Joseph D. Olander - No place else: explorations in utopian and dystopian fiction

Writers have created fictions of social perfection at least since Platos Republic. Sir Thomas More gave this thread of intellectual history a name when he called his contribution to it Utopia, Greek for no place. With each subsequent author cognizant of his predecessors and subject to altered real-world conditions which suggest ever-new causes for hope and alarm, no place changed. The fourteen essays presented in this book critically assess mans fascination with and seeking for no place. In discussing these central fictions, the contributors see no place from diverse perspectives: the sociological, the psychological, the political, the aesthetic. In revealing the roots of these works, the contributors cast back along the whole length of utopian thought. Each essay stands alone; together, the essays make clear what no place means today. While it may be true that no place has always seemed elsewhere or elsewhen, in fact all utopian fiction whirls contemporary actors through a costume dance no place else but here.from the Preface The contributors are Eric S. Rabkin, B. G. Knepper, Thomas J. Remington, Gorman Beauchamp, William Matter, Ken Davis, Kenneth M. Roemer, William Steinhoff, Howard Segal, Jack Zipes, Kathleen Woodward, Merritt Abrash, and James W. Bittner.