First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Tom Moylan is Glucksman Professor of Contemporary Writing at the University of Limerick. He is author of Scraps ofthe Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia and Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the UtopianImagination (Routledge), and coeditor of Not Yet:Reconsidering Ernst Bloch.
Raffaella Baccolini is Associate Professor of English at the University of Bologna.

ContentsIndroduction: Dystopia and Histories Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan1. Utopia in Dark Times: Optimism/Pessimism and Utopia/Dystopia Ruth Levitas and Lucy Sargisson2. Genre Blending and the Critical Dystopia Jane Donawerth3. The Writing of Utopia and the Feminist Critial Dystopia: Suzy MKee Charnas' Holdfast Series Ildney Cavalcanti4. Cyberpunk and Dystopia: Pat Cadigan's Networks David Seed5. Posthuman Bodies and Agency in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Naomi Jacobs6. 'A useful knowledge of the present is rooted in the past': Memory and Historical Reconciliation in Ursula K. LeGuin's The Telling Raffaella Baccolini7. 'The moment is here...and it's important': State, Agency, and Dystopia in Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica and Ursula K. LeGuin's The Telling Tom Moylan8. Unmasking the Real? Critique and Utopia in Recent SF Films Peter Fitting9. Where the Prospective Horizon is Omitted: Naturalism and Dystopia in Fight Club and Ghost Dog Phillip E. Wegner10. Theses on Dystopia and Anti-Utopia Darko Suvin11. Concrete Dystopia: Slavery and its Others Maria Varsam12. The Problem of the 'Flawed Utopia': A Note on the Costs of Eutopia Lyman Tower SargentConclusion: Critical Dystopia and Possibilities Raffaella Baccolini and Tom MoylanNotes on ContributorsIndex