As well as examining the points of contact and the differences and antagonisms that lie between Surrealism and SF, this collection is concerned with the related literature of comics, which were admired and exploited by Surrealists from the 1940s, and influenced in turn by the imagery, themes and styles of Surrealism and its art. It is about Surrealism specifically, and how the movement in France, the US, and Britain used, informed, contributed to, and criticised SF and comics. Among the aims of the book are an assessment of Verne in the light of Surrealism and an analysis of the debate in the ... More

As well as examining the points of contact and the differences and antagonisms that lie between Surrealism and SF, this collection is concerned with the related literature of comics, which were admired and exploited by Surrealists from the 1940s, and influenced in turn by the imagery, themes and styles of Surrealism and its art. It is about Surrealism specifically, and how the movement in France, the US, and Britain used, informed, contributed to, and criticised SF and comics. Among the aims of the book are an assessment of Verne in the light of Surrealism and an analysis of the debate in the 1950s on the ‘new’ literature arriving in France, which received, in fact, a mixed reception from the later Surrealists of that decade even though writers and intellectuals close to the movement in the 1920s were directly responsible for its success. It looks in two further essays at the subsequent impact of Surrealism on SF novelists JG Ballard and Alan Burns, and features essays that argue for Salvador Dalí’s closeness to SF in the 1960s and his disagreement with the earlier scientific romance defined by Verne. The chapters on Surrealism and comics range from theoretical discussions of the relation between the original comic strips of Rodolphe Töpffer (1799-1846) and the key Surrealist technique of automatism, used in art and writing, through the cybernetic implications of the proto-SF Surrealist ciné-roman ‘M. Wzz…’ of 1929 (never discussed in any detail before) to the 1948 Vache paintings by René Magritte, inspired by Louis Forton’s strip Les Pieds nickelés. As in the chapters on SF, it goes on to show how Surrealism did not just receive and adapt the genre but impacted it in its later manifestations.