Fantastic Cities

Abstract

The American city, much like America itself, has always been a fantastic construct. More often than not, American cities are cities of illusion, as their representations tend to focus on images which connote order, power, and progress. These ideas gloss over the systemic realities of homelessness, unemployment, and social injustice characteristic of America’s urban centers. Fantastic Cities explores representations of American cities in science fiction, fantasy, and horror across a variety of media. These genres render the illusory character of American urban spaces explicit, as they realize that which usually remains veiled. In this volume, an international group of scholars investigates examples ranging from Samuel R. Delany’s science fiction classic Dhalgren and Jim Jarmusch’s urban vampire film Only Lovers Left Alive to the science fiction-western musical film serial The Phantom Empire and Kim Stanley Robinson’s fiction.