Book Review: Science Fiction: A Short Introduction by David Seed

David Seed, an English professor at University of Liverpool, treats a survey of science fiction through a number of tropes:

• Voyages into Space

• • Hollow Earth 

  • SF & Empire

  • Space Opera: Star Wars 

  • Spaceships

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey 

  • US Space Programme

  • Inner Space

• Alien Encounters
  

  • Alien Invasions 

  • Sympathetic Aliens

  • Language
• SF & Technology
  

  • Gernsback, Campbell, & Hard SF 

  • The City

  • Robots & Cyborgs

  • Computers

  • Cyberpunk & After 
• Utopias & Dystopias
  

  • The Golden Age of Utopias 

  • Wellsian Utopia

  • State Control in Brave New World & Other Works

  • Nineteen Eighty-Four & Its Legacy

  • The Constructed Worlds of Philip K. Dick 

  • Feminist Utopias

  • Ecotopias and the Mars Trilogy
• Fictions of Time
  

  • Prehistoric Fiction 

  • Future Wars

  • Post-Nuclear Futures

  • Alternate Histories

  • Disasters
• The Field of SF
  

  • Media & Intertexts 

  • Magazines & the SF community

  • Genre Fluidity and Generic Reinvention

  • SF Criticism

  When they say short, they do mean short.  3/4's is the essay proper.  The rest is reference material, so consider this a half of a normal-length book.
  
  Nonetheless, the material here provides a good socio-political foundation in what SF is.  If you scan the listings and are familiar with such discussions, much of it probably will feel familiar.  However, Seed puts his own stamp on the items.