Frontier Of The Past, But Of The Future As Well?

Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West. By Carl Abbott. (2006) Kansas: University of Kansas Press. 230 pages. $29.95.

Reviewed by Ryder W. Miller


Carl Abbott, a professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Oregon State University, in Frontiers Past and Future defends the use of the prevalent Western Frontier tropes that abound in science fiction. His work adds depth and understanding for those who enjoy such metaphors, and those who are adherents of the prevalent comparisons and analogies of the past.

Abbott questionably uses an equal mark in a sentence to equate science fiction with a retelling of the Western American experience before the closing of The West, but a squiggly mark (~) appears to be needed above the equal mark in sentence in such an imperfect equation today: ~=.

It can also be argued that space, at least our solar system, is more like a dangerous wilderness rather than a Frontier, and we may be the "indigenous" peoples, more later.

Abbott's work is insightful and a pleasure to read, but it is an example of how difficult it is to try to academicize or historicize science fiction with its vast numbers of forgotten books, authors, universes, imaginary planets, futures, and dimensions. It would be a cheap shot to say that an author such as Abbott making such a grand attempt at historical discourse has not read a particular book, but is there an acknowledged cannon or established Mega-text that we can all be responsible for as science fiction fans, critics, and historians? Science fiction has been different things to many different people, and for many, still a re-exploration of the complicated Frontier Dream.

Abbott in this partial (necessarily so) discourse, successfully documents the fascinating explanation for science fiction's connection to America's western past:

"For many writers of American science fiction, the exploration and development of the American West has been a fertile source of ideas and models for future centuries." (Page 2)

Abbott argues that science fiction has to be based at least partly by "present knowledge" and that:

"Science fiction extends western openness to infinity, from cold desert surfaces of the moon or Mars to the wide-open spaces of entire galaxies, making the western plains and desert actually as well as metaphorically boundless and extending their possibilities and dangers to the ends of the imagination." (Page 12-13.)

Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 paper: "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" wrote that the Frontier experience defined the American character, and one finds in science fiction many ruminations on this aspect of the bigger Mega-textual story to be told by science fiction about the American story. Science fiction is presented as about the "Frontiers" of the future, of scientific discoveries, of the sometimes traveled to past, and the bigger "shared" universe out there.

As Abbott shows there are many analogies that can be made between the Western American experience and space exploration. The imagined planets, but not those of the solar system, for the meantime also still too distant, offer us a place to start again or homestead in the wild. There are new imaginary lands to be cultivated, new places to create frontier democracies or utopian experiments, and possibilities for terraforming (or planet alteration) unsuitable planets which Abbott calls an "Engineers Dream" like the dams that brought waters to the settlers of the American West. In the past the frontiers of Venus and Mars have been treated as landscapes for the respective metaphorical exploration of love and war. There "was" once enough air and suitable temperatures to have outdoor adventures there.

Abbott's Frontiers Past and Future is not just about the American West's past and future, but also the present. There is plenty of discussion about the western cities San Francisco and Los Angeles, but not much about Portland and Seattle? Cyberpunk, with its "cyber cowboys" is also described as an attempt to explore our relationship with the Pacific Rim, which includes both our and their expansionism. There is also discussion of the Asian World's economic impact on the western states. Here the work focuses on the Western present and the complicated California experience. Abbott's work argues that science fiction is a reflection of the past and the present: "for science fiction looks both backward and forward as it recycles and rethinks the older themes and narratives of the American West." (Page 185)

Frontiers Past and Future is mostly about the works of Robert Heinlein, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Greg Bear, William Gibson, Thomas Pynchon, and Neil Stephenson. The main texts discussed are Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Farmers in the Sky, Robinson's 1990's Mars series and Pacific Edge series, Le Guin's Always Coming Home, Bear's Moving Mars, Gibson's Nueromancer, Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (?), John Shirley's City Come a Walkin, Stephenson's Snow Crash and Diamond Age, the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, Alaska, and the movie "Toy Story".

Surprisingly missing is Lewis Shiner's Frontera, Tony Daniel's Warpath, Terry Bisson's Voyage to the Red Planet (1990), and a host of famous westerns. Instead Pynchon's Californian The Crying of Lot 49 and the movie "Toy Story"? The book is not a comparison between The Western and science fiction, no mention of Walter Van Tilburg Clark's The Ox-Bow Incident or Edward S. Ellis's Seth Jones; or, The Captives of the Frontier here, but instead a successful documentation of how the history of the American West has influenced the modern science fiction novel.

But is space, with our barren solar system which people still cannot venture forth into, still to be considered a Frontier?

The books main problem is not one of execution, for which it is excellent, but rather in omission or conceptualization. There is no exploration of the alternative vision of space as a wilderness, even if it is probably only a sterile wilderness filled with only strange gas planets, empty and lifeless moons, and rock planets with only geological formations. But some scientists still think that there could be alien life, extremophiles, out there that need our protection from the would-be terraformers.

Abbott does not point out that the Frontiers or wildernesses of space, at least in our solar system, are different than the Frontier of the American West. For one thing there is no air. There also is not the necessary transportation to bring us to such places. The planets and the moons in the solar system are also inhospitable. Without space suits humans who could survive Alaskan winters would die almost instantly on Mars, the moon or in the vacuum of space. There are no saloons, open prairies, or frontier towns as well. There are probably a number of watering holes in space. There has been a lot of reporting of the discovery of ice and water in the solar system, but one could not take a horse there or move cattle or sheep through such solar system country. There are no Native Americans or other indigenous cultures in the solar system. No extraterrestrial civilizations in the nearby area either. There will be no solar system Homestead Act like the Homestead Act of 1862 which offered 160 acres of western land to anyone who would cultivate the land for five years. There are not likely to be lawmen or outlaws or gun fights on the other planets of the solar system or on Pluto anytime soon. "The Final Frontier" of Star Trek, the best of which is up there with the best of science fiction, happy 41st anniversary Star Trek, will not occur in our lifetimes or ever (especially those transporters, but at least they are not transporting entire planets). But through imagination and imaginary technologies of the future we can work through our past again on distant worlds and terraformed planets.

Abbot writes: "The western past, in other words, not only provides conceptual tools for thinking about the future, but it also gives those ideas depth and resonance." (Page 182)

What is missing in this 187 page essay is the presentation of a preservationist ethic, or alternative space wilderness vision: Astroenvironmentalism or Astropreservationism, except maybe in the discussion of the works of Kim Stanley Robinson who has Martian preservationists. But was there such an argument being made in the Western lands? Yes. Portions of Yosemite Valley were saved before the closing of the American west, John Muir and the Sierra Club. But was there such a sentiment among the settlers of the west? Walden was written in 1854 and Western settlers learned to love at least some of the seasons. Appreciation of the land, and likely strange new worlds with their unique landscapes, is something that probably can grow on you. The appreciation of new landscapes have grown on me. It is telling that the Frontiers Past and Future is written by an urban planner, who like the astronomers and urban ecologists are usually boxed out of a definition of nature which sometimes and necessarily contrasts Nature with technological culture because we are different, because of technology different than everything else on the planet. The planet Earth has not seen the likes of something like us before. Wilderness, contrasted with technological culture, is better off without us. Nature can also mean the universe or an approaching asteroid, but we also need a strict definition of Nature to remind that wild places need to be set aside for their own protection. The Frontier ethic still de-legitimizes this argument.

Our solar system is strange and alien and so vast that it is believed beyond our possible alteration, but that was once believed true of the Earth. Passenger Pigeons, now extinct, once flew in flocks in America so large that they could block out the entire visible sky. The ideas to terraform Mars and Venus, before we have even had the chance to explore such places firsthand, hearkens back to the survivalist tendencies of the Frontier ethic with its argument for freedom, survival, and new opportunities. Abbott does not acknowledge that such a tendency is not conducive to the establishment of a needed modern preservationistic perspective which can remind us of important things like caring about pollution, global warming, habitat destruction and population growth. A Frontier is something that stands in our way and needs to be altered. An alternative idea is to modify ourselves so that we can adapt to these strange worlds. Deep Ecologists make such an argument about adapting to habitats on Earth. The solar system is a place to explore, but unfortunately we will not be able to do so as individuals seeking freedom. It will be governments which have the resources and technology to send people out there. They will be more effective gatekeepers than they have been in the past. They will also control the conditions in which people are allowed to go, or if a few are allowed to go at all. But Abbott convinces the reader that our desire to go has a long history.

Despite its faults, a strong component of Abbott's Frontiers Past and Future is the argument that new worlds offer us the opportunity to establish more enlightened political arrangements. Just as the New World of the Americas fostered democracy, new places may offer an improvement to our current political malaise. Robert Zubrin, The President of The Mars Society argues that Mars may be a place where we can do away with the unfairly privileged. These new places may shine the light of Utopian dreaming for all members of the human tribe, showing that improvements can be made to the human condition. Abbott also argues that Frontier science fiction can shine such a light into the sometimes darkness of the human condition. Settlers of the real American West, as Abbott shows, have already done so.

But it will be hard to convince the Science Fiction Field to give up the Frontier tropes, they have been fun and about freedom, but the imagined Frontier with air and habitable conditions for the meantime are only in our dreams and nightmares. If we think of the solar system as a wilderness, rather than a Frontier, it will be wondrous, rather than just something we need to conquer. Abbott's work succeeds at reminding us of the future of the past and present, for some a disappearing conception as a Frontier. Abbott does not open up the discussion to what the future of the future will be, which may alternatively be wilderness exploration instead.