To boldly go: New U of C collection looks at the beauty, mystery and controversy in our obsession with the cosmos​on February 13, 2025 at 7:00 pm

There are fewer topics as rich as humanity’s obsession with space. It’s called the final frontier for a reason.

In the pages of Mythologies of Outer Space, a new book by the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, writers representing a variety of disciplines carry the broad theme of space exploration into some far-flung directions.

It’s a topic that has captured the imaginations of humankind since our earliest days, of course. But even by those standards, the essays are remarkably imaginative. They straddle science, sociology, history and various areas of the humanities, showing how centuries of sci-fi narratives and our actual activities in the cosmos are inextricably linked.

Sci-fi expert Chris Pak writes about terraforming in fiction, the practice of altering a planet to make it habitable for humans, which is central to Elon Musk’s grandiose plans to colonize Mars.

Mi’kmaw astronomer and physicist Hilding Neilson’s essay covers Indigenous stories and mythology that deal with the constellations and explores the relationship between astronomy research, the exploration of outer space and colonialism. Co-editor Noreen Humble, a U of C professor in the Classics department, looks at the work of ancient Greek writer Lucian of Samosata, whose stories Icaromenippus and True Histories are believed to be the first fictional accounts of a trip to the moon.

“One of the things that fascinated me is that we have this long history of thinking about space and the way that that tends to turn into certain realities, which shows the importance of thinking about those stories we tell about outer space,” says Jim Ellis, an English professor at U of C and director of the Calgary Institute for the Humanities. “It does shape how we went there and the ways we went there and the things we thought about and the things we didn’t think about. What’s interesting to me is that the very first piece of science fiction that dealt with a trip to the moon was already talking about colonialism in a 2,000-year-old piece of literature. Flash forward to Star Trek and we talk about space, the final frontier. (Years later) Donald Trump is talking about the new Space Force and he’s talking about the final frontier to militarize space. So it’s interesting to me that science fiction has considered a lot of the issues that are now facing us. Science fiction has been writing about terraforming for 100 years but now Elon Musk is trying to turn it into a possibility.”

The collection sprang from the 42nd-annual community seminar of the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, which was held in 2022 and brought in speakers to discuss a variety of celestial topics. That year, the theme was The Final Frontier: Mythologies of Outer Space and included talks from Neilson, Pak and Australian space archaeologist Alice Gorman, who expands on her talk in the book’s opening essay “How we let the moon die and why it isn’t dead.” Known online as “Dr. Space Junk,” she is an expert on the man-made debris and artifacts left behind by the exploration of space.

But since it is a book published by U of C, Ellis and Humble also wanted to include some locally centred topics. Philip Langill, an associate professor in U of C’s department of physics and astronomy, writes about the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory. Langill is also director of the observatory and, in the essay Fifty Years at the Rothney, writes about the evolution of the facility. Unbeknownst to many Calgarians, researchers and scientists-in-training have been using the observatory to peer into the cosmos since 1973. It is the only university-run and funded astronomical observatory operated far from the campus and city lights. Nestled in the foothills near Priddis, it has several research-grade telescopes and instrument suites, Langill writes.