Carl Abbott is a professor emeritus of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. He is the author of Imagining Urban Futures: Cities in Science Fiction and What We Might Learn from Them (2016) and Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West (2006). He has also published extensively in the fields of urban history, city and regional planning, and Quaker studies.
Carl Abbott
Articles
One Microbe, One Vote?
Carl Abbott dives into Joan Slonczewski’s “Minds in Transit.”
Fatal Flâneur: On Joel Schumacher’s “Falling Down” and the Sidewalks of Los Angeles
Carl Abbott revisits Joel Schumacher’s “Falling Down,” starring Michael Douglas, for the film’s 30th anniversary.
Pasadena on Her Mind: Octavia E. Butler Reimagines Her Hometown
The ways Octavia Butler depicted Pasadena offer a window into her own thinking, but also into the power of race and class in the city that shaped that life.
“Islandia” and the Dangers of Globalization
Carl Abbott on the politics of utopia in Austin Tappan Wright’s “Islandia.”
Beyond Blade Runner: Community in Cities of the Future
Carl Abbott on what science fiction can tell us not only about the city of tomorrow, but also today.
J. G. Ballard’s “High-Rise”: When We Feared Skyscraper Living
Twentieth-century fears of overpopulation are alive and well in “High-Rise,” J. G. Ballard’s classic science fiction novel and its 2016 film adaptation.
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