Alternative Worlds : Blue-Sky Thinking since 1900.
Title:
Alternative Worlds : Blue-Sky Thinking since 1900.
Author:
Vidal, Ricarda.
ISBN:
9783035306736
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (350 pages)
Series:
Cultural History and Literary Imagination ; v.22
Cultural History and Literary Imagination
Contents:
Cover -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Introduction ([Ricarda Vidal ] [ Ingo Cornils]) -- In Praise of Blue-Sky Thinking -- Bibliography -- Websites -- Part I: Shaping the Earth and the Sea -- 1 Atlantropa: One of the Missed Opportunitiesof the Future (Ricarda Vidal) -- The Plan -- Water Power and World Peace -- Fact, Fiction and the Power of Faith -- Atlantropa on Film -- Atlantropa in Fiction -- Afterlives -- Bibliography -- 2 Alternative Mediterraneans Six Million Years Ago: A Model for the Future? ([Daniel Garcia-Castellanos] [Ricarda Vidal]) -- The Significance of Salt: The Messinian Salinity Crisis -- Drowned River Valleys: Main Evidence for a Desiccated Mediterranean -- Why the Strait Closed: The Formation of a Land Bridge between Morocco and Spain -- Closing the Strait of Gibraltar: Climate Control or Macro-Engineering Hubris? -- Bibliography -- 3 Atlas Swam: Freedom, Capital and Floating Sovereignties in the Seasteading Vision ([Philip E. Steinberg] [Elizabeth A. Nyman] [Mauro J. Caraccioli]) -- Introduction: Launching the Seastead Idea -- Seasteading and the Search for a Floating Utopia -- The Anarcho-libertarianism of Seasteading: Where Economic Man Meets Burning Man -- Seasteading as New, New Urbanism -- Sovereignty, Territory and 'Aquatory' -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Part II: The 1960s: Building the Future -- 4 The Last 'City of the Future': Brasília and its Representation in Literature and Film (Patricia Silva McNeill ) -- Bibliography -- 5 The Post-War High-Rise: Promise of an Alternative World (Elena Solomides ) -- Impact of Technology -- The Multi-Level City -- The High-Rise in the City -- Looking Forward -- Bibliography -- 6 'The landscape is coded': Visual Culture and the Alternative Worlds of J.G. Ballard's Early Fiction (Christopher Daley ) -- Bibliography -- Part III: Alternative Lives.
7 Designed Surfaces and the Utopics of Rejuvenation (Maya Oppenheimer) -- Storying Surface: Patina and the Formation of Narrative -- Consuming Surfaces -- Cosmetic Intervention and Happy-Ageing -- The Mask of Age -- Conclusion: Re-storying the Ageing Process -- Bibliography -- 8 The Alternative World of Michel Houellebecq (Boukje Cnossen) -- Introduction -- The Plot -- A Fast-Paced Society -- Acceleration -- Standstill -- Le Néant -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- 9 From the American Myth to the American Dream: Alternative Worlds in Recent Hollywood Westerns (Susanne Kord ) -- The Assassination of an American Myth -- Burials and Border Crossings: Living the Dystopian Dream -- Back to Nature, or Forward to the Past: The End of the Quest -- Bibliography -- 10 Growing up in the New Age: A Journey into Wonderland? (Marjolaine Ryley) -- The Commune and the Letter: Where It All Began -- The Ark, Voices and Intertwining Strands: Using my Parents' Writing in 'Growing up in the New Age' -- Squatting as a Countercultural Activity and Life at 81 Thicket Road -- Kirkdale Free School and the Philosophy of Alternative Education -- Growing up in the New Age: Spiritual Emergency? -- Bibliography -- Part IV: Outer Space -- 11 Alternative Worlds in the Cosmos (Peter Dickens) -- Worlds in Outer Space -- Outer Spatial Practice -- Representations of Outer Space -- Space Art as 'scientific' representation -- 'The Outer Space Frontier' as a representation -- Representational Space: Towards Real Alternatives -- Acknowledgements -- Bibliography -- 12 Between Bauhaus and Bügeleisen: The Iconic Style of Raumpatrouille (1966) (Ingo Cornils) -- Straßenfeger (Blockbuster) -- The Stylistic Elements of a Cult Series -- Design Influences -- Objects of Desire and Control -- A Concrete Utopia? -- Conclusion -- Bibliography.
13 Blue Sky Thinking in a Post-Astronautic Present (Rachel Steward) -- Escaping/Going Nowhere -- A Reconfigured Aristotelian Imaginary -- Seahaven's Solid Sky -- The Ideal of Tativille -- A Frozen Sky -- A Breathless Edge -- Bibliography -- Film -- Websites -- Other sources -- Notes on Contributors.
Abstract:
In an attempt to counteract the doom and gloom of the economic crisis and the politicians' overused dictum that 'there is no alternative', this interdisciplinary collection presents a number of alternative worlds that were conceived over the course of the last century. While change at the macro level was the focus of most of the ideological struggles of the twentieth century, the real impetus for change came from the blue-sky thinking of scientists, engineers, architects, sociologists, planners and writers, all of whom imagined alternatives to the status quo. Following a roughly chronological order from the turn of the nineteenth century to the present, this book explores the dreams, plans and hopes as well as the nightmares and fears that are an integral part of alternative thinking in the Western hemisphere. The alternative worlds at the centre of the individual essays can each be seen as crucial to the history of the past one hundred years. While these alternative worlds reflect their particular cultural context, they also inform historical developments in a wider sense and continue to resonate in the present.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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