ABSTRACT
Stories have to happen somewhere, or perhaps, more accurately, stories have to produce somewhere in which to stage their happenings. Film and television represent a three-dimensional space on the screen, and written fictions usually have some sort of setting; it seems reasonable to assume that there must be spaces of sf. However, it is not easy to say what “space” is. It is often taken for granted as a category of existence or experience, and has received much less attention than time in philosophy, social theory, and textual criticism – although not in the discipline of geography. The word “geography” means “writing about the earth,” so it might seem useless for the study of other worlds, fictional or otherwise, but this chapter will argue that thinking about space can benefit sf criticism. At the same time, taking sf seriously can help the critical study of space by making us think again about experience and representation.
