Terraforming: Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in Science Fiction

Chris Pak is Editor-in-Chief of the Science Fiction Research Association's SFRA Review.

• Acknowledgements Introduction: Terraforming: Engineering Imaginary Environments Shaping Earth and the Solar System Sf as Environmental Literature A Disciplined Thought Experiment: Landscaping, SF and Terraforming The Lay of the Land 1: Landscaping Nature’s Otherness in Pre-1960s Terraforming and Proto-Gaian Stories Terraforming as a Site for Environmental Philosophical Reflection The War on Nature in Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come and John Russell Fearn’s “Earth’s Mausoleum” Nature’s Otherness and Terraforming in Stapledon’s Last and First Men and Star Maker Deism and Teleology in Stapledon’s Essays of Myth Creation Pre-1940s Proto-Gaian Living Worlds Proto-Gaian Scientific Romance: M.P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “When the World Screamed” The Pulp SF Proto-Gaian Cluster The Decline of the Living World Motif in 1950s American Pulp Sf2: The American Pastoral and the Conquest of Space The Garden of the World in Early 1950s Terraforming Stories The Burden of Hope in the Garden of the Chattel: 1950s Consensus Dystopias Moral Extensionism in Late 1950s-Early 1960s Terraforming Stories3: Ecology and Environmental Awareness in 1960s-1970s Terraforming Stories 1960s-1970s Proto-Gaian Living Worlds Terragouging: Time and the Forest Terraforming in the 1960s-1970s Terraforming and Ecopolitics in the Dune Sequence The Garden in Dune Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia 4: Edging Toward an Eco-Cosmopolitan Vision Building Critical Spaces: Pamela Sargent’s Venus Domes on Venus: Chronotopes of Enclosure The Pastoral in Pamela Sargent’s Venus Trilogy Frederick Turner’s Genesis: An Epic Poem5: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy Gardens on Mars “Stepping Back” Visions Reflected Back to Earth Closed Life-Support Systems, Soil and Cybernetics Eco-Economics and the Landscape as Mirror Science and Nature On Martian Myths Acknowledgements Introduction: Terraforming: Engineering Imaginary Environments Shaping Earth and the Solar System Sf as Environmental Literature A Disciplined Thought Experiment: Landscaping, SF and Terraforming The Lay of the Land1: Landscaping Nature’s Otherness in Pre-1960s Terraforming and Proto-Gaian Stories Terraforming as a Site for Environmental Philosophical Reflection The War on Nature in Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come and John Russell Fearn’s “Earth’s Mausoleum” Nature’s Otherness and Terraforming in Stapledon’s Last and First Men and Star Maker Deism and Teleology in Stapledon’s Essays of Myth Creation Pre-1940s Proto-Gaian Living Worlds Proto-Gaian Scientific Romance: M.P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “When the World Screamed” The Pulp SF Proto-Gaian Cluster The Decline of the Living World Motif in 1950s American Pulp Sf2: The American Pastoral and the Conquest of Space The Garden of the World in Early 1950s Terraforming Stories The Burden of Hope in the Garden of the Chattel: 1950s Consensus Dystopias Moral Extensionism in Late 1950s-Early 1960s Terraforming Stories3: Ecology and Environmental Awareness in 1960s-1970s Terraforming Stories 1960s-1970s Proto-Gaian Living Worlds Terragouging: Time and the Forest Terraforming in the 1960s-1970s Terraforming and Ecopolitics in the Dune Sequence The Garden in Dune Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia4: Edging Toward an Eco-Cosmopolitan Vision Building Critical Spaces: Pamela Sargent’s Venus Domes on Venus: Chronotopes of Enclosure The Pastoral in Pamela Sargent’s Venus Trilogy Frederick Turner’s Genesis: An Epic Poem5: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy Gardens on Mars “Stepping Back” Visions Reflected Back to Earth Closed Life-Support Systems, Soil and Cybernetics Eco-Economics and the Landscape as Mirror Science and Nature On Martian MythsConclusion Coda Works Cited Primary Works Cited Secondary Works Cited Index

‘Pak’s decades-spanning analysis of terraforming is an impressive work. It finds in sf an opportunity for a“disciplined thought experiment” (Pak 8)—a space for speculations about the future, yes, but also and especially for reflections on the present.’Benjamin R. DeVries, Fafnir—Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research