Table of Contents

Foreword by Imre Szeman | vii
Introduction | 1
1 Petroculture | 13
2 Big, Oily Dreams | 49
3 Attachment | 77
4 Quilting Point | 107
5 Petrotemporality | 139
6 Scenarios | 169
7 Excess | 185
8 The Beach | 211
Afterword by Mark Simpson | 239
Acknowledgments | 243
Notes | 247
Bibliography | 253

About the Author

Mark Simpson (Afterword By)
Mark Simpson is Professor of English and Film Studies and Principal Investigator for Transition in Energy, Culture and Society at the University of Alberta.
Simon Orpana (Author)
Simon Orpana is an artist and educator. His work explores the political and historical dimensions of popular culture, and his writing has appeared in such collections as Zombie Theory: A Reader and Skateboarding: Subcultures, Sites and Shifts. He is also the co author of Showdown! Making Modern Unions, a graphic history of labor organizing.
Imre Szeman (Foreword By)
Imre Szeman is University Research Chair of Environmental Communication and Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo.

Reviews

"This is an important book! We are floundering up to our necks in oil and Simon Orpana explains how we got here, the dire consequences of our dependence on fossil fuel, and posits ways forward to get out of the pool. It's in-depth, academic and playful and examines petroculture through multiple cultural lenses coupled with visually inventive imagery, creating an incredibly readable book."---Joe Ollmann, author/artist of Fictional Father

"When I began reading Gasoline Dreams, I was immediately mesmerized. Our fossil fuels, in all of their smoggy reality, have never been so clearly interwoven with the abstract systems that maintain their hold on our lives. At once personal and in conversation with theories of the Anthropocene, Orpana's Gasoline Dreams is a landmark work in nonfiction comics. Like Guy Delisle, Ebony Flowers, Sarah Glidden, and Joe Sacco, Simon Orpana uses the comics medium to represent our reality in all of its complexity. Gasoline Dreams transforms the major insights of the environmental humanities into a moving account of how urgent it is to transition from fossil fuels, right now."---Daniel Worden, author of Neoliberal Nonfictions: The Documentary Aesthetic from Joan Didion to Jay-Z

Gasoline Dreams: Waking Up from Petroculture by Simon Orpana (Sept. 7, $15.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8232-9772-6) rallies for a shift away from climate-destroying reliance on fossil fuels, using a graphic narrative to convince readers that happiness in contemporary life doesn't require gas-guzzling.-- "Publishers Weekly, Fall Announcements"