Book Review for Cityscapes of the Future: Urban Spaces in Space, Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Abstract

Those interested in spatial theory, urban studies, and the science fiction imagination will find this collection of essays to be a worthwhile investigation into science fiction's many representations of the city. Yael Maurer and Meyrav Koren-Kuik have collected an array of interdisciplinary material for this fifty-third volume of Brill Rodopi's Consciousness, Literature, and the Arts series. The textual variety with which these authors grapple covers early twentieth-century to contemporary literature, Hollywood films, anime, video games, interactive websites, and more. The topics range from narrative structure and author technique to the ways in which future urban spaces impact social spheres as they relate to theories of network, body, and race. Pairing urban spatiality and science fiction itself concurrently engages two highly relevant and growing fields of critical discourse and popular culture. Maurer and Koren-Kuik appropriately describe the city as more than setting, as an actant, actively reworking systems like race, class, and gender within real and imaginary networks. The essays captured in this volume articulate the intersections between these many moving parts of future cityscapes.