Spacecraft

(Paperback)

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Description

Science fiction is filled with spacecraft. On Earth, actual rockets explode over Texas while others make their way to Mars. But what are spacecraft, and just what can they teach us about imagination, ecology, democracy, and the nature of objects Why do certain spacecraft stand out in popular culture If ever there were a spacecraft that could be detached from its context, sold as toys, turned into Disney rides, parodied, and flit around in everyones headthe Millennium Falcon would be it. Springing from this infamous Star Wars vehicle, Spacecraft takes readers on an intergalactic journey through science fiction and speculative philosophy, revealing real-world political and ecological lessons along the way. In this book Timothy Morton shows how spacecraft are never mere flights of fancy.

Reviews

As I read Mortons account of his childhood engagement with space flight, I thought of my own, when my personal imaginary met world history, though I certainly didnt think in those terms at the time. In pursuing Mortons childhood, Im not attempting to shoehorn Spacecraft into old-fashioned biographical criticism whereby one seeks to explain a text by finding its secrets in the authors autobiography. Its part of the story hes telling, one common to many children whose imagination has been fired with visions of space travel. Its a story born of a specific cultural imaginary common among children of the last decades of the previous century Spacecraft, then, is a vehicle in which Morton meditates on futurality. The Millennium Falcon, along with hyperspace, is at the center of this meditation. * 3 Quarks Daily *
Morton is the punk rock sci-fi geek artist philosopher of Now. In prose as precise and freewheeling as one of their flights-of-fancy spacecraft, this book takes us on a journey of the mind through the hyperspace of pop-culture and high thought, because It Is All Connected Cant You See I started reading this and lost a day but gained a light year. * Max Borenstein, screenwriter of Godzilla vs. Kong *
This is a brilliantly provoking book about why spacecraft are not at all the same as spaceships, and how imaginary objects can transform our thinking. Morton offers an exuberant, acute, compact, and luminously uplifting guide to the ways in which human society might become a whole lot more progressive in the coming centuries. * Nicholas Royle, author of Veering: A Theory of Literature *

Author Bio

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University, USA. They are the author of 16 books, including Being Ecological (2018) and Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (2017), and 200 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food. www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com @the_eco_thought