Kitchin R., Kneale J. (eds.) Lost in Space: Geographies of Science Fiction

London: Continuum. – 2002. – 223 p. The two things for which science fiction is best known are these: the creation of new environments, and the evocation of a sense of wonder. New places are wrought and telling futures conjured, and within both we hold up a mirror to ourselves. Whether in the guise of traditional space opera or slick 1990s cybernoir, the lyricism of Ray Bradbury's Mars stories, the gnostic unrealities of Philip K. Dick or the head-swirling complexity of Greg Egan's new conceptual worlds, much of the genre's sense of possibility comes from this revitalized consideration of where we live now, and what we think we know about it. I understood this intellectually, but it was only recently, and with a degree of surprise, that I realized just how key both geographical and architectural concerns are to the fiction that I myself write. Science fiction has traditionally been about space - outer space, the space of distant planets and imagined landscapes. It goes without saying, however, that any good fiction is also about inner space — about the character of humankind as manifest in the past, the present, the future. Perhaps then it is time for the traditional alliance between science fiction writers and the hard, physical scientists to be augmented and enriched with a further liaison, one between those who — through either invention or interpretation — are concerned with the human space in both its most general and specific senses. Just as the existing landscape records our past, these future worlds and environments are an expression of our internal present. The better our maps of these lands, whether real or virtual, the keener will be our understanding of who we are, where we are, and why.Acknowledgements.
Foreword.
Lost in space.
The way it wasn't: alternative histories, contingent geographies.
Geography's conquest of history in The Diamond Age.
Space, technology and Neal Stephensbn's science fiction.
Geographies of power and social relations in Marge Piercy's He, She and It.
The subjectivity of the near future: geographical imaginings in the work of J. G. Ballard.
Tuning the self: city space and SF horror movies.
Science fiction and cinema: the hysterical materialism of pataphysical space.
An invention without a future, a solution without a problem: motor pirates, time machines and drunkenness on the screen.
What we can say about nature: familiar geographies, science fiction and popular physics.
Murray Bookchin on Mars! The production of nature in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.
In the belly of the monster: Frankenstein, food, factishes and fiction.