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Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable: Critical Essays

William J. Burling

First published 2009
Publisher McFarland & Company
Format Trade Paperback
Type Nonfiction
Cover art Ally Union
Pages viii+303
ISBN 9780786433698

  • Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy 13 with Donald E. Palumbo and C. W. Sullivan, III credited as series editors.
  • Publication date from Amazon.com. The book lists only 2009.
  • No Price on book.
  • Sections:
    • Page 9: Part I. Utopia and Alternative History
    • Page 113: Part II. Theory and Politics
    • Page 225: Part III. Ecology and Nature
    • Page 275: Part IV. Interview and Select Bibliography.
  • Cover photograph of Kim Stanley Robinson by Ally Union; background images ©2009 Shutterstock
  • Moylan's essay Witness to Hard Times combines two earlier pieces and adds new material. The first is Utopia Is When Our Lives Matter: Reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Pacific Edge from 1995, the second from Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia from 2000

Year Reviewer Publication
2011 Neil Easterbrook SFRA Review #297

Searching by ISBN: 9780786433698

Page Title Author(s) Type
1 Preface and Acknowledgments (Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable: Critical Essays) William J. Burling Essay
3 Introduction (Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable: Critical Essays) William J. Burling Essay
11 Witness to Hard Times: Robinson's Other California Thomas P. Moylan Essay
48 "If I Find One Good City, I Will Spare the Man": Realism and Utopia in the Mars Trilogy Fredric Jameson Essay
67 Falling Into History: Imagined Wests in the "Three Californias" and Mars Trilogy Carl Abbott Essay
83 Remaking History: The Short Fiction John Kessel Essay
95 The Martians: A Habitable Fabric of Possibilities Nick Gevers Essay
98 Learning to Live in History: Alternate Historicites and the 1990's in The Years of Rice and Salt Phillip E. Wegner Essay
115 The Density of Utopian Destiny in Red Mars Carol Franko Essay
122 Falling Into Theory: Simulation, Terraformation, and Eco-Economics in the Mars Trilogy Robert Markley Essay
144 Chromodynamics: Science and Colonialism in the Mars Trilogy Elizabeth Leane Essay
157 The Theoretical Foundation of Utopian Radical Democracy in Blue Mars William J. Burling Essay
170 The Politics of the Network: The Science in the Capital Trilogy Roger Luckhurst Essay
181 Living Thought: Genes, Genres and Utopia in the Science in the Capital Trilogy Gib Prettyman Essay
204 "Structuralist Alchemy" in Red Mars William J. White Essay
227 Ecological Newspeak Alan R. Slotkin Essay
231 Murray Bookchin on Mars! The Production of Nature in the Mars Trilogy Shaun Huston Essay
242 The Mars Trilogy and the Leopoldian Land Ethic Eric Otto Essay
257 Dead Penguins in Immigrant Pilchard Scandal: Telling Stories About "The Environment" in Antarctica Sherryl Vint & Mark Bould Essay
277 A Conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson Irving F. 'Bud' Foote & Kim Stanley Robinson Interview
292 A Select Secondary Bibliography William J. Burling Essay
297 About the Contributors (Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable: Critical Essays) uncredited Essay
301 Index (Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable: Critical Essays) uncredited Essay