Lost in Space

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.

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.

1. Lost in Space - Rob Kitchin and James Kneale. 2. The Way it Wasn't: Alternative Histories, Contingent Geographies - Barney Warf, Florida State University. 3. Geography's Conquest of History in 'The Diamond Age' - Michael Longan and Tim Oakes, University of Colorado at Boulder (both). 4. Space, Technology and Neal Stephenson's Science Fiction - Michelle Kendrick, Washington State University; 5. Geographies of Power and Social Relations in Marge Piercy's 'He, She and It' - Barbara J. Morehouse. 6. The Subjectivity of the Near Future: Geographical Imaginings in the Work of J. G. Ballard - Jonathan Solomon Taylor. 7. Tuning the Self: City Space and SF Horror Movies - Stuart C. Aitken, San Diego State University. 8. Science Fiction and Cinema: The Hysterical Materialism of Pataphysical Space - Paul Kingsbury, University of Kentucky. 9. An Invention without a Future, a Solution without a Problem: Motor Pirates, Time Machines, and Drunkenness on the Screen. 10. What We Can Say About Nature: Familiar Geographies, Science Fiction, and Popular Physics - Sheila Hones. 11. Murray Bookchin on Mars: The Production of Nature in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy - Shaun Huston, Portland Community College. 12. In the Belly of the Monster: Frankenstein, Food, Factishes, and Fiction - Nick Bingham, Open University.