Introduction: Rewriting and Transforming Traditions

Abstract

The introduction begins by tracing the contexts, such as millennial anxiety, climate change, globalisation, terrorism and religious extremism that have informed the trend towards apocalyptic fiction in the contemporary moment. However, the gender blindness of much of the work in this field is also noted. The genres (including dystopia, science fiction and speculative fiction) in which post-apocalyptic fiction can be placed are then discussed. The introduction then situates contemporary women’s post-apocalyptic writing in a number of different histories, including the utopian and dystopian tradition, before focusing closely on a comparison of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and Octavia Butler’s Dawn (1987) as foundational texts within the genre.