Routledge Studies in Speculative Fiction
About the Book Series
Routledge Studies in Speculative Fiction is our home for cutting-edge research and criticism of literatures from imaginative genres. The monographs in this series each take a critical look at literatures from all around the word that fall within the speculative fiction umbrella, including but not limited to, science fiction, fantasy, horror, apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic, utopian/dystopian literatures, and supernatural fiction.
The Re-Enchanted Ghost in Contemporary American Spectral Fiction
1st Edition
By Karen Frances McCarthy
May 25, 2026
The Re-Enchanted Ghost in Contemporary American Spectral Fiction examines an emerging trend in spectrality and liminality within contemporary American fiction. Traditionally, the ghost story has reflected the culture from which it emerges, thereby providing insights into human challenges, purpose, ...
Globalisation, Science Fiction and the Poetics of Residue
1st Edition
By Anupam Siddharth
May 20, 2026
Globalisation, Science Fiction and the Poetics of Residue turns to science fiction as an unexpected guide for mapping globalisation's true impact. The relentless pace of global capitalism has been creating a bewildering array of changes leaving us often disoriented and unable to fathom its true ...
Fictional Languages in Science Fiction Literature: Stylistic Explorations
1st Edition
By Israel A. C. Noletto
October 26, 2025
Fictional Languages in Science Fiction Literature surveys a large number of fictional languages, those created as part of a literary world, to present a multifaceted account of the literary phenomenon of glossopoesis (language invention). Consisting of a few untranslated sentences, exotic names, or...
Magical Realism in Twenty-First-Century Transnational Fiction: The Global Supernatural
1st Edition
By D. Chichester
September 24, 2025
Magical Realism in Twenty-First-Century Transnational Fiction: The Global Supernatural offers a much-needed re-evaluation of magical realism, moving beyond traditional postcolonial frameworks to explore its vibrant evolution in the 21st century. Analysing the works of contemporary authors like ...
The Ecological Imaginary in Literature and Other Media: The Nature of Fantasy
1st Edition
By Kevan Manwaring
September 22, 2025
From Gilgamesh to Gawain and the Green Knight, the Brothers Grimm to Grimdark, the natural world has provided the backdrop for Fantasy since its earliest iterations. The playgrounds of childhood are often a writer’s first Fantasy landscape and can develop into fully fledged storyworlds. Do readers ...
Rethinking Gothic Transgressions of Gender and Sexuality: New Directions in Gothic Studies
1st Edition
Edited
By Sarah Faber, Kerstin-Anja Münderlein
August 29, 2025
From early examples of queer representation in mainstream media to present-day dissolutions of the human-nature boundary, the Gothic is always concerned with delineating and transgressing the norms that regulate society and speak to our collective fears and anxieties. This volume examines British ...
Caribbean Futurism and Beyond: Conversations with Writers of Folklore, Fantasy, Science, and Speculative Fiction
1st Edition
By Jarrel De Matas
August 24, 2025
Caribbean Futurism and Beyond is a tripartite combination of interviews with writers of the sf (speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and folklore) genre, literary and cultural analysis of those interviews within the context of seven discrete yet overlapping dimensions – folklore, ...
Contemporary Pakistani Speculative Fiction and the Global Imaginary: Democratizing Human Futures
1st Edition
By Shazia Sadaf, Aroosa Kanwal
December 18, 2024
As the first book-length study of emergent Pakistani speculative fiction written in English, this critical work explores the ways in which contemporary Pakistani authors extend the genre in new directions by challenging the cognitive majoritarianism (usually Western) in this field. Responding to ...
Dystopia in Arabic Speculative Fiction: A Poetics of Distress
1st Edition
By Wessam Elmeligi
December 18, 2024
Dystopia in Arabic Speculative Fiction: A Poetics of Distress unpacks the nuanced Arabic contribution to speculative fiction. Part of a larger project by Elmeligi to formulate a poetics of literary theory to read Arabic literature, this book examines Arabic dystopian fiction from the lens of social...
J.R.R. Tolkien in Central Europe: Context, Directions, and the Legacy
1st Edition
Edited
By Janka Kascakova, David Levente Palatinus
December 18, 2024
This volume is a long overdue contribution to the dynamic, but unevenly distributed study of fantasy and J.R.R. Tolkien’s legacy in Central Europe. The chapters move between and across theories of cultural and social history, reception, adaptation, and audience studies, and offer methodological ...
Posthuman Subjectivity in the Novels of J.G. Ballard
1st Edition
By Carolyn Lau
November 28, 2024
This book proposes that Ballard’s novels extrapolate the formation of a posthuman subjectivity that is centred around an affirmative understanding of what a human body can do. This new subjectivity transforms constraints and prescribed desires into creative openings in a hyper-mediated control ...
Motherless Creations: Fictions of Artificial Life, 1650-1890
1st Edition
By Wendy C. Nielsen
January 29, 2024
This book explains the elimination of maternal characters in American, British, French, and German literature before 1890 by examining motherless creations: Pygmalion’s statue, Frankenstein’s creature, homunculi, automata, androids, golems, and steam men. These beings typify what is now called ...