Apocalypse in Crisis: Fiction from The War of the Worlds to Dead Astronauts by Christopher Palmer (review)

Moylan returns us to Ruth Levitas, her formulation of utopian method, and how it rubs against Frederick Jameson’s skepticism that the future is imaginable. Jameson admits that we can see possibilities but draws the line at the efficacy of the fully formed programs constructed by classical utopianism. The utopian impulse, in his analysis, is something that always fails closure. Moylan points out that Levitas rises to Jameson’s challenge with a “radical positivity” that goes beyond the moment of utopian negation (which Nietzsche would reject as the pathway to nihilism) to exploiting the utopian remnant or surplus in any political program. The goal is to realize “a better way of living” that is at variance with the way the world is now (189). With Moylan at hand, perhaps we can imagine and achieve the future after all.—De Witt Douglas Kilgore, Indiana University