The genesis and evolution of science fiction in fin de siecle Russia, 1880--1921

This dissertation investigates the emergence of science fiction as a full-fledged genre in Russian literary culture against the context in which it first came to be widely produced and read. It focuses on the period where science and technology, for the first time, became a subject of both intellectual and popular discourse while remaining conspicuously absent from everyday life. It reconstructs the process through which the nascent genre of science fiction, with its indeterminate status between literature and popular entertainment, evolved into a viable synthetic literary medium to resolve this paradox. The four chapters of the dissertation---"Conquering Space," "Conquering Time," "Creating Unlimited Energy," and "Creating the New Man"---demonstrate how the principal thematic preoccupations of Russian science fiction derived from the synergistic exchange of cultural discourse about science and technology across "high" and "popular," "literary" and "extra-literary" spheres. By analyzing the ways in which the particular cultural imperatives of fin de siecle Russia shaped this dialogic process, the dissertation traces the etiology of a concern with the metaphysical, transformative powers of technology---rather than its futuristic forms---that distinguishes Russian science fiction from its Western counterparts.