<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Call for Papers: Special Issue of <i>Science Fiction Studies</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">Science Fiction in/and California</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>This special issue of <i>Science Fiction Studies</i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; "> invites critical and scholarly articles dealing with California as a science fiction space, theme, or concept. The West Coast of the US, and California in particular, has long been a source of inspiration for the sf imagination: the state’s history offers a rich repository of utopian schemes, dystopian realities, collectivist experiments, and commercial and ecological catastrophes. During the Cold War and after, California has represented the vanguard of technoscientific progress, free-market ideology, lifestyle libertarianism, and countercultural experimentation. California shares the seismic instabilities of the Pacific Rim and is integrated into the cultural and economic exchanges facilitated and regulated by global capital throughout the region. California exists in the larger cultural imagination as both a much-dreamed-of sphere of spiritual discovery and multicultural hybridity as well as a nightmarish realm of ecological disaster and race war. The physical and ideological contrast between Northern and Southern California has inspired writers and thinkers, inside and outside the genre, for generations, from Thomas Pynchon’s <i>The Crying of Lot 49</i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; "> to William Gibson’s <i>Virtual Light</i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; ">. <span> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>In this issue, we hope to promote dialogues between theorists of the new urban geography, such as Mike Davis and David Harvey, and sf writers and critics. Philip K. Dick, Kim Stanley Robinson, Neal Stephenson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Silverberg, Octavia E. Butler, and William Gibson have all depicted California in their work, whether as a site of utopian inspiration or as a dystopic realm where history and authenticity are erased and natural beauty is threatened by economic and ecological mismanagement. California has offered sf writers a fruitful space where forward-thinking blueprints—sociopolitical and sexual utopias, technocultural avant-gardes, impulses towards collective and personal reinvention—are projected onto a beautiful and fragile landscape. We enourage essays that address these concerns or any others related to how California has figured within sf discourse.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Abstracts of 500 words should be submitted by 1 February 2011. Full drafts of essays will be required by 1 May 2011. Send abstracts to Jonathan Alexander (<<a href="mailto:jfalexan@uci.edu"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; "><u>jfalexan@uci.edu</u></span></a>>) and Catherine Liu (<<a href="mailto:liu@uci.edu"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; "><u>liu@uci.edu</u></span></a>>). </span></p></body></html>