| Sumario: | This essay explores the resurgence of British sf in the 1990s in the context of the transformation of British cultural life, in particular following the election of the New Labour government in May 1997. The argument does not propose that the boom starts with this election, only that Blairism consolidates trends in cultural policy that had been nascent throughout the 1990s. In particular, recent political theory about what has been called "cultural governance"—the attempts to discipline culture to operate within a homogenized or "mainstreamed" sphere—helps articulate some of the reasons for the revitalization of sf, fantasy, and the Gothic in Britain in the last few years. An examination of this field of cultural and political theory provides the detailed context for key works of the British Boom by James Lovegrove, Gwyneth Jones, Ken MacLeod, and Justina Robson.
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