics have become increasingly important as a film form. M. Keith Booker surveys this development in film history, tracking the movement to a more mature style in comics, and then a more mature style in films about comics. He focuses on detailed discussions of 15 major films of franchises, but also considers the general impact of graphic novels on the style and content of American film in general.

"M. Keith Booker has selected fifteen of the most successful and innovative science fiction films of all time, and examined each of them at length - from cultural, technical and cinematic perspectives - to see where they came from and what they meant for the future of cinema and for America at large." "All of these films expressed our fears and dreams, our abilities and our deficiencies. In this deep-seeking investigation, ideal for general readers interested in science fiction and film, we can all find something of ourselves that we recognize - as well as something that we've never recognized before."--BOOK JACKET.

Originally published in 1932, this outstanding work of literature is more crucial and relevant today than ever before. Cloning, feel-good drugs, antiaging programs, and total social control through politics, programming, and media -- has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller's genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 AF (After Ford, the deity). When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, Brave New World is both a warning to be heeded and thought-provoking yet satisfying entertainment. - Container.

"Science Fiction Television traces the development of the genre as a distinct cultural phenomenon within the context of broader developments in American culture as a whole." "In the process, it offers a unique and informative guide for television fans and science fiction fans alike, one whose coverage is unprecedented in its scope and breath. A must-read for anyone interested in its subject or in American popular culture, Science Fiction Television is a history of one of television's most lasting forms of entertainment."--BOOK JACKET.

African novels are not easy reading. The African novel differs from European and American novels in its social and historical background and in its aesthetics. African novelists make important use of formal strategies and techniques that are derived from African cultural traditions. They also make extensive use of imported European forms. As Booker explains, the African novel is a hybrid of African and imported Western literary conventions. Proper appreciation of the hybridity of African novels is one of the most important and daunting tasks facing Western readers who must resist the temptation to read African literature either according to strictly Western criteria or as exotic specimens of cultural otherness. American and European students reading African novels often have to completely overhaul lifelong habits of reading. They must keep in mind certain basic issues if they are to read African novels effectively. Postcolonial African literature reacts against decades of European colonial rule in Africa while challenging the long legacy of negative representations of Africa and Africans in European and American writing. Indeed, as Booker shows, the very choice of a language in which to write is a highly political act for an African novelist. The role of the African novel in the restoration of African history and culture gives African literature a relevance and vitality that Western readers should find exciting. Moreover, the obvious importance of African literature to the social and political world of Africa serves to demonstrate the overall social and political importance of literature. African novels raise a number of formal and ideological issues that are different from the issues students typically meet within the European or American novel. This very difference can help students to understand Western literature better. Booker concludes that Americans and Europeans have every reason to study the African novel, in so doing they will become familiar with one of the most powerful cultural forces in the world today. They will also see their own cultures in new and exciting ways.

In Colonial Power, Colonial Texts, M. Keith Booker examines a number of British novels that deal with colonial rule in India in the first half of the twentieth century. The works discussed - by authors such as Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forster, George Orwell, Paul Scott, and J. G. Farrell - date from both the colonial and postcolonial periods, and Booker pays attention as well to representations of India in both British and American popular culture, especially film. These various cultural texts open multiple viewpoints on the role of literature in the British vision of India and the role of India in the British conception of literature. Drawing particularly on the work of Georg Lukacs and Fredric Jameson, Booker focuses on the treatment of British colonial power in these fictions as that treatment indicates how colonialism and decolonization participate in a larger historical process of modernization. The author uses a Marxist model of bourgeois cultural revolution to illustrate the ways these texts engage in productive exchanges with their historical context. Colonial Power, Colonial Texts will be of particular value to those who study the role of culture in colonialism and anti-colonial resistance, as well as to students and scholars of modern British literature and culture.