Over the last half-century, science fiction has witnessed increasing complexity in its treatments of future homesteading, community building, mining, and other themes familiar to western historians. Considering these common threads, this is the first book to explore the ways that science fiction writers have drawn directly on narratives of the American West to frame their visions of the future.

Frontiers Past and Future

Carl Abbott (2006)

Reviewing the work of many Hugo and Nebula Award winners, as well as drawing upon popular film and television series (like the Buck Rogers serials), Abbott’s study journeys across the far reaches of science fiction’s universe. His cast of notables ranges from venerable masters like Robert Heinlein and Fritz Lieber to new-wave feminist Ursula Le Guin and cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson; their settings are as diverse as the near-future West of Octavia Butler and the entrancing extraterrestrial visions of Pamela Sargent, Jonathan Lethem, and C. J. Cherryh.

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