Lost in Space: Geographies of Science Fiction

Description

Science fiction--one of the most popular literary, cinematic and television genres--has received increasing academic attention in recent years. For philosophers, critical theorists and others it opens up a space in which the here-and-now can be made strange or remade; where virtual reality and cyborg are no longer gimmicks or predictions, but new spaces and subjects.Lost in Space brings together an international collection of authors to explore the diverse spatialities and geographies of space. A diverse range of themes are examined--from geographical and sociological imaginations to nature, scale, geopolitics, modernity, time, identity, the body, power relations and the representation of space.Drawing on a range of theoretical approaches, the essays explore the writings of a broad selection of SF writers and films, including J. G. Ballard, Octavia Butler, Philip K. Dick, Frank Herbert, William Gibson, Marge Piercy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Neal Stephenson; the films include Aliens, Bladerunner, Dark City, The Fly, The Invisible Man and Metropolis.Contributors: Stuart C. Aitken, Nick Bingham, David Clarke, Marcus Doel, Sheila Hones, Shaun Huston, Michelle Kendrick, Paul Kingsbury, Michael W. Longan, Barbar J. Morehouse, Timothy Oakes, Jon Taylor Barney Warf

Rob Kitchin is Lecturer in Human Geography at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. James Kneale is Lecturer in Human Geography at University College London.

"Science fiction's distinctive settings help to denaturalize commonsense understandings of space, making it a useful vehicle for meditations on the more mundane and familiar spaces of the "real" world. Essays in this collection, written mostly by academics specializing in geography, probe science fiction novels and films on themes like the threat of technological invasion to bodily integrity, patriarchal relations in horror movies, and colonization of Mars as an exploration of ecological theory." - American Literature