Firefly Revisited

According to Joss Whedon, the creator of the short-lived series Firefly (2002), the show is about "nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things." The chronicles of crewmembers on a scruffy space freighter, Firefly ran for only four months before its abrupt cancellation. In that brief time, however, it established a reputation as some of the best science-fiction television of the new millennium: sharply written, superbly cast, and set on an exotic multi-cultural frontier unlike anything ever seen on television. The show's large, enthusiastic fan following supported a series of comics and a theatrical film, Serenity (2005), that extended the story, deepened the characters, and revealed new wonders and dangers on the show's deep-space frontier. In Firefly Revisited: Essays on Joss Whedon's Classic Series, Michael Goodrum and Philip Smith present a collection that reflects on the show, the characters, and the post-cancellation film and comics that grew out of the series. The contributors to this volume offer fresh perspectives on familiar characters and blaze new trails into unexplored areas of the Firefly universe. Individual essays explore the series' place in the history of the space-Western subgenre, the political economy of the Alliance, and the uses of music and language in the series to immerse audiences in a multicultural future. A close examination of Joss Whedon's "space Western," these essays look at how the show offered viewers high adventure as well as engaged with a range of themes that still resonate today. As such, Firefly Revisited will intrigue the shows many fans, as well as Whedon scholars and anyone interested in the twenty-first-century renaissance of science fiction television.