Frank Herbert's Windmill (1977)

In March 1977, the Associated Press reported that Dune author Frank Herbert (1920-1986) had chosen to live a self-reliant life of "techno-peasantry." From his six-acre homestead on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, Herbert occupied a solar-paneled residence with his family. They grew their own vegetables in a lean-to greenhouse that supplied radiant heat to their adjacent home. They raised chickens and gathered droppings to fertilize their garden.

Herbert also collaborated with Taliesin-trained architect John Underhill Ottenheimer to design a panemone windmill. The duo patented their turbine and sought to market it for Sears or Wards company catalog sales.

Drawings and research notes pertaining to their windmill are housed with the author's manuscripts at California State University, Fullerton University Archives and Special Collections.

Like Albert Ledner, John Ottenheimer continues to practice architecture. He is assisting with the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright's Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

Read more:  "Writers sees self-reliance as key to survival." The Manhattan Mercury 25 March 1977.

Huddling Place

In recognition of the British Library's new exhibition Out of this World, The Guardian recently asked science fiction writers to reminisce about their favorite novels or authors. Science fiction historian John Clute chose Clifford Simak's 1952 novel, The City:

"We know better now, of course. But they still entrance us, the old page-turners from the glory days of American SF, half a century or so ago, when the world was full of futures we were never going to have. In the mid-1940s, when he began to publish the episodes that would be assembled as City in 1952, Clifford Simak, a Minneapolis-based journalist and author, could still carry us away with the dream that cars and pollution and even the great cities of the world – "Huddling Place", the title of one of these tales, is his own derisory term for them – would soon be brushed off the map by Progress, leaving nothing behind but tasteful exurbs filled with middle-class nuclear families living the good life, with fishing streams and greenswards sheltering each home from the stormy blast.

Fortunately, Simak soon gets past this demented vision of a near-future world saved by technological fixes, a dementia common then to SF writers and gurus and politicians alike, and launches into an astonishingly eventful narrative of the next 10,000 years as seen through the eyes of one family and the immortal robot Jenkins, and all told with a weird pastoral serenity that for a kid like me seemed near to godlike. In its course City touches on almost everything dear to 1940s SF, and to me remembering. Robots. Genetic Engineering. Space. Jupiter. Domed cities. Keeps. Hiveminds. Matter transmission. Telepathy. Parallel worlds. Paranormal empathy. Mutants. Supermen. It's all there, and, thanks to Simak's skilled hand at the wheel, it's all in place: suave, sibylline, swift. The whole is framed as a series of legends told by the uplifted Dogs who have replaced the human race, now gone for ever. They have been bred not to kill. At the end, only Jenkins remains to keep them from learning how to repeat history and die.

It all seemed immensely sad and wise then, but fun. It still does."

Read more favorites here.

China Miéville's recent The City & The City (2010) is another great one, which Margaret Atwood has referred to as "an intricately detailed metaphor for how we live today – ignoring what is right there in front of us but 'invisible' because we choose not to see it."

Architecture & Carnival

As reported by Architectural Art and Its Allies March 1912:

"Now that the carnival is past and gone for another twelve month [sic], the decorations have disappeared, the stands come down, the props been knocked from under many a veranda, and life has assumed its normal flow again, we may well dismiss the subject; but before doing so, it might not be out of place to stop to consider for an instant a matter which is but incidental to the festivalbut which has a marked effect upon the appearance of the business portion of the city and the comfort of the people.

From time immemorial it has been custom to span at will the sidewalks of any and all New Orleans streets with verandas, which take many and divers shapes, from the attractive and architectural balcony to the mere shed roof, without which no corner grocery is complete. By far the prevailing type on the main thoroughfares has been a light structure, resting on iron columns at the curb and railed above with one or another of the few designs of cast iron rail for which the foundries have carried patterns since the forties. These verandas serve throughout the year to shelter the shopping crowds from sun and rain, and would seem to suggest Bellamy's Eutopian [sic] general umbrella. They are not different from isolated examples elsewhere, but their prevalence in New Orleans makes them conspicuous.

During the carnival, with their tiers of seats filled with laughing people, they add much to the enjoyment of the pageants, but they have their drawbacks. Thus far they have not received the serious consideration of architects that they should have. Their frail construction makes it necessary each year to shore them up with row on row of braces, which greatly impede the circulation of crowds beneath, at a time when the uninterrupted space is most seriously needed, and give the stranger the impression the buildings of which they are part, are unsafe.

They obstruct light and some architects have essayed to reduce them to mere suspended awnings at impost heigh, with transoms of prism glass above, but to those who recall the old days, when cafes made hanging gardens of them and spread their delicacies al fresco as on a Parisian boulevard, it would seem that the proper regulation as to height and strength to carry any carnival load, without obstructing the sidewalk, the veranda might be retained upon Canal and other broad streets of the business section, and given architectural effect as that of the Madison Square Garden of New York, but the veranda should be banished altogether from the narrow streets and residential avenues, where every impulse should be for light and air and freedom from unsightly objects, which impair the vista. As these verandas are an encroachment on the public domain, and are only permitted on sufferance, the city would be justified in refusing to issue permits for them altogether on neutral ground boulevards and in the business section, when their construction will require obstructive bracing to carry a crowd. The money spent year afer year for bracing these galleries would pay many times over for members of larger size in their original construction." [unknown author, p. 12]

Addendum: The Times-Picayune reported that a French Quarter balcony collapsed on Friday, 18 March 2011. See Chris Granger's photos here.

Looking Forward/Looking Backward II

19 September 1932

"The recent serious falling of one of the large canopies of one of our important buildings impresses one with an unfortunate tendency in the design of more modern buildings in which the galleries and balconies are being abandoned and substitutes are adopted which have neither the art nor the security of those old features which are typical of our city and which have been admired more by the visitor than ourselves.

The cause is no doubt the competiveness of our merchants who in their natural contest for business, and in which the logic of the situation is not sound, attempt to attract when in fact they retard business. . .

Rainy or hot days are certainly not good days on Canal Street. Since the old style galleries have been removed the heating area of the sidewalk has been increased at least two fifths due to the sun upon sidewalks which formerly were in the shade. The movement of the people during rain is practically stopped, which would not be the situation were a proper covering over the sidewalks and across the cross street in arch form.

The need for some protection is admitted in the motly [sic] canopies and awnings both of which have little to commend them and are a hazard in the first instance and a source of continual expense in the latter case. Gradually neither of these are being used in imitation of cities in which there is a snow climate which few realize is the main reason for the non-use of galleries and canopies, and with it all business naturally suffers many hours during year in our city which would not be so much the case were it possible to go from one store to another or block to block.

Our predecessors had sounder ideas on this question than we have today.

Edward Bellamy in his book "Looking Backward" written in 1887 and picturing Boston in the coming year 2000 A.D. describes automatic covering over the city sidewalks making it possible to go from place to place irrespective of the weather, and which permits business accessibility to be maintained at all times.

So much for analysis.

For suggestion:--Havana has its arcades or colonades, so has Genoa, Florence, Paris on Rue Rivoli and other business streets, Houston in some instances and other cities where sound thinking has been done.

Why not along Canal Street have a colonade, with the light metal columns which were so prevalent in the past and above it have a gallery with iron railing such as that of the Pontalba Buildings, and under the gallery, from column to column cast iron or wrought iron grilles of such artistic nature as we still have in few instances in our down town section. Maintain the height uniform and provide an innovation in arching over the cross streets to a heighth to clear the trolley wires of the street cards. Modern steel constrution [sic] and metal works provide greater facilities than in the past and such galleries would also serve 'practically' for the Carnival or other days of celebration. . . "

Rathbone DeBuys, Architect.

Typescript with manuscript edits, Rathbone DeBuys Office Records, Box 1, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Obituary: J.G. Ballard

British science fiction writer J.G. Ballard (1930-2009), known for his dystopian novels and short stories, passed away on April 19th.   Although he once described himself as "a man of complete and serene ordinariness," his works have been considered some of the most imaginative and prescient of the twentieth century.  Read John Clute's Indy obit here.

Ballard's stories frequently explore landscape and cities of the near future:  The Wind from Nowhere (1961); The Drowned World (1962); The Drought (1964); Concrete Island (1974); and The High Rise (1975).  These titles and many more may be found in Tulane's University's Howard-Tilton Memorial Library.

Image above:  Cover, J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World, Penguin pbk edition, 1965.  To see more Penguin SF covers, click here.

Opening Soon: In-Situ

The Museum of Modern Art's Department of Architecture and Design has announced a new exhibition opening in April.  Titled In-Situ: Architecture and Landscape, the show presents a series of projects from MOMA's collections that center on relationships between the built environment and its natural surroundings, projects such as parks, homes, cemeteries and urban developments.  To read more, click here.

In a similar vein, the National Building Museum recently opened an exhibition focused on architectural projects dotted along Norway's Public Roads Administration's Tourist Routes.  In conjunction with Detour: Architecture and Design along 18 National Tourist Routes in Norway, the National Building Museum screened the 2003 film, Schultze Gets the Blues, largely set in Louisiana Bayou country. Watch the trailer here.

On the west coast, the Museum of Contemporary Art launched Dan Graham: Beyond which includes his Homes for America (1966-1967), developed from Kodak Instamatic photographs Graham took while traveling by train through New Jersey suburban tract housing developments.  Science fiction writer and contributor to MOCA's related exhibition catalog Mark Van Schlegell will be speaking at MOCA on March 8th at 3 pm.  He was recently asked in an interview, "Why is so much contemporary science fiction inherently about Los Angeles?"  Read his answer here.

Looking Forward/Looking Backward

How to represent architecture of the future?  Would you look to Los Angeles?  The structure most frequently utilized as a setting in science fiction films is actually the oldest extant commercial building in L.A.'s central city (Broadway and Third Street).  Designed by George H. Wyman for real estate millionaire Lewis Bradbury, it was completed in 1893 and was inspired by Edward Bellamy's novel Looking Backward 2000-1887 (first edition 1888), which describes a utopian building of the future as "a vast hall of light, received not alone from the windows on all sides but from the dome, the point of which was a hundred feet above. . . the walls [. . . ] in mellow tints to soften without absorbing the light which flooded the interior."

Wyman incorporated gold and rose-hued glazed brick, golden oak, yellow tiles, brown terra cottta and rose marble to evoke California's warm natural light.  Cast iron balconies diminish in scale as one approaches the clerestory, thus exagerrating the interior height.  To read Charlie Jane Anders' piece on the building's appearance in SF places (not just utopias), click here.  To read the building's 1977 nomination for National Register of Historic Places status, which includes a (now dated) bibliography, click here.

My thanks to Texas A & M Science Fiction Curator Hal W. Hall for the information!

Image:  Marvin Rand, photographer.  Bradbury Building (304 South Broadway, Los Angeles, CA, 1893). HABS photograph CA-334-12 taken 1965.  

Utopian Theory/Utopian Practice: Call for Papers

THE SOCIETY FOR UTOPIAN STUDIES

2009 CALL FOR PAPERS
Utopian theory/Utopian practice
Confluence, tension, intersection, incommensurability

34th Annual Meeting
Blockade Runner Hotel
Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina
October 29-November 1 2009

The Society for Utopian Studies invites you to submit abstracts for any of the following:

• a paper (between 15-20 minutes)
• a panel (usually of 3 papers)
• an informal panel on a topic (e.g., 3 presenters, or a presenter and 2 or 3 respondents)
• a presentation or performance of creative work on any topic related to utopia

Scholars and artists from all disciplines are encouraged to present on difficulties and opportunities afforded by the theme “utopian theory/utopian practice.” How do we understand the relationship between theory and practice in a field where the practice might seem improbable and the theory “merely theoretical.” How utopian can theory be if it cannot be put into practice? How utopian can practice be if it continually strays from theory? We also welcome papers on other aspects of the utopian tradition -- from the earliest utopian visions to the utopian speculations and yearnings of the 21st century, including art, architecture, urban and rural planning, literary utopias, dystopian writings, utopian political activism, theories of utopian spaces and ontologies, music, new media, or intentional communities.

Please send a 100-250 word abstract by May 10, 2009 to:

Claire P. Curtis
Department of Political Science
66 George St.
College of Charleston
Charleston SC 29424

Or e-mail submissions to curtisc@cofc.edu (please put “sus submission” in the subject line)

As you submit your abstract, please indicate if you have:
A. any scheduling restrictions
B. audiovisual needs (overhead projector; DVD/VHS player)
C. a need for a written letter of acceptance of your proposal, or whether an e-mail acceptance will suffice. Changes in the time and date of your panel will not be possible after panels are scheduled; requests for AV will not be honored unless you submit them with your original abstract.

For inquiries about the program e-mail Claire Curtis at curtisc@cofc.edu

For information about registration, travel or accommodations, please contact the Conference Coordinator, Peter Stillman at stillman@Vassar.edu

The Built Environment and Science Fiction

Philip H. Roach, Jr., Sketch, n.d.
Folder 28, Philip H. Roach, Jr. Collection, The Southeastern Architectural Archive,
Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries

A friend and colleague, Hal W. Hall, the Science Fiction Curator at Texas A & M University's Cushing Library, has developed an incredible research tool called "The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database."

Historic science fiction and fantasy literature frequently elucidates cultural truths in ways that evidential primary documents fail. Utopian and dystopian notions of urban design and renewal may have actually had their first manifestations in dime novels and pulp literature. Intended for the masses, these cultural forms are frequently (and alarmingly!) insightful, in sync with subconscious notions of who we are as human beings, and where we desire and fear to go. For researchers, this literature (and secondary sources) is notoriously difficult to mine for information, since analytical indexing for science fiction is often tied to limited-edition print bibliographies, known by a small coterie of researchers, but not the general public.

This is why Hal's database is so wonderful!

To search the SFFRD (and you can do so by subject) click here. To give an example, enter the search term "architecture" and see what results. Enter "building." Enter "landscape." Enter "cities."

My own to read list based on these searches:

Green, Ernest. "The Social Function of Utopian Architecture," Utopian Studies 4:1 (1993): 1-13.

Hatch, Richard. "The Ideology of Work and the Architecture of Utopia," in Saccaro Del Buffa, Giuseppa and Lewis, Arthur O., eds. Utopia e Modernita: Teorie e prassi utopiche nell'eta moderna e postmoderna. Rome: Gangemi Editore, 1989. pp.175-186.

Missal, Alexander. "In Perfect Operation: Social Vision and the Building of the Panama Canal," in Verheul, Jaap, ed. Dreams of Paradise, Visions of Apocalypse : Utopia and Dystopia in American Culture. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2004. pp. 69-77.

Now, the database does not have full-text capabilities, but a simple search for the journal or book title in your library's OPAC (online catalog) will allow you to find the publication or give you the information necessary to submit an interlibrary loan request.

If you wish to join the interdisciplinary Society for Utopian Studies, which includes subscription to Utopian Studies Journal, click here.