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The fine distinction between curiosity and fanaticism holds much power in space exploration. The genre of Science Fiction has always accommodated exciting tales set in/of space, be it exploration, conquest, war or first-contact stories. Positioned in this literary tradition are the gritty cyberpunk narratives that depict decaying space stations, scavenging astronauts and the powerful technology-corporate interface. The paper studies one such short story titled Red Star, Winter Orbit, written by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, first published in Omni magazine in 1980 and later in the Cyberpunk anthologies Burning Chrome (1986) and Mirrorshades (1986). The story, set in an alternate future, dramatises the decay of a Soviet space station named ‘Kosmograd’ when it is deemed valueless following serious Cold War geopolitics. The paper argues that Red Star, Winter Orbit demonstrates how the notion of space exploration, deeply rooted in humanist ideals of conquest, culminates in a collapsing epistemic project led by a space settlement. The study advocates for reconfiguring cosmic understanding through the posthuman conceptualisation of ‘minor sciences’, addressing factors of outer space’s ‘geontological’ agency, fluidity and affective entanglements that render the human and non-human equally vulnerable. By situating the thesis where human/non-human agents, technology and cosmos interact, the study ultimately accentuates how the approach to space must be reframed, from a failed human frontier into a relational threshold of becoming-with the cosmos.
Ms. Puja. J, Dr. G. Parvathy. ““A dream that failed. Like space”: Reframing Anthropocentric Space Frontiers in Gibson and Sterling’s Red Star, Winter Orbit.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 4, August 2026, pp. 971-985. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n4.60.
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