New Mappings: The Cultural Dissemination of Science Fiction in Postmodern Culture

My project deals with how the science fiction genre within the last 50 years ha diseminated across genre categories. Experimental, postmodern literature has to an increasing extent assimilated aesthetic devices from the sf genre, while popular culture has also embraced the genre in a different manner than earlier. Everything from documentaries (The Future is Wild) to college soaps (Felicity) has incorporated sf into their own field. In more experimental art, there are numerous examples which would never be categorized as 'real' sf, neither by author, critic or sf fans. It is this cultural dissemination that I investigate, primarily with reference to Jacques Derrida's concept of dissemination and generic contamination.