Science Fiction and Romanticism - A Special Issue of *Romanticism On the
Net* (to be published in 2000)
William Gibson's cyberpunk novel, *Neuromancer*, even as it invented the
future now up on the screen in The Matrix, winked back at the past with his
evocative title. 'Neuron' 'Romancer' for sure, but also, 'New' 'Romance'
--or 'New Romantic'. The connections between science fiction and romanticism
are not limited to cyberpunk allusion. The claim that Mary Shelley
'invented' science fiction in *Frankenstein* and *The Last Man* has been
made for some time, while the continued reworkings of the former in film and
novel argue for its foundational importance to the genre. Other authors
could be offered as inventors--William Godwin's alternative history in *St.
Leon*, Percy Shelley's *Queen Mab*'s utopic imagininings, Edgar Allan Poe's
balloon hoaxes--but the very Wordsworthian phrase, 'something ever more
about to be' suggests how important the future was to romanticism. A propos
of the millenium, *Romanticism on the Net* will devote a special issue to
science fiction and romanticism in 2000. Articles on science fiction's roots
in romanticism and romanticism's persistence in science fiction will be
welcome. More broadly, we will also welcome papers about scientific
imagining in the period. Finally, how does seeing romanticism as 'science
fiction' enable us to see it differently? Potential contributors might be
interested in the bibliography 'Fictional Representations of Romantics and
Romanticism', available at Romantic Circles
(http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/ficrep/nassr-sf.html).
Submission deadline: 15 November 1999. For more information, please contact
Robert Corbett (rcor@u.washington.edu)
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Michael Eberle-Sinatra
Editor *Romanticism On the Net*
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St. Catherine's College, Oxford OX1 3UJ, England
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http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385
(US mirror site: http://www-sul.stanford.edu/mirrors/romnet/)
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