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Terraforming TERRAFORMING Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies, 55 Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies Editor David Seed, University of Liverpool Editorial Board Mark Bould, University of the West of England Veronica Hollinger, Trent University Rob Latham, University of California Roger Luckhurst, Birkbeck College, University of London Patrick Parrinder, University of Reading Andy Sawyer, University of Liverpool Recent titles in the series 30. Mike Ashley Transformations: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazine from 1950–1970 31. Joanna Russ The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and Reviews 32. Robert Philmus Visions and Revisions: (Re)constructing Science Fiction 33. Gene Wolfe (edited and introduced by Peter Wright) Shadows of the New Sun: Wolfe on Writing/Writers on Wolfe 34. Mike Ashley Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazine from 1970–1980 35. Patricia Kerslake Science Fiction and Empire 36. Keith Williams H. G. Wells, Modernity and the Movies 37. Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon (eds.) Queer Universes: Sexualities and Science Fiction 38. John Wyndham (eds. David Ketterer and Andy Sawyer) Plan for Chaos 39. Sherryl Vint Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal 40. Paul Williams Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War: Representations of Nuclear Weapons and Post-Apocalyptic Worlds 41. Sara Wasson and Emily Alder, Gothic Science Fiction 1980–2010 42. David Seed (ed.), Future Wars: The Anticipations and the Fears 43. Andrew M. Butler, Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s 44. Andrew Milner, Locating Science Fiction 45. Joshua Raulerson, Singularities 46. Stanislaw Lem: Selected Letters to Michael Kandel (edited, translated and with an introduction by Peter Swirski) 47. Sonja Fritzsche, The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film 48. Jack Fennel: Irish Science Fiction 49. Peter Swirski and Waclaw M. Osadnik: Lemography: Stanislaw Lem in the Eyes of the World 50. Gavin Parkinson (ed.), Surrealism, Science Fiction and Comics 51. Peter Swirski, Stanislaw Lem: Philosopher of the Future 52. J. P. Telotte and Gerald Duchovnay, Science Fiction Double Feature: The Science Fiction Film as Cult Text 53. Tom Shippey, Hard Reading: Learning from Science Fiction 54. Mike Ashley, Science Fiction Rebels: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1981 to 1990 TERRAFORMING Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in Science Fiction CHRIS PAK LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS First published 2016 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2016 Chris Pak The right of Chris Pak to be identiied as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available print ISBN 978-1-78138-284-4 cased epdf ISBN 978-1-7813-845-4-1 Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster For Irene, Alex, and Dennis Contents Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction: Terraforming: Engineering Imaginary Environments 1 Shaping Earth and the Solar System 3 Sf as Environmental Literature 5 A Disciplined Thought Experiment: Landscaping, Sf, and Terraforming 8 The Lay of the Land 12 1: Landscaping Nature’s Otherness in Pre-1960s Terraforming and Proto-Gaian Stories 18 Terraforming as a Site for Environmental Philosophical Relection 19 The War on Nature in Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come and John Russell Fearn’s ‘Earth’s Mausoleum’ 21 Nature’s Otherness and Terraforming in Stapledon’s Last and First Men and Star Maker 28 Deism and Teleology in Stapledon’s Essays of Myth Creation 32 Pre-1940s Proto-Gaian Living Worlds 38 Proto-Gaian Scientiic Romance: M.P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘When the World Screamed’ 39 The Pulp Sf Proto-Gaian Cluster 45 The Decline of the Living World Motif in 1950s American Pulp Sf 53 2: The American Pastoral and the Conquest of Space 56 The Garden of the World in Early 1950s Terraforming Stories 61 vii viii TERRAFORMING The Burden of Hope in the Garden of the Chattel: 1950s Consensus Dystopias 78 Moral Extensionism in Terraforming Stories of the Late 1950s and Early 1960s 89 3: Ecology and Environmental Awareness in 1960s–1970s Terraforming Stories 98 1960s–1970s Proto-Gaian Living Worlds 102 Terragouging: Time and the Forest 112 Terraforming in the 1960s–1970s 116 Terraforming and Ecopolitics in the Dune Sequence 117 The Garden in Dune 122 Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress 125 Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed 128 Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia 134 4: Edging Towards an Eco-cosmopolitan Vision 137 Building Critical Spaces: Pamela Sargent’s Venus Trilogy 143 Domes on Venus: Chronotopes of Enclosure 146 The Pastoral in Pamela Sargent’s Venus Trilogy 151 Frederick Turner’s Genesis: An Epic Poem 159 5: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy 168 Gardens on Mars 172 ‘Stepping Back’ 174 Visions Relected Back to Earth 182 Closed Life-Support Systems, Soil, and Cybernetics 185 Eco-Economics and the Landscape as Mirror 189 Science and Nature 196 On Martian Myths 200 Conclusion 204 Coda 219 Works Cited 223 Primary Works Cited 223 Secondary Works Cited 227 Index 235 Acknowledgements Acknowledgements This book grew out of research conducted at the Department of English at the University of Liverpool. I owe a special thanks to Andy Sawyer for his mentorship, and for introducing me to the academic study of science iction. The staff at the Special Collections and Archives at the University of Liverpool’s Sydney Jones Library also deserve a thank you for their assistance in providing access to the research materials available at the Science Fiction Foundation Collection that made this book possible. I had the pleasure of exchanging emails with Frederick Turner, who generously answered many questions about his work and about terraforming and landscape restoration, and who kindly agreed to be interviewed for the SFRA Review. I also want to thank Siobhan Chapman, David Seed, and Mark Bould for their criticism of the PhD thesis that eventually became this book, and Simon Hailwood for introducing me to the domain of environmental philosophy. I am indebted to my colleagues, both academic and administrative, for providing an environment that helped shape my intellectual life throughout the nine years that I spent at Liverpool. I have received much encouragement and stimulation from many individuals, not least Katherine Buse, Molly Cobb, Barry Dainton (at the Department of Philosophy), Nick Davis, Leimar Garcia-Siino, David McWilliam, Glyn Morgan, and Michelle Yost. The Science Fiction Foundation, the Science Fiction Research Association, and the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment – UK and Ireland were instrumental in shaping my thinking about the intersections between science iction and ecology. I would like to thank these organisations for their support, and in particular Thierry Bardini, Ritch Calvin, Paweł frelik, Greg Garrard, Joan Haran, Ursula K. Heise, Larisa Mikhaylova, T.S. Miller, John Parnham, Adeline-Johns Putra, Louise Squire, Sherryl Vint, and Liz Williams. Thanks are also due to Mariano Martín Rodríguez, and to ix x TERRAFORMING Cathy Rees, Chris Williams, and Phil Franey, whose support throughout my time at the university is much appreciated. Elements of the Introduction appear in the journal publication ‘Environmental Philosophy and Space in Literature: Landscaping and the Chronotope,’ Brief: Online Journal of Snippets – American Literature, 1 (2011), 5–6 <http://www.brief.umcs.eu/american-literature/brief-1_american- literature.pdf> (accessed March 2016). Elements of the irst chapter appear in the journal publications ‘“A Creature Alive but Tranced and Obscurely Yearning to Wake”: Gaian Anticipations and Terraforming in the European Science Fiction of H.G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon and Stanislaw Lem,’ Revista Hélice: Reflexiones Críticas Sobre Ficción Especulativa, 15 (2012a), 12–19; ‘“A Fantastic Relex of Itself, An Echo, A Symbol, A Myth, A Crazy Dream”: Terraforming as Landscaping Nature’s Otherness in H.G. Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come and Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men and Star Maker,’ Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, 111.40 (2012b), 14–31; and ‘Terraforming and Proto-Gaian Narratives in American Pulp Sf of the 1930s–1940s,’ Eaton Journal of Archival Research, 1 (2013), 38–55. Elements of the ifth chapter appear in the journal publications ‘Ecocriticism and Terraforming: Building Critical Spaces,’ Forum: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts, 10 (2010) <http://www.forumjournal.org/site/issue/10/chris-pak> (accessed March 2016); and ‘“All Energy Is Borrowed” – Terraforming: A Master Motif for Physical and Cultural Re(Up)cycling in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy,’ Green Letters, 18 (2014a), 1–13 <http://www.tandfonline.com/ doi/abs/10.1080/14688417.2014.890527> (accessed March 2016). Introduction Terraforming: Engineering Imaginary Environments Introduction Science-ictional (sf) stories of planetary adaptation – terraforming – construct imaginative spaces to explore society’s orientation to ecological, environmental, and geopolitical issues and concerns. Terraforming involves processes aimed at adapting the environmental parameters of alien planets for habitation by Earthbound life, and it includes methods for modifying a planet’s climate, atmosphere, topology, and ecology. Combining the Latin terra for ‘earth’ or ‘land’ with the gerund ‘forming,’ the term refers to ‘[t]he process of transforming a planet into one suficiently similar to the earth to support terrestrial life’ and is chiely associated with sf discourse (‘Terraforming, n.,’ 2015). While the Online OED credits the irst use of the term to Jack Williamson (writing as Will Stewart) in 1949, Jeffrey Prucher traces the verb ‘terraform’ to Williamson’s 1942 short story ‘Collision Orbit’ (2007, 235).
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