LOST IN SPACE This page intentionally left blank LOST IN SPACE GEOGRAPHIES OF SCIENCE FICTION EDITED BY ROB KITCHIN AND JAMES KNEALE continuum LONDON • NEW YORK Continuum The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London, SE1 7NX 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6503 First published 2002 Rob Kitchin, James Kneale and the contributors 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-8264-5730-4 (hardback) 0-8264-5731-2 (paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lost in space: geographies of science fiction / edited by Rob Kitchin and James Kneale. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8264-5730-4—ISBN 0-8264-5731-2 (pbk. ) 1. Science fiction—History and criticism. 2. Space and time in literatur I. Kitchin, Rob. II. Kneale, James. PN3433. 6. L672001 809. 3'8762'09384—dc21 2001032309 Typeset by Refinecatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wilts CONTENTS Contributors vii Acknowledgements X Foreword xi Michael Marshall Smith 1 Lost in space 1 James Kneale and Rob Kitchin 2 The way it wasn't: alternative histories, contingent geographies 17 Barney Warf 3 Geography's conquest of history in The Diamond Age 39 Michael Longan and Tim Oakes 4 Space, technology and Neal Stephensbn's science fiction 57 Michelle Kendrick 5 Geographies of power and social relations in Marge Piercy's He, She and It 74 Barbara J. Morehouse 6 The subjectivity of the near future: geographical imaginings in the work of J. G. Ballard 90 Jonathan S. Taylor 7 Tuning the self: city space and SF horror movies 104 Stuart C. Aitken 8 Science fiction and cinema: the hysterical materialism of pataphysical space 123 Paul Kingsbury vi CONTENTS 9 An invention without a future, a solution without a problem: motor pirates, time machines and drunkenness on the screen 136 Marcus A. Doel and David B. Clarke 10 What we can say about nature: familiar geographies, science fiction and popular physics 156 Sheila Hones 1 1 Murray Bookchin on Mars! The production of nature in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy 167 Shaun Huston 12 In the belly of the monster: Frankenstein, food, factishes and fiction 180 Nick Bingham References 193 Index 209 THE CONTRIBUTORS Stuart C. Aitken is a Professor of Geography at San Diego State University. His past books include Place, Power, Situation and Spectacle: A Geography of Film (co- editor with Leo Zonn; Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), Family Fantasies and Community Space (Rutgers University Press, 1998), Geographies of Young People (Routledge, 2001) and Putting Children in Their Place (Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers, 1994). Professor Aitken is also published widely in academic journals and has edited collections on film and the social constructions of masculinity. Nick Bingham is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the Open University, UK. Current research on the GM controversy and the patenting of lifeforms explores the challenging geographies that emerge when we are forced to think the natural and the social at the same time. Such work is informed by an ongoing engagement with the 'cosmopoliticaT thought of anthropologists of science and technology Michel Serres, Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers. David B. Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Leeds and an affiliate member of the Institute of Communications Studies. His research interests centre on the geographies of consumerism and the media. In addition to a number of journal articles, he has edited The Cinematic City (Routledge, 1997) and is currently conducting research on early cinema and working on a number of books on the consumer society. Marcus A. Doel is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Wales Swansea. His research centres on social and spatial theory, with particular reference to subjectivity, technology and consumption. He is the author of Poststructuralist Geographies (Edinburgh University Press, 1999). Sheila Hones is an Associate Professor in the Department of Area Studies of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo. Her major field is North American studies, within which she focuses on written texts and cultural geography. viii THE CONTRIBUTORS Shaun Huston is an adjunct instructor of geography at Portland State University and Portland Community College. His work on environmental philosophy and social theory has been published in Anarchist Studies, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism and Society and Nature. Michelle Kendrick is Assistant Professor of English at Washington State University, Vancouver, where she teaches in the Electronic Media and Culture programme. She is author of many articles on technology and culture, co-editor of the collection Eloquent Images: Writing Visually in New Media (forthcoming, MIT Press) and co-author of the forthcoming DVD Red Planet: A Scientific and Cultural History (University of Pennsylvania Press). Paul Kingsbury is a PhD student in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky. He is writing a dissertation that uses psychoanalytical and poststructuralist approaches to examine tourism and community develop- ment in Jamaica. He recently edited disclosure: A Journal of Social Theory. Rob Kitchin is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. His research interests centre on the geographies of cyberspace and disability. He is the author of Cyberspace (Wiley, 1998) and Mapping Cyberspace (with Martin Dodge; Routledge, 2000), and the Managing Editor of the journal Social and Cultural Geography. James Kneale is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at University College London. His interests in cultural and historical geography include popular fiction, the media, and cultures of drink. He has contributed chapters on William Gibson and SF to Virtual Geographies (ed. M. Crang, P. Crang and J. May; Routledge, 1999) and Impossibility Fiction (ed. D. Littlewood and P. Stockwell; Rodopi, 1996). Michael Longan is a Visiting Professor at Gustavus Adolphus College in St Peter, Minnesota. He has research interests in geographies of cyberspace as well as in cultural and urban geography. He is currently studying the geography of the community networking movement in the United States. Barbara J. Morehouse, Associate Research Scientist, is affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, The University of Arizona, USA. She also holds the tide of Adjunct Assistant Professor in the University of Arizona, Department of Geography and Regional Development. Her research interests include nature-society interactions and border studies. Her publication credits include A Place Called Grand Canyon: Contested Geographies (University of Arizona Press, 1996), charting the history of boundary-drawing at Grand Canyon. THE CONTRIBUTORS ix Tim Oakes teaches geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of Tourism and Modernity in China (Routledge, 1998) as well as numerous articles and chapters on Chinese culture, tourism development, place and subjectivity. Michael Marshall Smith is a science fiction author and scriptwriter who has published several SF novels and numerous short stories. He received the prestigious Philip K. Dick Award for his novel Only Forward. Jonathan S. Taylor is an Assistant Professor in Geography at California State University, Fullerton. He is interested in geographies of the Internet, geographies of music and geographic education, as well as in human—environmental issues. He has published on virtual reality and Internet education issues. Barney Warf is Professor and Chair of Geography at Florida State University, Tallahassee. He is intrigued by social theory and political economy at the regional and global scales, and studies the economic geography of services and telecommunications. He has co-authored or edited two books, 20 book chapters, and 60 refereed articles. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS James would like to thank the following people for advice and encouragement in the initial stages of his investigation of science fiction: Lucie Armitt, Mark Bould, Jacquie Burgess and (particularly) Andy Butler. Thanks also to Rob, for getting this off the ground and keeping it there, and to Siobhan. Rob would like to thank Cora for allowing him the time to indulge in his 'projects', James for signposting an interesting topic, and the various members of the crit-geog-forum mailing list who suggested readings. We would both like to thank the contributing authors for generally sticking to deadlines and responding so positively to our critical reviews. We are grateful to Michael Marshall Smith for his Foreword, David M. Smith for making it possible, Martin Dodge and CASA for providing meeting space, and Tristan Palmer for editorial support and his enthusiasm for the project. FOREWORD Michael Marshall Smith The two things for which science fiction is best known are these: the creation of new environments, and the evocation of a sense of wonder. New places are wrought and telling futures conjured, and within both we hold up a mirror to ourselves. Whether in the guise of traditional space opera or slick 1990s cyber- noir, the lyricism of Ray Bradbury's Mars stories,