Terraforming: Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in Science Fiction

Front matter

Baida

Ecopolitical Transformations and Enuironmentalism # «a in Science Fiction | à f ov.

Mitry

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Terraforming: Engineering Imaginary Environments

Shaping Earth and the Solar System

Index

98 102 112

116 117 122 125 128 134

143 146 151

223 227

Acknowledgements

This book grew out of research conducted at the Department of English at the University of Liverpool. I owe a special thanks to Andy Sawyer for his mentorship, and for introducing me to the academic study of science fiction. The staff at the Special Collections and Archives at the University of Liverpool’s Sydney Jones Library also deserve a thank you for their assistance in providing access to the research materials available at the Science Fiction Foundation Collection that made this book possible. I had the pleasure of exchanging emails with Frederick Turner, who generously answered many questions about his work and about terraforming and landscape restoration, and who kindly agreed to be interviewed for the SFRA Review. I also want to thank Siobhan Chapman, David Seed, and Mark Bould for their criticism of the PhD thesis that eventually became this book, and Simon Hailwood for introducing me to the domain of environmental philosophy.

I am indebted to my colleagues, both academic and administrative, for providing an environment that helped shape my intellectual life throughout the nine years that I spent at Liverpool. I have received much encouragement and stimulation from many individuals, not least Katherine Buse, Molly Cobb, Barry Dainton (at the Department of Philosophy), Nick Davis, Leimar Garcia-Siino, David McWilliam, Glyn Morgan, and Michelle Yost. The Science Fiction Foundation, the Science Fiction Research Association, and the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment — UK and Ireland were instrumental in shaping my thinking about the intersections between science fiction and ecology. I would like to thank these organisations for their support, and in particular Thierry Bardini, Ritch Calvin, Pawet Frelik, Greg Garrard, Joan Haran, Ursula K. Heise, Larisa Mikhaylova, T.S. Miller, John Parnham, Adeline-Johns Putra, Louise Squire, Sherryl Vint, and Liz Williams. Thanks are also due to Mariano Martin Rodriguez, and to ix x TERRAFORMING

Cathy Rees, Chris Williams, and Phil Franey, whose support throughout my time at the university is much appreciated.

Elements of the Introduction appear in the journal publication ‘Environmental Philosophy and Space in Literature: Landscaping and the Chronotope,’ Brief: Online Journal of Snippets — American Literature, 1 (2011), 5-6 <http://www.brief.umcs.eu/american-literature/brief-1_american-literature.pdf> (accessed March 2016).

Elements of the first chapter appear in the journal publications ‘“A Creature Alive but Tranced and Obscurely Yearning to Wake”: Gaian Anticipations and Terraforming in the European Science Fiction of H.G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon and Stanislaw Lem,’ Revista Hélice: Reflexiones Críticas Sobre Ficción Especulativa, 15 (2012a), 12-19; “A Fantastic Reflex of Itself, An Echo, A Symbol, A Myth, A Crazy Dream”: Terraforming as Landscaping Nature’s Otherness in H.G. Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come and Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men and Star Maker,’ Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, 111.40 (2012b), 14-31; and ‘Terraforming and Proto-Gaian Narratives in American Pulp Sf of the 1930s—1940s,’ Eaton Journal of Archival Research, 1 (2013), 38-55.

Elements of the fifth chapter appear in the journal publications ‘Ecocriticism and Terraforming: Building Critical Spaces,’ Forum: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture @ the Arts, 10 (2010) <http://www.forumjournal.org/site/issue/10/chris-pak> (accessed March 2016); and “All Energy Is Borrowed” — Terraforming: A Master Motif for Physical and Cultural Re(Up)cycling in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy,’ Green Letters, 18 (2014a), 1-13 <http://www.tandfonline.com/ doi/abs/10.1080/14688417.2014.890527> (accessed March 2016).