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Envisioning the Future
Science Fiction and the Next Millennium
Sales Date: 2003-09-03
240 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in
Writers speculate on the future and the role of science fiction.
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.
FUTURE PAST Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century – Neil Postman
The End-of-the-World Ball – James Gunn
FUTURE PRESENT Reflections on What Remains of Zamyatin's We after the Change of Leviathans: Must Collectivism Be against People? – Darko Suvin
The Coming of Christ the Joker – George Zebrowski
Goodbye to All That – Harlan Ellison
FUTURE PERFECT Superfeminist; or, A Hanukah Carol – Marleen S. Barr
Utmost Bones – Pamela Sargent
Love and Sex in the Year 3000 – Marge Piercy
Cyberteratologies: Female Monsters Negotiate the Other's Participation in Humanity's Far Future – Rosi Braidotti
FUTURE CRITICAL "You Must Have Seen a Lot of Changes": Fiction beyond the Twenty-first Century – Patrick Parrinder
Review: What Was Science Fiction? – Eric S. Rabkin
Review: Sciene in the Third Millennium – Kim Stanley Robinson
Black to the Future – Walter Mosley
MARLEEN S. BARR is a visiting scholar at Columbia University and the author of Genre Fission (2000), Lost in Space (1993) and Feminist Fabulation (1992). She was awarded the 1997 Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction criticism.
"Marleen Barr offers an exciting collection mixing science fiction stories and commentary, and her introduction is splendid—combining rambunctious critical analysis with acerbic social criticism."
~Jane Donawerth, Professor of English, Affiliate in Women's Studies, University of Maryland
"The new millennium has arrived and these articles and stories continue to enlighten and entertain. How lucky we are that Marleen Barr has brought them together in this collection."
~Camille Bacon-Smith, author of Science Fiction Culture