Zone Theory

Alexander Popov is Assistant Professor at Sofia University «St. Kliment Ohridski», where he teaches linguistics and science fiction. Zone Theory is his first monograph.

Table of Contents


List of Figures


Preface


Acknowledgements


Permissions


Part One. Maps


Chapter One: Between Model and Monster


Chapter Two: Modalizing Utopia


Chapter Three: Six Excursuses on Modal Science Fiction


Chapter Four: The Utopian Diagram


Part Two. Fold


Chapter Five: Topologies of Revolutionary Time. Critical Utopia, Critical Dystopia, Heterotopia


Chapter Six: Non/Inhuman Spaces and Economies of the Self


Chapter Seven: Anti-Anti-Utopia and Totality


Part Three. Unfold


Chapter Eight: Rewriting Myth and Genre. Narrative Modalities and Possible Worlds


Chapter Nine: A Cartography of Zones. Inhuman Spaces and Ontological Ruination


Part Four. Refold


Chapter Ten: Staying with the Singularity. Nonhuman Narrators and More-than-Human Mythologies


Chapter Eleven: Anti-Anti-Utopia Redux. Utopia as Virus


Bibliography


Index

“This book elaborates a structure for the general family of utopian genres with marvelous clarity, and with it established, Popov can pursue all kinds of further insights about the relationships between these texts. As the world’s situation becomes more desperate, and the need for a new political economy more obvious, this complicated canon is becoming increasingly important: no longer just a minor literary genre, but rather a crucial aid to thinking about our social systems. The better we understand utopian narrative strategies, the more fully we can put them to use, so Popov’s excellent study is timely and interesting.”

Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy and The Ministry for the Future

"Alexander Popov’s Zone Theory deftly guides us through the thickets of utopian theory and shows us why we should care, with fresh and convincing readings of a variety of science fictional texts. The writers explored here range from the usual suspects—Le Guin, Delany, Kim Stanley Robinson—to some not usually classed as utopian or dystopian, such as John Crowley and Brooke Bolander. Popov builds on the work of Tom Moylan and Fredric Jameson while adding important perspectives such as considering utopia as a hyperobject and using utopian theory to read the incongruous, unresolvable Zones of science fiction such as the Strugatskys’ Roadside Picnic and Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy. I am happy to do as Popov suggests: to read utopias not only as ongoing processes rather than finished blueprints, as Moylan has taught us, but also to see them as a way of learning about the world. Utopia, says Popov, is “an apparatus for registering difference at the level of societal organization” and thus is always open to new discoveries and new antinomies: anti-utopias lead to anti-anti-utopias and so on without end."

Brian Attebery, Emeritus Professor of English and Philosophy at Idaho State University, author of Stories about Stories: Fantasy & the Remaking of Myth