About the Author

Carl Abbott is professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University and an avid science fiction reader since his youth. Among his other books are The New Urban America: Growth and Politics in Sunbelt Cities and The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West.

Reviews

"A striking book that deserves praise and recognition from both science fiction scholars and Western historians, and Abbott excels at the difficult task of speaking powerfully to audiences in both fields."--Science Fiction Studies"Abbott has combined a life-long passion for science fiction with his acknowledged skills as an interpreter of the American West. At its core, this gracefully written monograph examines how the shifting views of the myth of the West have helped shape American science fiction writing from roughly the 1940s to the present day."--Pacific Historical Review"This book demonstrates how science fiction and western history have both accepted and challenged the frontier myth. A fundamentally interdisciplinary study, this work serves as an excellent introduction to both science fiction and Western historical writing. . . . As the New Western History revises our understanding of the frontier to supply a productive and valued past, so science fiction, by reimagining this West on the space frontier, becomes a medium through which narratives of democratic community displace the hierarchies required by stories of imperial conquest. Abbott locates a future 'critical citizenship' in this productive interchange of ideas and narratives."--American Historical Review"An erudite, lively, and instructive book. It will be read with pleasure by those interested in science fiction, the West, or America's fantasy life as it engages with our history and general culture."--Western Historical Quarterly"Abbott is conversant with a broad range of writing about both the West and science fiction, and he succeeds admirably in orchestrating a meaningful and often witty dialogue between the two traditions. . . . Artfully weaving connections between history and fiction, cultural theory and aesthetics, this book should provide food for thought to anyone interested in genuinely interdisciplinary studies."--Western American Literature"Abbott has assembled a valuable archive of science fiction literature that engages with the imagination of the American West; each chapter clearly marks two or three dominant trends in fiction that address a particular aspect of the West, and thereby establish a useful taxonomy of the wealth of material Abbott addresses. For the science fiction novice in particular, this survey will prove engaging and functional."--Oregon Historical Quarterly"Scholars of both history and science fiction will find abundant discussion of benchmark literature, and Abbott's writing is highly accessible for the reader-enthusiast as well."--History: Reviews of New Books

"The great pleasure of reading this book comes from the unexpected new sense of depth that Abbott gives to his subjects by reading them off each other, in the same way two images in a stereopticon suddenly give the mind a third dimension."--Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Mars Trilogy"Abbott boldly goes where no western historian has gone before. . . . A dazzling book that ponders the past and projects possibilities in ways that illuminate the present."--Stephen Aron, author of How the West Was Lost and Executive Director, Institute for the Study of the American West, Autry National Center"Carl Abbott has written a broad, erudite, and entertaining survey of how the West and the Future intersect in fiction, and a thought-provoking study of the interplay of genre, region, and history."--Ursula K. Le Guin, author of The Earthsea Cycle