CARL ABBOTT is a professor emeritus at Portland State University, having taught urban studies and planning since the late 1970s. He is the author of the prize-winning books The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West and Political Terrain: Washington, D.C., from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis. He has also written several feature articles for the journal Science Fiction Studies and the book Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West.