Reviews and Awards
"Terraforming: Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in Science Fiction is the first study to trace the historical development of environmental science fiction, and it convincingly frames this development within the genre's representation of planetary adaptation...Pak's is a very good book." Professor Eric Otto, Florida Gulf Coast University
'Pak's volume is indispensable to the study of terraforming stories. Both science fiction scholars and environmental theorists will find in this book a broad history of a complex idea expressed clearly and cogently. Pak explores an impressive number of texts and traces the development of terraforming sf with a deep understanding of its complexities, its social origins, and its philosophical import. This is a timely study that will surely become seminal to future scholars of terraforming stories.' -- James Hamby, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts
"Pak's Terraforming certainly rises to the challenge, making a strong case for ecological science fiction not simply as an important subliterature worthy of attention by English specialists but also as a mode of creative mythopoesis." Gerry Canavan, Science Fiction Studies
"This is an important book and will be essential reading for scholars of ecocriticism and of the development of ideas in SF." Anthony Nanson, The BSFA Review
"Such a wide-ranging examination inevitably runs the risk of becoming unwieldy, or of collapsing under the weight of its own ambitious scope. Pak's grasp of his material, however, is hugely impressive, and he moves with confidence through the whole of twentieth-century SF." Thomas Connolly, SFRA Review
"Pak's decades-spanning analysis of terraforming is an impressive work. It finds in sf an opportunity for a 'disciplined thought experiment' (Pak 8) - a space for speculations about the future, yes, but also and especially for reflections on the present." Benjamin R. DeVries, Fafnir-Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research
"Pak's monograph provides an outstanding overview... Because of its breadth, attention to historical shifts in the fiction of terraforming in response to scientific, philosophical, and cultural developments, and commitment to tracing the value of such fiction for environmentalist thinking, Pak's Terraforming is a strong contribution to environmental literary criticism and studies of science fiction." The Year's Work in English Studies