Fights of fancy

This collection of 15 original essays offers new perspectives in armed conflict as a central aspect of science-fiction and fantasy writing. Looking past the superficial conventions associated with ray guns and aliens, swords and sorcerers, the contributors show how writers in the genre today are not so much imagining war more fully as they are completely re-imagining it. Science-fiction and fantasy writing is no longer mired in epic or chivalric models but is responding to new and more complex real-world motivations for armed aggression: advances in weaponry, shifts in the theatres of war, and changes in battlefield conditions.