New Perspectives on Dystopian Fiction in Literature and Other Media

This Collection Of Essays Examines Various Forms Of Dystopian Fiction In Literature, Television, And Digital Games. It Frames The Timely Trend Of Dystopian Fiction As A Thematic Field That Accommodates Several Genres From Societal Dystopia To Apocalyptic Narratives And Climate Fiction, Many Of Them Examining The Hazards Of Science And Technology To Human Societies And The Ecosystem. These Are Genres Of The Anthropocene Par Excellence, Capturing The Dilemmas Of The Human Condition In The Current, Increasingly Precarious Epoch. The Essays Offer New Interpretations Of Classical And Contemporary Works, Including The Canonised Prose Of Orwell, Atwood And Cormac Mccarthy, Modern Pop Culture Classics Like Battlestar Galactica, Fallout And Hunger Games, And The Work Of Johanna Sinisalo, A Pioneer Of Finnish Speculative Fiction. From Thomas Pynchon To Watership Down, The Volumeâ (tm)s Multifaceted Approach Offers Fresh Perspectives To Those Already Familiar With Existing Research, But It Is No Less Accessible For Newcomers To The Ever-expanding Field Of Dystopian Studies. Table of Contents List of Illustrations Introduction: Navigating the Many Forms of Dystopian Fiction • Saija Isomaa, Jyrki Korpua & Jouni Teittinen Part I: Societal Dystopia Old and New 1. From Anxiety to Hatred: Negative Emotions in Classical Dystopias • Saija Isomaa 2. Pain and Suffering in Classical Dystopian Fiction: Case Orwell • Sari Kivistö 3. From Gilead to Eusistocratia: The Dialogue Between Margaret Atwood’s Dystopian Novel The Handmaids Tale and Johanna Sinisalo’s The Core of the Sun • Hanna Samola 4. “Make Britain Great Again.” (Critical) Political Dystopia in Bryan Talbot’s The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta • Jyrki Korpua 5. Challenging Secularity: Spiritual and Religious Undertones in Young Adult Dystopias • Kaisa Kaukiainen 6. An Ever-Compromised Utopia: Virtual Reality in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge • Esko Suoranta Part II: Articulating the (Post)Apocalypse 7. This Future Past: Parsing Post-apocalyptic Temporality with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road • Jouni Teittinen 8. Folds around the End: Open and Closed Temporalities in Margaret Atwood’s Madd Addam-trilogy • Mikko Mäntyniemi 9. Constructing a Dystopian Game World: Gothic Monstrosities in the Digital Role-playing Game Fallout 3 • Sari Piittinen 10. The Dream and the Nightmare of Artificial Intelligence: Individual and Collective Responsibility for the Future in the Television Series Battlestar Galactica and Caprica • Essi Vatilo 11. Outlaws of the Nature: Humanity as a Destructive Species in Richard Adams’s Watership Down and Other Animal Dystopias • Maria Laakso 12. Colonized Environments: The Weird Ecology of Iohanna Sinisalo’s Birdbrain • Juha Raipola & Toni Lahtinen Contributors Index