Envisioning the Future

by Barr, Marleen S.

• ISBN13: 9780819566515
• ISBN10: 0819566519
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-08-01
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr

Summary

In this unique collection of fiction and essays, some of the best writers in the science fiction world explore our relationship to the future through the dual lens of science fiction and cultural studies, and provide a rich testament to the power of science fiction to help us re-imagine reality. Each contributor was asked to reflect on our anxiety about the new millennium and to write about how science fiction could help us envision the far future and future cultural spaces. The resulting array of speculative writings, both critical and fictional, is diverse and illuminating--from a personal essay by Marge Piercy on love, sex and the power of fiction; to a new story by Harlan Ellison in which consumerism is the opiate of the masses; to a fictional book review by Kim Stanley Robinson which imagines what future historians will say about science in the third millennium. CONTRIBUTORS: Marleen S. Barr, Rosi Braidotti, Harlan Ellison, James Gunn, Walter Mosley, Patrick Parrinder, Marge Peircy, Neil Postman, Eric S. Rabkin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Pamela Sargent, Darko Suvin, George Zebrowski.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
American Science Fiction; or, "What Happened to the Flying Cars?": Science Fiction/Millennia/Culture
Marleen S. Barr
Introduction	1	(18)
Now-and 3000: Science Fiction Studies/Cultural Studies
Marleen S. Barr
PART 1. Future Past
Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century	19	(10)
Neil Postman
The End-of-the-World Ball	29	(22)
James Gunn
PART 2. Future Present
Reflections on What Remains of Zamyatin's We after the Change of Leviathans: Must Collectivism Be against People?	51	(31)
Darko Suvin
The Coming of Christ the Joker	82	(17)
George Zebrowski
Goodbye to All That	99	(12)
Harlan Ellison
PART 3. Future Perfect
Superfeminist; or, A Hanukah Carol	111	(5)
Marleen S. Barr
Utmost Bones	116	(15)
Pamela Sargent
Love and Sex in the Year 3000	131	(15)
Marge Piercy
Cyberteratologies: Female Monsters Negotiate the Other's Participation in Humanity's Far Future	146	(27)
Rosi Braidotti
PART 4. Future Critical
"You Must Have Seen a Lot of Changes": Fiction beyond the Twenty-first Century	173	(18)
Patrick Parrinder
Review: What Was Science Fiction?	191	(8)
Eric S. Rabkin
Review: Science in the Third Millennium	199	(3)
Kim Stanley Robinson
Black to the Future	202	(3)
Walter Mosley
About the Contributors	205