Walter M. Miller, Jr., was one of the twentieth century's leading science fiction writers, a two-time Hugo Award winner and author of the classic novels A Canticle for Leibowitz and Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman. This comprehensive literary guide provides more than 1,500 alphabetically arranged entries on Miller's life and body of work. It includes summaries of his two novels and all of his shorter works, character descriptions, explanations of the literary, cultural, historical, and religious allusions found in the works, as well as translations of all foreign words and phrases. This guide is meant to inform both scholarly and popular readings of Miller's work.

This volume brings together essays by specialists in different disciplines on the cultural expression of apocalypse, in particular in anglophone science fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Approaching these works from historical, philosophical, linguistic and literary perspectives, the contributors examine the relationship between secular and spiritual apocalypse, connecting the fiction and films to their historical moment. Not surprisingly, war recurs throughout this material, as a critical turning-point, fulfilment of prophecy, or prelude to a new age. In particular the essays explore the issue of whether modern apocalypse is seen as an ending or a beginning, considered under its political, ethnic and gendered aspects. Among the writers covered are H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon and such contemporary figures as Michael Moorcock, J. G. Ballard and Storm Constantine.

Dystopian States of America is a crucial resource that studies the impact of dystopian works on American society-including ways in which they reflect our deep and persistent fears about environmental calamities, authoritarian governments, invasive technologies, and human weakness. Dystopian States of America provides students and researchers with an illuminating resource for understanding the impact and relevance of dystopian and apocalyptic works in contemporary American culture. Through its wide survey of dystopian works in numerous forms and genres, the book encourages readers to connect with these works of fiction and understand how the catastrophically grim or disquieting worlds they portray offer insights into our own current situation. In addition to providing more than 150 encyclopedia articles on a large and representative sample of dystopian/apocalyptic narratives in fiction, film, television, and video games (including popular works that often escape critical inquiry), Dystopian States of America features a suite of critical essays on five themes-war, pandemics, totalitarianism, environmental calamity, and technological overreach-that serve as the foundation for most dystopian worlds of the imagination. These offerings complement one another, enabling readers to explore dystopian conceptions of America and the world from multiple perspectives and vantage points.

The idea of the complete annihilation of all life is a powerful and culturally universal concept. As human societies around the globe have produced creation myths, so too have they created narratives concerning the apocalyptic destruction of their worlds. This book explores the idea of the apocalypse and its reception within culture and society, bringing together 17 essays that explore both the influence and innovation of apocalyptic ideas from classical Greek and Roman writings to the foreign policies of today's United States.

For all its concern with change in the present and future, science fiction is deeply rooted in the past and, surprisingly, engages especially deeply with the ancient world. Indeed, both as an area in which the meaning of "classics" is actively transformed and as an open-ended set of texts whose own 'classic' status is a matter of ongoing debate, science fiction reveals much about the roles played by ancient classics in modern times. Classical Traditions in Science Fiction is the first collection in English dedicated to the study of science fiction as a site of classical receptions, offering a much-needed mapping of that important cultural and intellectual terrain. This volume discusses a wide variety of representative examples from both classical antiquity and the past four hundred years of science fiction, beginning with science fiction's "rosy-fingered dawn" and moving toward the other-worldly literature of the present day. As it makes its way through the eras of science fiction, Classical Traditions in Science Fiction exposes the many levels on which science fiction engages the ideas of the ancient world, from minute matters of language and structure to the larger thematic and philosophical concerns.

Using the principles of John Rawls’ theory of justice, this book offers an alternative political vision, one which describes a mode of governance that will enable communities to implement a sustainable and socially just future. Rawls described a theory of justice that not only describes the sort of society in which anyone would like to live but that any society can create a society based on just institutions. While philosophers have demonstrated that Rawls’s theory can provide a framework for the discussion of questions of environmental justice, the problem for many philosophical theories is that discussions of sustainable development open the need to address questions of ecological interdependence, historical inequality in past resource use and the recognition that we cannot afford to ignore the limitations of growth. These ideas do not fit in comfortably in standard discourse about theories of justice. In contrast, this book frames the discussion of global justice in terms of environmental sustainability. The author argues that these ideas can be used to develop a coherent political theory that reconciles cosmopolitan arguments and the non-cosmopolitan or nationalist arguments concerning social and environmental justice. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental philosophy and ethics, moral and political philosophy, global studies and sustainable development.

This Summer 2009 (VII, 3) issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, is devoted to the theme “Sociological Re-Imaginations in & of Universities.” As part of the journal’s continuing series critically engaging with C. Wright Mills’ “sociological imagination,” i.e., the proposition that the best way to theorize and practice sociology is via a continual conversation between the study of one’s personal troubles and that of broader public issues, the present issue turns its attention to fostering sociological re-imaginations in and of universities. Several faculty, recent graduates or alumni, and current undergraduate students advance insightful, critical perspectives about their own learning and teaching experiences and personal “troubles,” and broader university, disciplinary, and administrative “public issues” that in their view merit immediate attention in favor of fundamental rectifications of outdated procedures and educational habita that continue to persist at the cost of more creative, and in fact more scientific and rational, approaches to production and dissemination of knowledge. Contributors include: Satoshi Ikeda, Sandra J. Song, L. Lynda Harling Stalker, Jason Pridmore, Festus Ikeotuonye, Samuel Zalanga, Donald A. Nielsen, Anne Bubriski, Penelope Roode, Belle Summer, E. M. Walsh, Ann Marie Moler, Minxing Zheng, Andrew Messing, Jillian Pelletier, Christine Quinn, Trevor Doherty, Lisa Kemmerer, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (also as journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal’s Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR’s homepage.