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.
"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
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