UWP Lecturers CFP Special Issue of SF Studies: Science Fiction in/and California

[Rob Latham]

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Science Fiction Studies

Science Fiction in/and California

	This special issue of Science Fiction Studies 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 The Crying of Lot 49 to  
William Gibson’s Virtual Light.

	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.

	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 (<jfalexan at uci.edu>) and Catherine Liu  
(<liu at uci.edu>). 
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