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Palgrave Macmillan

Vegetarianism and Science Fiction

A History of Utopian Animal Ethics

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Authors:
  1. Joshua Bulleid

    1. Melbourne, Australia

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  • Examines vegetarianism through a science fiction and utopian studies framework
  • Intersects with vegan studies, critical animal studies, food studies, and ecocriticism
  • Engages with animal and cultural activism promoting environmental sustainability

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature (PSAAL)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. The Speculative Politics of Meat: Utopia, Carnism, and Critical Animal Studies

    • Joshua Bulleid
    Pages 1-29

  3. Feed My Frankenstein: Mary Shelley’s Romantic Vegetarian Precedent

    • Joshua Bulleid
    Pages 31-61

  4. You Are What You Eat: Bestiality and Other “Carnal Cravings” in the Works of H. G. Wells

    • Joshua Bulleid
    Pages 63-102

  5. My God, It’s Full of Starch! Arthur C. Clarke, Alternative Meat, and the Hunting Hypothesis

    • Joshua Bulleid
    Pages 103-140

  6. Should Androids Eat Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick, Interspecies Empathy, and Animal Liberation

    • Joshua Bulleid
    Pages 141-171

  7. The Critical Carnist Shift: Marge Piercy, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ernest Callenbach, Octavia E. Butler and the Critical Utopian Period

    • Joshua Bulleid
    Pages 173-208

  8. Where’s the Beef? Kim Stanley Robinson’s Carnist Climate Change Catastrophes

    • Joshua Bulleid
    Pages 209-243

  9. That Way Maddness Lies: Returning to Carnism in Margaret Atwood’s Science Fiction

    • Joshua Bulleid
    Pages 245-282

  10. The Last Word in Gastronomy? Veganism, Ecocriticism, Pandemic Science Fiction and the Future

    • Joshua Bulleid
    Pages 283-314

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 315-336
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Keywords

About this book

Vegetarianism and Science Fiction: A History of Utopian Animal Ethics examines how vegetarian ideals promoted within science fiction and utopian literature have had a real-world impact on the awareness and spread of vegetarianism and animal advocacy, as well as how the genres' engagements have been altered to reflect changes in ethical and environmental philosophy. Author Joshua Bulleid examines the representation of vegetarianism in the works of major science fiction authors, including Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ernest Callenbach, Marge Piercy, Octavia E. Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson and Margaret Atwood within their evolving social contexts, tracing the development of vegetarian trends and their science fictional representations from the early-nineteenth century to the present day.

Reviews

“This is an important book on an important topic. Anglophone science fiction has repeatedly speculated about vegetarian variants of utopian and dystopian futures. Yet, the topic is only rarely and often inadequately addressed in the relevant secondary literature. Bulleid's Vegetarianism and Science Fiction more than fills the gap and will be a must for all serious scholars of the genre.”

—Andrew Milner, co-author of Science Fiction and Climate Change: A Sociological Approach

“To imagine alternative worlds allows a fiction writer to re-imagine our relationships with the other animals. Numerous novels envision an end to our tawdry and selfish human-centered attitudes. How marvelous that Joshua Bulleid examines, with care and alertness, this creative refashioning of ethical commitments.”

—Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory

 “Bulleid’s Vegetarianismand Science Fiction offers a provocative and timely lens through which to read works from across the genre of science fiction. Via various theoretical lenses (ecocriticism, utopian studies, critical animal studies, and vegan studies), Bulleid investigates science fiction’s historical attention to animal and human relationships and its interrogation of what—and who—we eat.”

—Laura Wright, author of The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror

 “Spanning more than two centuries of science fictional speculation, Bulleid’s instant-classic shows how the genre continually produces vegetarian provocations as its way of thinking about freedom, revolution, masculinity, utopia, kindness, cruelty, happiness, misery, life, death, and what it really means to be a human being in a world where everyone needs to eat.”

—Gerry Canavan, co-editor of The Cambridge History of Science Fiction and Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction

Authors and Affiliations

  • Melbourne, Australia

    Joshua Bulleid

About the author

Joshua Bulleid completed his PhD in literary studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. In addition to contributing chapters on vegetarianism and utopia to the Palgrave Macmillan collection Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction (2020) and The Edinburgh Companion to Vegan Literary Studies (2022), his articles on vegetarianism and animal ethics have appeared in the field-defining science fiction journals Foundation and Science Fiction Studies. He also hosts the Terry Pratchett podcast Unseen Academicals.

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