Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West - Hardcover

Abbott, Carl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0700614303 ISBN 13: 9780700614301

Publisher: University Press of Kansas, 2006

Synopsis

Will the settlement of Mars prove much different from the settlement of the West? Look to science fiction master Kim Stanley Robinson for fascinating ideas; then turn to historian Carl Abbott for further insights.

Over the last half-century, science fiction has witnessed increasing complexity in its treatments of future homesteading, community building, mining, and other themes familiar to western historians. Considering these common threads, this is the first book to explore the ways that science fiction writers have drawn directly on narratives of the American West to frame their visions of the future.

Abbott offers a fruitful new way to read science fiction, one that also greatly enriches our understanding of western history and its impact on our collective imagination. Detailing the overlap of science fiction and western fiction—especially relating to their mutual interest in and concerns about frontier expansionism—he reveals an unsuspected common ground that informs the writings of both camps.

Reviewing the work of many Hugo and Nebula Award winners, as well as drawing upon popular film and television series (like the Buck Rogers serials), Abbott's study journeys across the far reaches of science fiction's universe. His cast of notables ranges from venerable masters like Robert Heinlein and Fritz Lieber to new-wave feminist Ursula Le Guin and cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson; their settings are as diverse as the near-future West of Octavia Butler and the entrancing extraterrestrial visions of Pamela Sargent, Jonathan Lethem, and C. J. Cherryh.

Both enlightening and energizing, Abbott's study deftly shows us how the ways we remember the past greatly influence our ability to imagine multiple futures-in distant universes that appear very strange and yet utterly familiar. Frontiers Past and Future boldly goes where no historian has gone before and rewards us with new insights into our probable pasts and possible futures.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"The great pleasure of reading this book comes from the unexpected new sense of depth that Abbott gives to his subjects by reading them off each other, in the same way two images in a stereopticon suddenly give the mind a third dimension."--Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Mars Trilogy

"Abbott boldly goes where no western historian has gone before. . . . A dazzling book that ponders the past and projects possibilities in ways that illuminate the present."--Stephen Aron, author of How the West Was Lost and Executive Director, Institute for the Study of the American West, Autry National Center

"Carl Abbott has written a broad, erudite, and entertaining survey of how the West and the Future intersect in fiction, and a thought-provoking study of the interplay of genre, region, and history."--Ursula K. Le Guin, author of The Earthsea Cycle

About the Author

Carl Abbott is professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University and an avid science fiction reader since his youth. Among his other books are The New Urban America: Growth and Politics in Sunbelt Cities and The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West.

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0700614303
• ISBN 13: 9780700614301
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240