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33 results

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  • Chapter 12 - Environmentalism and Ecotopias

  • Edited by Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to American Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945
    Published online:
    09 May 2024
    Print publication:
    16 May 2024, pp 217-236

  • Summary

    This chapter considers contemporary environmentalism through the lens of ecotopia, a modification of the utopian form that includes the ecological as a core consideration. The idea that the nonhuman world should have meaningful political status is a radical transformation of the usual terms of utopia, rendering certain utopian tropes (like the technology-fueled extinction of vermin or pests) impossible while activating other new possibilities both for the transformation of the social and for individual self-actualization. In particular, ecotopias are distinct from most utopias in their abiding suspicion of technology; in an era of escalating climate disaster, this suspicion of technology becomes increasingly urgent even as it becomes complicated by the perceived need for some miraculous techno-fix to ameliorate the worst impacts of climate change even in ecotopia. A short coda discusses real-world ecotopian projects, attempts to make such visions real as a model to others for what might yet be.

  • 11 - Ice-Sheet Collapse and the Consensus Apocalypse in the Science Fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson

  • from Science Fiction and Future Fantasies
  • Edited by Adeline Johns-Putra, Kelly Sultzbach, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate
    Published online:
    31 March 2022
    Print publication:
    07 April 2022, pp 179-190

  • Summary

    The breakdown of what Donald Wollheim once called the ‘consensus future’ of science fiction – a spacefaring human civilisation migrating to the moon, Mars, the outer solar system, and beyond – has coincided with increasingly dire warnings about the true consequences of technological modernity on the planet. Where the future once seemed to be a site of unlimited possibility, it now appears to be a site of ever-worsening catastrophe and collapse. This chapter considers what might be called the ‘consensus apocalypse’, but also looks beyond it to consider techno-utopian and ecotopian visions of a non-disastrous future for humanity, with a thematic focus on figurations of sea-level rise due to ice-sheet collapse, especially in the work of Kim Stanley Robinson.

The Cambridge History of Science Fiction
  • Edited by Gerry Canavan, Eric Carl Link
  • Published online:
    15 December 2018
    Print publication:
    03 January 2019
  • The first science fiction course in the American academy was held in the early 1950s. In the sixty years since, science fiction has become a recognized and established literary genre with a significant and growing body of scholarship. The Cambridge History of Science Fiction is a landmark volume as the first authoritative history of the genre. Over forty contributors with diverse and complementary specialties present a history of science fiction across national and genre boundaries, and trace its intellectual and creative roots in the philosophical and fantastic narratives of the ancient past. Science fiction as a literary genre is the central focus of the volume, but fundamental to its story is its non-literary cultural manifestations and influence. Coverage thus includes transmedia manifestations as an integral part of the genre's history, including not only short stories and novels, but also film, art, architecture, music, comics, and interactive media.

  • Capital as Artificial Intelligence

  • GERRY CANAVAN
  • Journal:
    Journal of American Studies / Volume 49 / Issue 4 / November 2015
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    07 October 2015, pp. 685-709
    Print publication:
    November 2015

  • This article examines science-fictional allegorizations of Soviet-style planned economies, financial markets, autonomous trading algorithms, and global capitalism writ large as nonhuman artificial intelligences, focussing primarily on American science fiction of the Cold War period. Key fictional texts discussed include Star Trek, Isaac Asimov's Machine stories, Terminator, Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano (1952), Charles Stross's Accelerando (2005), and the short stories of Philip K. Dick. The final section of the article discusses Kim Stanley Robinson's novel 2312 (2012) within the contemporary political context of accelerationist anticapitalism, whose advocates propose working with “the machines” rather than against them.

The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction
  • Edited by Gerry Canavan, Eric Carl Link
  • Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    26 January 2015
  • The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction explores the relationship between the ideas and themes of American science fiction and their roots in the American cultural experience. Science fiction in America has long served to reflect the country's hopes, desires, ambitions, and fears. The ideas and conventions associated with science fiction are pervasive throughout American film and television, comics and visual arts, games and gaming, and fandom, as well as across the culture writ large. Through essays that address not only the history of science fiction in America but also the influence and significance of American science fiction throughout media and fan culture, this companion serves as a key resource for scholars, teachers, students, and fans of science fiction.

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