The shining blade of leibowitz
Through the enduring themes of sci-fi, we can examine the zeitgeist’s cultural context and ethical questions. Sci-fi brings out the best in our imaginations and evokes a sense of wonder, but it also inspires a spirit of questioning. It’s also remarkably porous, allowing for some overlap with genres like fantasy and horror.
Now, two centuries later, sci-fi is a sprawling and lucrative multimedia genre with countless sub-genres, such as dystopian fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, and climate fiction, just to name a few. Some scholars argue that science fiction as we now understand it was truly born in 1818, when Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, the first novel of its kind whose events are explained by science, not mysticism or miracles. Science fiction’s earliest inklings began in the mid-1600s, when Johannes Kepler and Francis Godwin wrote pioneering stories about voyages to the moon. Today, we call those dreams science fiction. And what remarkable dreams they are-dreams of distant worlds, unearthly creatures, parallel universes, artificial intelligence, and so much more. Through this artful juxtaposition of history and projected futures, he reminds us that what's to come is not yet determined-and that, even for a nation desperate to leave the past behind, history holds ideas that can light the way to a brighter society.Since time immemorial, mankind has been looking up at the stars and dreaming, but it was only centuries ago that we started turning those dreams into fiction. By looking at how American frontier mythology plays out in the imagined West of the future, Katerberg offers a new approach to understanding the region's popular culture. He considers how Leslie Marmon Silko'sAlmanac of the Dead ties revitalized Native American traditions to their hopes for the future, and he uses such stories of race wars as The Turner Diaries to compare reactionary visions to progressive utopianism. Here are Douglas Coupland's postindustrial West, Callenbach's eco-utopian Pacific Northwest, and Kim Stanley Robinson's critical utopian view of Orange County. Ranging widely over science fiction subgenres-from alternative futures to cyberpunk-Katerberg takes us on a tour of utopias of all stripes, whether exclusivist, reactionary, or progressive. He suggests powerful new ways to think critically and hopefully about American history-and about politics and civic life in the present.
Katerberg revisits the frontier mythos (and iconic figures like Buffalo Bill Cody and Frederick Jackson Turner) and explores the West of future-oriented novels and films, in which the frontier is long past and American society is aging.
The frontier has long fostered America's persistent desire to leave the past behind and begin anew-a desire that has nurtured the utopian dreams of westerners from Progressives to Earth Firstlers. Combining intellectual history, literary analysis, and political philosophy, his study boldly encourages readers to reframe their understanding of both popular Western culture and American political culture.
What is the future of the American West? Is it fated to shine with the benign promise of Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia? Or will it instead dissolve into postapocalyptic dust, as in Walter Miller's classic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, or devolve into relentlessly dark and rain-soaked urban landscapes, as in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner? William Katerberg takes a new look at works of utopian, dystopian, and apocalyptic science fiction to show how narratives of the past and future powerfully shape our understanding of the present-day West.