His research focuses on the relationship between science fiction and the political and cultural history of the post-war period, with special emphasis on ecology and the environment. He has been the co-editor of special issues of American Literature and Polygraph on “speculative fiction” and “ecology and ideology,” respectively, and with author Kim Stanley Robinson he is the co-editor of Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction (Wesleyan University Press, 2014). Additional current projects include a critical monograph on science fiction and totality, and another on the work of African-American science fiction author Octavia E. Butler; he is also, with Eric Carl Link, the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction (2015). He also serves as an editor at Extrapolation and Science Fiction Film and Television.