Scotland in Space

With a foreword from Ken MacLeod

Contributions from:

• Pippa Goldschmidt
• Laura Lam
• Russell Jones
• Alastair Bruce
• Sean McMahon
• Elsa Bouet
• Beth Biller
• Tacye Phillipson
• Catherine Heymans
• Matjaz Vidmar
• Afterword from Colin R McInnes

Scotland has big plans for its space industry in the next decade: opening Europe’s first orbital spaceport, expanding further its satellite research and manufacturing industry, and developing a £4 billion space industry by 2030. Astronomy and Astrophysics have been important fields of study in Scottish universities since the eighteenth century, and world-leading research continues to be produced here today. And in contemporary Scottish literature, science-fiction writing is flourishing.

Scotland in Space: Creative Visions and Critical Reflections on Scotland’s Space Futures brings together these three strands to generate dialogues between literary authors, natural and social scientists and scholars working in the humanities, to envision some of Scotland’s potential space futures.

The book comprises three sections, in each of which an original piece of science fiction is accompanied by essays that respond to the ideas the story evokes. The essays, written by specialist scholars and practitioners working closely with the literary authors, identify, explore and comment upon the physical, social and cultural possibilities and potentials evoked in the science fiction.

These cross-disciplinary discussions speculate about the ways in which research and innovation currently taking place in Scotland might change our sense of the possible futures of this country, this world and, perhaps, other worlds.