If you loved how A Companion to Science Fiction synthesizes movements from Wells’s time-travel foundations through cyberpunk’s rise around Gibson, this sweeping history doubles down on that intellectual breadth. Roberts’s contributors cross-reference traditions you saw discussed—utopia/anti-utopia debates, New Wave experimentation, feminist interventions around writers like Ursula K. Le Guin—and trace their evolution across literature, film, and global contexts with rigorous scholarship.

You enjoyed following the long arc from early pioneers like H. G. Wells to late‑20th‑century transformations (cyberpunk, postmodern play) in A Companion to Science Fiction. Aldiss and Wingrove chart that same grand trajectory with storytelling verve—moving from Verne and Wells to Asimov’s robotics, Heinlein’s futures, and Le Guin’s anthropological worlds—so you get a panoramic, narrative drive to match the vast scope you liked.

If the variety of perspectives in A Companion to Science Fiction—from chapters on utopias/dystopias to analyses of cyberpunk and alternate histories—was the hook, this volume offers a similarly rich chorus of voices. James and Mendlesohn’s contributors tackle topics you’ll recognize—time travel lineages from The Time Machine, the cultural impact of texts like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and shifts from pulps to New Wave—each essay adding a crisp new angle.

If what grabbed you in A Companion to Science Fiction was how it reads the genre through culture—feminist and postcolonial lenses, the politics of dystopia from More to Atwood, the social textures of Le Guin’s worlds—this Companion leans even further into those currents. It maps SF’s dialogues with ideology, media, and global history, echoing the cultural analyses you enjoyed while adding fresh case studies across books and film.

If the philosophical through-lines in A Companion to Science Fiction—identity puzzles around androids from Dick, ethical quandaries in Asimov’s robotics, and the thought experiments behind time travel from Wells—were your favorite parts, this collection turns those questions into center stage. Schneider gathers philosophers unpacking minds, reality, and AI using examples like Blade Runner and classic texts, giving you the theory-rich deep dive you were craving.