Call For Papers for a collection edited by Duke University's Gerry Canavan and UCSD's Kim Stanley Robinson:

CFP for edited collection: Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction
Editors: Gerry Canavan and Kim Stanley Robinson (ecologyandsciencefiction@gmail.com)
Abstracts due August 31, 2011
Final essays due Summer 2012

We are seeking proposals for an edited collection tentatively titled Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction, with completed essays due in Summer 2012. We seek contributions that touch on any aspect of the relationship between ecological science, environmentalism, and SF, with particular attention to such topics as:

* ecological futurity and ecocriticism in SF
* visions of eco-disaster, eco-catastrophe, and eco-apocalypse
* strategies for ecotopia
* “the globe” and global thinking in SF
* science fictional critiques of global capitalism, consumerism, and ecological racism
* social justice as an ecological technology
* narratives of political resistance
* SF as it figures within current public debate about ecological science (climate change, Peak Oil, etc)
* philosophies and fantasies of Nature
* narratives of evolution, extinction, and extermination
* eco-feminist SF
* reproductive futurity
* ecology and Afrofuturism
* ecology, digitality, and techno-optimism
* terraforming and other narratives of space colonization
* aliens, alien worlds, xenobiology, and exo-ecology
* ecological thinking as a strategy for cognitive estrangement
* ecological critiques of particular unscientific or anti-ecological science fictions, or critiques of the history of the genre as a whole

We hope to produce a collection that speaks to the long history of ecological SF, ranging from the climate change that prompts the Martian invasion in War of the Worlds to Oryx and Crake, The Wind-Up Girl, Avatar, and WALL-E (and everything else before, after, and between). We likewise intend “SF” in its broadest possible sense, to include fantasy and horror literature alongside “science fiction” more narrowly construed, and hope to receive submissions that properly reflect SF as a diverse and global genre.

Please direct all queries, questions, and submissions to ecologyandsciencefiction@gmail.com. Abstracts should be around 250-300 words; submissions should also include contact information and a short bio. Please plan for final essays to range between 4000-8000 words.

Speaking of which, I just realized a significant omission! Following Stan Robinson's talk at Duke University in January 2010 (covered in KSR.info here), in September 2010 was published Polygraph #22, which included an extensive interview of Robinson by Gerry Canavan, Lisa Klarr and Ryan Vu: "Science, Justice, Science Fiction: A Conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson".

The interview is freely available on Gerry Canavan's blog (also in PDF format)! It covers a lot of ground: politicizing science, science and capitalism, social justice, democracy, Obama (the interview was conducted in the spring of 2009), the left, environmentalists, science fiction and utopia, ... At 17 dense pages, this is one of the most comprehensive and in-depth interviews of Robinson around, recommended reading -- this will will keep you busy for a bit!

How, in your view, can democracy be put to work in service of social and environmental justice and responsible governance?

This must be a whole program with reforms all across the board. Complex and messy, it would (or will) take many years in many jerks and starts. But it would begin with electing representatives who have promised to work on it, and then holding them to it in subsequent elections, for a long time, until a pattern was built and a certain trajectory or path dependency set into place. A very difficult assignment.