Shades of an urban frontier : historical resonances in the cities of Black and Anglophone SF【翻译】

ABSTRACT
The purpose of the study was to compare the portrayal of cities in science fiction by
African American authors to the portrayal of cities in science fiction by Anglo-European authors
and determine the connection between the emergent similarities and dissimilarities and the urban
history of each ethnic group. Two city typologies were used to provide a common basis for
comparison: the ‘imperial cities’ at the center of sf empires and the ‘ghost cities’ or ‘dead cities’
wherein the metropolis has undergone collapse, desolation and mass depopulation. The study
found that all the urban sf narratives shared a focus on interrogating crises of political and
environmental sustainability in urban history, but that the dead cities of black sf authors also
tended to focus on crises unique to African American urban history—in particular, that of
neighborhood dereliction and disintegration at the hands of racially targeted urban redevelopment
policies, and that of the role of imperialism and black anti-imperial politics in shaping
neighborhood formation in urban African American communities.
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PUBLIC ABSTRACT
Cities have a paradoxical relationship with science fiction literature. On the one
hand, critics like Brian Aldiss have called sf a ‘literature of cities’, citing them as the
dominant context for speculative fiction. On the other, critics like Gary Wolfe have noted
how sf has an “anti-urban frontier mentality” and how sf narratives involving cities often
tend to view them as a trap from which the protagonist must escape. This relationship is
even more complex in sf works by African American authors, as contemporary African
American fiction in general takes the city as the dominant social context for black life and
has turned to interrogate “issues of urban community” in the post-Civil Rights era.
This dissertation explores the connections between the heterogeneous urban
histories of Anglo-European and African American sf authors and the cities they construct.
It does so by comparing the portrayal of cities by each group and relating the
commonalities and contrasts that emerge from these portrayals to the differences and
similarities between African American urban history and Anglo-European urban history.
To provide a common ground for comparison, two city typologies are focused on: the
‘imperial city’ that reigns at the heart of sf’s many empires, and the empty metropolis of
the ‘dead city’ or ‘ghost city’. The study finds that these narratives all interrogate crises of
political and environmental sustainability in urban history, but that the focus of these
crises often diverge along the axis of race, with an especially large concentration on the
crises related to racially targeted urban renewal programs present in black sf’s dead cities
and on crises related to black anti-imperialist politics in its imperial cities.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………………………vi
Introduction: Urban Frontierism and the Black SF City: Historical Resonances in the Science Fictional
Metropolises of Black Authors .................................................................................................................. 1
Chapter I: Empire Through Two Ends of A Looking Glass, Part I — Anglophone SF’s Cycle of
Imperial Cities ............................................................................................................................................ 9
Chapter II: Empire Through Two Ends of a Looking Glass, Part II—The Counter-Imperial Imperial
Cities of Black SF .................................................................................................................................... 56
Chapter III: Dereliction in Black and White, Part I—Creative Destruction and the Dead Cities of
Anglophone Science Fiction .................................................................................................................. 111
Chapter IV: Dereliction in Black and White, Part II—The Dead Cities of Black SF and a Century of
Urban Dislocation .................................................................................................................................. 136
Conclusion: The Black Boxes of the SF Urban Frontier ....................................................................... 187
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………...207
Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………………….216
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure A1: photograph of Kensington, Philadelphia, early 19th century................216
Figure A2: photographs of Kensington, Philadelphia, circa 2011………………..217

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