Andrew Milner
Biographic Data
| ID | 3692763 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrew Milner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrew |
| FAMILY NAME | Milner |
| SIGNATURE | MILNER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Monash University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6598-9943 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 58 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 37 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
What is Cli-Fi
This essay begins by reviewing the theoretical debates within literary-critical “ecocriticism” over what Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer termed the “anthropocene” and what Jason Moore terms the “capitalocene.” It explains how those debates are implicated in recent climate fiction, which Daniel Bloom dubs “cli-fi.” These debates have direct implications for the possibilities and prospects for environmental education, insofar as both “high” lit…
Popular Cultural Icons: Star Trek
Star Trek is the most successful brand in the history of US television science fiction. This entry concentrates on three main topics: the ideological meanings at work in the Star Trek television series and films; the more specific interplay between the program's fictional Starfleet and the real National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); and the sociology of its fan base
Définir la fiction climatique, ou cli-fi
Cet article propose dans un premier temps d’explorer la relation entre la cli-fi et la science-fiction avant d’explorer l’histoire de la fiction climatique francophone, de Jules Verne à Jean-Marc Ligny, à travers des concepts empruntés aux études sur l’utopie, notamment en ce qui concerne la distinction entre les utopies et les dystopies classiques et critiques. Il veut démontrer l’importance des fictions qui sont scientifiquement plausibles mais…
Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Yesterday: Eutopia, Dystopia and Violence in Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Marjorie Barnard (1897–1987) and Flora Eldershaw (1897–1956) were prolific Australian authors who co-wrote, under the pseudonym “M. Barnard Eldershaw,” five novels and four works of nonfiction published between 1929 and 1947. Their final collaboration, a future fiction entitled Tomorrow and Tomorrow, first appeared in Melbourne in 1947 and was reissued by the London feminist publisher Virago in 1983. Lyman Tower Sargent’s bibliography of Australi…
The Critical Dystopia in Climate Fiction
This chapter develops an account of critical cli-fi dystopias that exhibit, by turn, each of five ideal-typical responses to climate change: denial, mitigation, negative adaptation, positive adaptation, and Gaian deep ecological anti-humanism. The texts analysed include Ian McEwan’s Solar, Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 and Aurora, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Jean-Marc Ligny’s AquaTM , David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Cra…
Changing the Climate: Some Provisional Conclusions
The chapter opens with an account of the ‘value relevance’ of the authors’ own loosely ‘Green’ beliefs and of how these led them to search for a cli-fi version of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach . They conclude that no such text exists as yet, but note the operation of what they term an ‘Off-Shute effect’, in which the cumulative weight of many different cli-fi texts could have a cumulative effect on real-world behaviour. One of their more striking un…
Ice, Fire and Flood: A Short Pre-history of Climate Fiction
This chapter argues that catastrophic climate change fictions have been organised around three main tropes: the new ice age, the burning world and the drowned world. Of these, only the last has a deep history in the Western mythos, dating back to stories of a Great Flood in Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh. When modern science fiction (SF) began to take shape in the early nineteenth century, it inherited a preoccupation with the Flood from its p…
A Theoretical Interlude
This chapter begins by discussing the relationship between SF and what Daniel Bloom dubbed ‘cli-fi’. Cli-fi, it argues, is best understood as a sub-genre of SF and the crucial shift between the pre-history of climate fiction outlined in the previous chapter and this contemporary sub-genre has been the development of a near-consensus amongst scientists about the potentially disastrous effects of global warming. It proceeds to a critical account of…
Base Reality Texts and Eutopias
The chapter opens with the observation that there seem to be far fewer climate eutopias than climate dystopias, but adds that there is a case to be made that these are likely to become more culturally significant as the climate crisis develops. It then proceeds to a discussion, by turn, of base reality texts and critical eutopias. The texts analysed include Michael Crichton’s State of Fear , Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior , Kim Stanley Robi…
The Classical Dystopia in Climate Fiction
The chapter opens with a discussion of the distinction between ‘classical’ and ‘critical’ dystopias, as developed by Tom Moylan, Raffaella Baccolini and Lyman Tower Sargent. It then proceeds to an account of classical cli-fi dystopias that exhibit, by turn, each of five ideal-typical responses to climate change: denial, mitigation, negative adaptation, positive adaptation, and Gaian deep ecological anti-humanism. The texts analysed include Liu Ci…
Cli-fi in Other Media
This chapter explores cli-fi in other print media (short stories, published poetry, comics and graphic novels), recorded popular music (folk and rock), and audio-visual media (cinema, television and videogames). It identifies rhetorically effective instances of cli-fi from a wide range of media, notably Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Keep It in the Ground’, Brian Wood’s The Massive , Anohni’s Hopelessness , Franny Armstrong’s The Age of Stupid and Darren Aro…
Climate Fiction and the World Literary System
The chapter opens with a discussion of two early instances of global warming cli-fi, Arthur Herzog’s Heat and George Turner’s The Sea and Summer, and argues that both are more or less oblivious to the wider world beyond their respective national frontiers. It proceeds to elaborate an account of the place of SF in the world literary system, understood in Wallerstein and Moretti’s terms as comprising a core, semi-periphery and periphery. This model…
The Problem of Fatalism in Dystopian Climate Fiction
This chapter explores the logics of fatalism in climate fiction as they variously function in the classical dystopia, the critical dystopia and the time-travel story. For the classical dystopia, the examples are Maggie Gee’s The Flood, Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods and Antti Tuomainen’s Parantaja . For the critical dystopia, the examples are Emmi Itäranta’s Teemestarin kirja , Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book and James Bradley’s Clade . For th…
Anthropocene Fiction and World-Systems Analysis
As developed by Immanuel Wallerstein and various co-thinkers, world-systems analysis is essentially an approach to economic history and historical sociology that has been largely indifferent to literary studies. This indifference is perhaps surprising given that the Annales school, which clearly influenced Wallerstein’s work, produced a foundational account of the emergence of modern western literature in Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin’s L’a…
Science Fiction and Climate Change: A Sociological Approach
Despite the occasional upsurge of climate change scepticism among Anglophone conservative politicians and journalists, there is still a near consensus among climate scientists that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas are sufficient to alter global weather patterns to disastrous effect. The resultant climate crisis is simultaneously both a natural and a socio-cultural phenomenon and in this book Milner and Burgmann argue that science fict…
Guns Under the Table: Kim Stanley Robinson and the Transition to Utopia
Kim Stanley Robinson is a declared eco-socialist and arguably the most distinguished acolyte of Fredric Jameson, America's leading Marxist literary critic. Robinson's Mars trilogy develops a detailed account of three political revolutions. Robinson explains that this was a deliberate choice on his part, because he felt that in his first utopian novel, Pacific Edge, he "dodged the necessity of revolution." He describes Antarctica and The Years of …
Class and Class Consciousness in Marxist Theory
Marx’s general theory of ideology stresses the necessary connectedness of social structure and social belief. But it also produces two more specific theses: that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas; and that different classes tend to produce different forms of class consciousness. This paper traces the history of these notions in communist Marxism and in Western Marxism
Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre and Dystopia, Science Fiction, Post-apocalypse: Classics—New Tendencies—Model Interpretations
Darko Suvin's Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, first published by Yale University Press in 1979, has been the single most influential work in the history of academic science-fiction studies. As Veronica Hollinger observed: “Metamorphoses is the significant forerunner of all the major examinations of the genre” (1999, 233). Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint make more or less the same point: “Disagreeing with him [Suvin] is a considerable part of SF sch…
Climate Fiction: A World-Systems Approach
Since the death of Pierre Bourdieu, the leading contemporary sociologist of literature has arguably been Franco Moretti. Moretti's distinctive contribution to the field has been his attempt to apply Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory to literary studies. Although Wallerstein traces the origins of the modern world-system back to the 16th century, Moretti focuses on the much shorter period since the late 18th century. This is also the hist…
Popular Culture Forms: Culture and Icons
Sociologists have addressed a wide range of topics under the heading of popular culture. In fact, there are far too many to cover adequately in this encyclopedia. Thus, a decision was made to give at least a sense of this literature by sampling some of the key topics examined by sociologists and offering an indication of the way in which they have been covered. A variety of forms of popular culture are considered: the beach, hip‐hop, jazz, P2P, r…
Utopia and Utopian Studies in Australia
There are no independently Australian translations of Thomas More's Utopia. Nor is there any equivalent in Australia to the Society for Utopian Studies in North America or the Utopian Studies Society in Europe. Nor are there any extant formal research groups or undergraduate or graduate courses in utopian studies. There are, however, distinctively Australian traditions of utopian writing, both eutopian and dystopian, and also a limited field of A…
Resources for a Journey of Hope: Raymond Williams on Utopia and Science Fiction
Raymond Williams had an enduring interest in science fiction, an interest attested to: first, by two articles specifically addressed to the genre, both of which were eventually published in the journal Science Fiction Studies; second, by a wide range of reference in more familiar texts, such as Culture and Society, The Long Revolution, George Orwell and The Country and the City; and third, by his two 'future novels', The Volunteers and The Fight …
Ice, fire and flood: Science fiction and the Anthropocene
Despite the occasional upsurge of climate change scepticism amongst conservative politicians and journalists, there is a near-consensus amongst scientists that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas are sufficient to alter global weather patterns to possibly disastrous effect. Like the hole in the ozone layer as described by Bruno Latour, global warming is a 'hybrid' natural-social-discursive phenomenon. And science fiction (SF) seems to oc…
Introduction to the special issue on science fiction
This introduction to a special issue of Thesis Eleven devoted to science fiction begins by exploring the way the genre has been handled by German and French critical theory and their Anglophone equivalents. It proceeds to a discussion of the historical sociology of the genre and, thence, to an account of what it terms the dialectic of science fiction endangerment. Finally, it concludes with a brief overview of the various contributions to the iss…
Iain M. Banks, February 16, 1954–June 9, 2013
The leading Scottish author Iain M. Banks was to have been the opening speaker at the conference of the European Utopian Studies Society held at New Lanark on July 1–4, 2013. His diagnosis with imminently terminal cancer made that sadly impossible. Below we publish the text of the eulogy delivered in his stead by Andrew Milner, professor of English and comparative literature at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia
Re-Imagining Cultural Studies: The Promise of Cultural Materialism
Cultural Materialism and Cultural Theory Politics and Letters From Culture to Society Theorizing Culture Rethinking Mass Civilization Rethinking Minority Culture Towards 2050
Cultural Materialism, Culturalism and Post-Culturalism: The Legacy of Raymond Williams
Changing the climate: The politics of dystopia
This paper aims to test the adequacy of various theoretical approaches to utopian studies and science fiction studies – especially those drawn from the work of Darko Suvin, Raymond Williams and Fredric Jameson – to an understanding of the history of Australian science-fictional dystopias. It argues that science fiction (SF) cannot readily be assimilated into either high literature (as utopia) or popular fiction (as genre) and rejects the widespre…
Can cultural studies be disciplined? Or should it be punished
Anthropocene Fiction and World-Systems Analysis
As developed by Immanuel Wallerstein and various co-thinkers, world-systems analysis is essentially an approach to economic history and historical sociology that has been largely indifferent to literary studies. This indifference is perhaps surprising given that the Annales school, which clearly influenced Wallerstein’s work, produced a foundational account of the emergence of modern western literature in Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin’s L’a…
Science Fiction and Climate Change: A Sociological Approach
Despite the occasional upsurge of climate change scepticism among Anglophone conservative politicians and journalists, there is still a near consensus among climate scientists that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas are sufficient to alter global weather patterns to disastrous effect. The resultant climate crisis is simultaneously both a natural and a socio-cultural phenomenon and in this book Milner and Burgmann argue that science fict…
Climate Fiction: A World-Systems Approach
Since the death of Pierre Bourdieu, the leading contemporary sociologist of literature has arguably been Franco Moretti. Moretti's distinctive contribution to the field has been his attempt to apply Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory to literary studies. Although Wallerstein traces the origins of the modern world-system back to the 16th century, Moretti focuses on the much shorter period since the late 18th century. This is also the hist…
Resources for a Journey of Hope: Raymond Williams on Utopia and Science Fiction
Raymond Williams had an enduring interest in science fiction, an interest attested to: first, by two articles specifically addressed to the genre, both of which were eventually published in the journal Science Fiction Studies; second, by a wide range of reference in more familiar texts, such as Culture and Society, The Long Revolution, George Orwell and The Country and the City; and third, by his two 'future novels', The Volunteers and The Fight …
Ice, fire and flood: Science fiction and the Anthropocene
Despite the occasional upsurge of climate change scepticism amongst conservative politicians and journalists, there is a near-consensus amongst scientists that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas are sufficient to alter global weather patterns to possibly disastrous effect. Like the hole in the ozone layer as described by Bruno Latour, global warming is a 'hybrid' natural-social-discursive phenomenon. And science fiction (SF) seems to oc…
Introduction to the special issue on science fiction
This introduction to a special issue of Thesis Eleven devoted to science fiction begins by exploring the way the genre has been handled by German and French critical theory and their Anglophone equivalents. It proceeds to a discussion of the historical sociology of the genre and, thence, to an account of what it terms the dialectic of science fiction endangerment. Finally, it concludes with a brief overview of the various contributions to the iss…
Science Fiction and the Literary Field
Pulped Dreams: Utopia and American Pulp Science Fiction
The decade Ernst Bloch devoted to his magnum opus, Das Prinzip Hoffnung (The Principle of Hope), from 1938 to 1947, coincided almost exactly with the so-called "Golden Age" of American pulp sf. Yet, despite his enthusiasm for such older popular forms as the colportage novel, the circus, and the fairy tale, the pulps themselves rate no mention in his study. Bloch's world never collided with Gernsback's or Campbell's, an omission this essay attempt…
Theorize This! Cultural Studies versus Utilitarianism
This paper had as its initial occasion the theme chosen for the 2002 conference of the Cultural Studies Association of Australia. The Association's call for papers insisted that the ‘foundational m
Darker Cities: Urban Dystopia and Science Fiction Cinema
This article makes use of Darko Suvin’s theory of the novum and Raymond Williams’s cultural materialism to analyse three urban-dystopian science fiction films: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and Alex Proyas’s Dark City (1998). It argues for the central significance of utopia, dystopia and cinema to SF. It explores the themes of class and gender, the uses of intertextuality, and the representations of the human …
Utopia and Science Fiction in Raymond Williams
Raymond Williams was a pioneer in the early history of what is now lknown as cultural studies and also a central inspiration for the early British New Left. There is an extensive commentary on his work, none of which makes anything of his enduring interest in science fiction. This essay argues that there are three main phases in Williams's thought, each explicable in terms of its own differentially negotiated settlement between the kinel of liter…
Replies To Feher and Heller: On Eurocommunism
Considerations on English Marxism
Edward Thompson and Perry Anderson are undoubtedly Britain's two most distinguished, living, socialist historians. They also share the distinction of each having served on the editorial committee of the New Left Review, probably the most influential English-language Marxist journal in the world today. And there, perhaps, the similarities end. For, in the 18 years that have passed since Anderson's 'New New Left' suc ceeded Thompson's 'Old New Left…
John Milton and the English Revolution: A Study in the Sociology of Literature
John Milton and the English Revolution: A Study in the Sociology of Literature
Class, class consciousness, and Australian social theory
(1983). Class, class consciousness, and Australian social theory. Politics: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 108-112
The 'English ' Ideology: Literary Criticism in England and Australia
A Reply to Docker
Notes and Discussion
A Young Man's Death: Raymond Williams 1921-1988
Contemporary cultural theory
An introduction to the historical and theoretical groundings of cultural studies which identifies six alternative paradigms: utilitarianism, culturalism, marxism, structuralism, feminism and postmodernism. It explores the socio-discursive contexts
Cultural Materialism, Culturalism and Post-Culturalism: The Legacy of Raymond Williams
Class
Can cultural studies be disciplined? Or should it be punished
Theorising Culture
Re-Imagining Cultural Studies: The Promise of Cultural Materialism
Cultural Materialism and Cultural Theory Politics and Letters From Culture to Society Theorizing Culture Rethinking Mass Civilization Rethinking Minority Culture Towards 2050
Utopia and Science Fiction in Raymond Williams
Raymond Williams was a pioneer in the early history of what is now lknown as cultural studies and also a central inspiration for the early British New Left. There is an extensive commentary on his work, none of which makes anything of his enduring interest in science fiction. This essay argues that there are three main phases in Williams's thought, each explicable in terms of its own differentially negotiated settlement between the kinel of liter…
Darker Cities: Urban Dystopia and Science Fiction Cinema
This article makes use of Darko Suvin’s theory of the novum and Raymond Williams’s cultural materialism to analyse three urban-dystopian science fiction films: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and Alex Proyas’s Dark City (1998). It argues for the central significance of utopia, dystopia and cinema to SF. It explores the themes of class and gender, the uses of intertextuality, and the representations of the human …
Postmodern Gothic: Buffy , the X-Files and the Clinton Presidency
Mary Shelley's 1817 novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is now widely regarded as one of the founding texts of the science fiction and horror genres. The modern myth it established has been enormously influential across a whole range of media and cultural forms. Here, I want to examine how its story was retold in two of the most successful American television series of the last decade of the twentieth century and the first of the twenty-…
Theorize This! Cultural Studies versus Utilitarianism
This paper had as its initial occasion the theme chosen for the 2002 conference of the Cultural Studies Association of Australia. The Association's call for papers insisted that the ‘foundational m
CFP: Two Australian Conferences
Bricolage
Bricolage is a French word, with no direct equivalent in British, North American, or Australasian English. In everyday usage, it describes the work done by a bricoleur – very roughly, but not quite, a cross between an odd job man and a handyman. In the 1950s and 1960s, though less so today, its meaning carried the sense of proceeding in an apparently disorganized and non‐rational fashion, but nonetheless producing effective results. It connoted t…
Popular Culture Icons: Star Trek
Star Trek is the most successful “brand” in the history of US television science fiction and, after the BBC's Doctor Who , the second longest running SF show in the history of the medium
Popular Culture Forms: Science Fiction
In science fiction, as in much myth, folktale, and fantasy, the entire narrative is dominated by what Darko Suvin calls the “novum,” that is, a fictional novelty or innovation not found in empirical reality
Pulped Dreams: Utopia and American Pulp Science Fiction
The decade Ernst Bloch devoted to his magnum opus, Das Prinzip Hoffnung (The Principle of Hope), from 1938 to 1947, coincided almost exactly with the so-called "Golden Age" of American pulp sf. Yet, despite his enthusiasm for such older popular forms as the colportage novel, the circus, and the fairy tale, the pulps themselves rate no mention in his study. Bloch's world never collided with Gernsback's or Campbell's, an omission this essay attempt…
Archaeologies of the Future: Jameson's Utopia or Orwell's Dystopia
This paper begins with the proposition that Fredric Jameson's Archaeologies of the Future (2005) is the most important theoretical contribution to utopian and science-fiction studies since Darko Suvin's Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979). It argues that Jameson's derivation of 'anti-anti-Utopianism' from Sartrean anti-anti-communism will provide 'the party of Utopia' with as good a slogan as it is likely to find in the foreseeable future. It…
Art (35 works) · Sociology (34 works) · Literature (30 works) · Philosophy (29 works) · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction (27 works) · History (24 works) · Art history (19 works) · Epistemology (19 works) · Political science (19 works) · Law (18 works)