If the historically grounded, theory-rich sections you got in The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction—like the sweeping overviews from Shelley through the New Wave, alongside thematic chapters on utopias/dystopias, cyberpunk, and feminist SF—were your sweet spot, you’ll love this volume. It offers similarly authoritative essays that synthesize the field, from Wells and Campbell-era edits to cyberpunk’s cultural turn, giving you that same “lots of ideas per page” hit with clear signposting to key texts and debates.

You liked how The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction threaded philosophical inquiry through topics like time-travel paradoxes, AI personhood, and the ethics of utopia—this collection doubles down on that. Using touchstones such as Blade Runner and The Matrix, plus classic time-travel puzzles and AI thought experiments, it gives you clear, lively arguments that echo the Companion’s theory chapters while pushing further into mind, self, and moral risk.

If you appreciated how The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction brought together many contributors—moving from pulp-era contexts to contemporary media and global traditions—this handbook gives you an even broader chorus. It spans print, film, fandom, gaming, and transmedia, mirroring the Companion’s multi-essay structure while expanding the scope so you can triangulate debates across eras, regions, and formats in one place.

If the sections in The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction that touched on race, diaspora, and alternative futures stood out to you, Womack’s guide zooms in with verve. You’ll get a tour through Sun Ra’s cosmic mythmaking, Octavia E. Butler’s transformative narratives, Janelle Monáe’s cyborg suites, and even Black Panther’s cultural moment—deepening the cultural and historical threads the Companion highlights into a vivid, accessible map.

If the Companion’s treatments of utopia/dystopia and social speculation grabbed you, Le Guin’s novel gives you the lived texture of those debates. Following physicist Shevek between anarchist Anarres and capitalist Urras, it stages arguments about freedom, scarcity, and solidarity as story—an “ambiguous utopia” that reads like the case study those chapters were pointing toward, with ideas foregrounded over gizmos.