New Forms Of Space And Spatiality In Science Fiction

What kinds of worlds will exist in our future? How will countries, cities and homes be shaped by advanced technology? What forms might we ourselves assume? The genre of science fiction provides countless possibilities for imagining new types of spaces—from utopias and dystopias to alien environments, and to purely mechanical or mutant cityscapes. This collection gathers together papers originally presented at the 2018 Science Fiction Symposium at Tel-Aviv University, a two-day conference discussing new concepts of space in science-fictional works. Featuring a transmedia approach by contributors from around the world, this volume discusses a wide and diverse array of issues in the ever-expanding field of science fiction studies, including capitalism, equality, revolution, feminist critique and the humanity of the Other.

This collection reads the science fiction genre and television medium as examples of heterotopia (and television as science fiction technology), in which forms, processes, and productions of space and time collide – a multiplicity of spaces produced and (re)configured. The book looks to be a heterotopic production, with different chapters and “spaces” (of genre, production, mediums, technologies, homes, bodies, etc), reflecting, refracting, and colliding to offer insight into spatial relationships and the implications of these spaces for a society that increasingly inhabits the world through the space of the screen. A focus on American science fiction offers further spatial focus for this study – a question of geographical and cultural borders and influence not only in terms of American science fiction but American television and streaming services. The (contested) hegemonic nature of American science fiction television will be discussed alongside a nation that has significantly been understood, even produced, through the television screen. Essays will examine the various (re)configurations, or productions, of space as they collapse into the science fiction heterotopia of television since 1987, the year Star Trek: Next Generation began airing.

Science fiction - one of the most popular literary, cinematic and televisual genres - has received increasing academic attention in recent years. For many theorists science fiction 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 geographies of spaceexploring imagination, nature, scale, geopolitics, modernity, time, identity, the body, power relations and the representation of space. The essays explore the writings of a broad selection of writers, including J.G.Ballard, Frank Herbert, Marge Piercy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Mary Shelley and Neal Stephenson, and films from Bladerunner to Dark City, The Fly, The Invisible Man and Metropolis.

The idea of the frontier--once, the geographical borderline moving further and further West across the North American continent--has shaped American science fiction television since its beginnings. TV series have long adapted the frontier myth to outer space and have explored American Wests of the future. This book takes a deeper look at the futuristic frontiers within such series as Star Trek, Firefly, Terra Nova, Defiance and The 100, revealing how they rethink colonialism, the environment, spaces of risk and utopian/dystopian worlds. Harnessing forms of speculation and the post-apocalyptic imagination, these series engage with matters of the present, from the legacies of colonialism to climate change and the increasing integration of humans and technologies. In doing so, these series question in novel ways the very idea of borders and reshape cultural binaries such as Self/Other, wilderness/civilization, city/nature, human/non-human and utopia/dystopia.

Divided into six chapters, each dealing with different aspects of the spatial in literary studies, the book provides: An overview of the spatial turn in literary theory - from modern philosophy and historicism to cartography and literary theory Introductions to the major theorists such as Michel Foucault, David Harvey, Edward Soja, Erich Auerbach, Georg Lukács, and Mikhail Bakhtin An analysis of spatiality from a variety of perspectives - the writer as map-maker, different literary and critical 'spaces', the concept of literary geography, cartographics and geocriticism. As the first guide to the literature and criticism of 'space', this clear and engaging book is essential reading.