Kids on Bikes in Twenty-First-Century Nostalgia Science Fiction

This final chapter focuses on one of the most recent and most popular trends happening right now in science fiction, the rise of a decidedly nostalgic form of science fiction. In particular, the trend examined in this chapter is one called ‘1980s-nostalgia science fiction’ and is made up of science fiction literary and screen texts from c. 2010-present that exhibit a profound fondness for or interest in the American 1980s. The three nostalgia texts that comprise the focus of this chapter are Super 8, Stranger Things, and Paper Girls. After first discussing what is one of the most influential texts for this 1980s-nostalgia science fiction – Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra Terrestrial – this chapter then analyzes how these nostalgia texts align themselves with Spielberg’s blockbuster film by demonizing motorized transport while simultaneously exalting the bicycle.

Staying Mobile in Postapocalyptic Cli-Fi

This chapter examines how the rising popularity since the 1990s of works of postapocalyptic cli-fi (i.e. climate change fiction) has provided science fiction writers a convenient opportunity to explore issues of mobility and transportation. After first examining an early postapocalyptic cli-fi work from the 1990s by Octavia E. Butler, the chapter then advances this book’s chronological analysis to some twenty-first century works of science fiction. In its discussion of a novel by Paolo Bacigalupi and one by Benjamin Parzybok, this chapter shows how more restrained modes of transport play a vital role during times of apocalypse in keeping a society functioning and keeping us as individuals from slipping into disempowerment.

Perfectibility and Techno-Optimism in the Pulp Era

This chapter focuses on the pulp era (c. 1926-1940) of American science fiction and explores how a distinct techno-optimism dominated this era. This pulp era optimism is best exemplified by the influential editor Hugo Gernsback and the magazines he started: Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories. However, this chapter argues that many writers who appeared in Gernsback’s magazines stridently condemned the automobiles of their own time. Where their technological optimism manifests itself, then, is in their belief that the automobile is not worthy of abandonment and that a certain perfectibility resides in the machine.

Messenger Skateboards and Messenger Bikes in Postcyberpunk

This chapter focuses on several important postcyberpunk works from the 1990s by Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling. All these works celebrate transportation technologies such as skateboards and bicycles, technologies that challenge the car and its dominance over the road. Furthermore, an interest in transport machines helps these texts demonstrate some of the key features that scholars have identified as setting postcyberpunk apart from the classic cyberpunk of the 1980s, as well as some of the features they see as building continuity between the two.

Murderous Cars, Space Bikes, and Alien Bicycles in the Golden Age

This chapter focuses on several works from the ‘Golden Age’ of the 1950s in which bicycles prominently appear. After first examining cars and walking in some works by Ray Bradbury, the discussion turns to a novel by Robert A. Heinlein, a novelette by Poul Anderson, and a short story by Avram Davidson. This chapter argues that these three texts favor portrayals of ‘low-tech’ bicycles as pragmatic, reliable machines worthy of continued use and appreciation, and of bicycles as potent pieces of technology capable of inspiring awe.

Conclusion

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Introduction

For the May 1967 issue of Analog, the influential science fiction magazine that began under the name Astounding Stories of Super-Science in 1930, editor (and sometimes author) John W. Campbell, Jr. composed an editorial titled ‘The Safest Form of Transportation.’ Campbell wrote the editorial, he tells us, in the days immediately following the Apollo 1 disaster, an incident that occurred on January 27, 1967, in which a cabin fire broke out in a space module as it sat on the ground during a launch rehearsal test. Three NASA astronauts were trapped inside the module and killed by the fire. Campbell, concerned that this disaster might halt subsequent development of human space flight programs, opens his editorial by brazenly declaring: ‘As of January 30th, 1967 travel by spaceship retains its unblemished record as the safest known form of travel; in hundreds of millions of miles of travel, not one person has been killed or injured.’...

Electric Cars, Autoduelling, and Bike Shares in the New Wave

Chapter Three focuses on works from the New Wave era (c. 1960-1975) by Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, and Ernest Callenbach. The primary goal of the chapter will be to highlight how some science fiction writers of the Sixties and Seventies responded to two important events related to transportation: the dramatic spike in annual automobile fatalities that began in the early-1960s and climaxed in the early-1970s, and the growing environmentalism of this era.