Apocalyptic Science Fiction Research Articles

J. Jesse Ramírez, Un-American Dreams: Apocalyptic Science Fiction, Disimagined Community, and Bad Hope in the American Century

J. Jesse Ramírez, <i>Un-American Dreams: Apocalyptic Science Fiction, Disimagined Community, and Bad Hope in the American Century</i>

Un-American Dreams: Apocalyptic Science Fiction, Disimagined Community, and Bad Hope in the American Century by J. Jesse Ramírez (review)

Un-American Dreams: Apocalyptic Science Fiction, Disimagined Community, and Bad Hope in the American Century by J. Jesse Ramírez (review)

Risk Society: A Pandemic Face of the Modern World Emily John Mandel’s Station Eleven and COVID-19 in relation to Ulrich Beck’s

Ulrich Beck’s notion of ‘risk society’ reveals the ugly aspects of modernity in today’s modern world. It demonstrates bio-ecological and technological terrors in the modern era. The present research paper discusses Emily John Mandel’s Station Eleven, a post- apocalyptic science fiction, and the current outbreak of pandemic of Covid-19 in relation to Beck’s ‘risk society’. Mandel’s Station Eleven, like Covid-19, deals with the pandemic of ‘Georgia flu’ which killed millions of people. The paper aims at exploring the risk features of modern world. It exhibits that today’s globalized world has started manifesting the ugly faces of modernity in the form of terrible biological war which is either a deliberately manufactured one or the outcome of human collective negligent actions resulted in an unwanted catastrophe. The study terms the pandemics as shared fear and the induced outcome of shared actions across the world. Keywords: risk society, apocalyptic literature, modernity, Covid-19, pandemic

The Literary Conventions of Apocalyptic Science Fiction: A Study of Dean Koontz’s The Eyes of Darkness (1981)

The Literary Conventions of Apocalyptic Science Fiction: A Study of Dean Koontz’s The Eyes of Darkness (1981)

Apocalyptic Allegories and Post-Apocalyptic Utopias: Saramago’s A Caverna and Sánchez and Pita’s Lunar Braceros

Apocalyptic Allegories and Post-Apocalyptic Utopias: Saramago’s A Caverna and Sánchez and Pita’s Lunar Braceros Micah Donohue (bio) The twenty-first century has witnessed a planet in crisis. Seemingly every day, new life-ending disasters threaten existence in local and global contexts. As startling reflection, as incisive critique, apocalyptic art has resurged in what jessica hurley and dan sinykin call a “privileged form for engaging the central aesthetic-political problems of our time: crises that feel like they exceed human scale, human agency, human understanding.”1 The two novels that I discuss in this essay—josé saramago’s A Caverna (2000; The Cave [2002]) and rosaura sánchez and beatrice pita’s Lunar Braceros 2125–2148 (2009)—are works of apocalyptic science fiction (sf) that depict crisis and catastrophe on regional and planetary scales.2 Although both novels imagine futures on the brink of ruin, their images of environmental and social collapse function as allegories for utopian renewal and transformation. As charles m. tung, andrew tate, and sharae deckard (among other scholars) have observed, [End Page 129] apocalyptic art can turn solipsistically inward, generating nothing more than “visions of the end of the world.”3 But in other works, and in particular those created from within or about culturally marginalized communities forced daily to resist cataclysmic realities, apocalypse often figures as a “disruption which enables the re-emergence of utopia as desire and future.”4 A Caverna and Lunar Braceros are apocalyptic in this latter sense. saramago’s apocalyptic visions dialogue continually with his experiences during and after the salazar dictatorship in Portugal, and sánchez and pita’s work returns to Latin American and Latinx histories of (resisted) oppression to reimagine the present and the future.5 Both novels are allegories of constantly imperiled but never extinguished utopian hope. That is, the imagery of disaster in A Caverna and Lunar Braceros functions allegorically not as an emblem of hopelessness but as a symbol for the dire need to re-create society as it currently exists. The novels are less about ruined futures or alternative presents (although those are foregrounded in their narratives) than they are ultimately concerned with the “imaginary reconstitution of society,” the key function of utopia according to Ruth Levitas.6 It is a utopian longing for a better world that compels the protagonists of Saramago’s novel, the Algor family, to flee the “Centro” [Center]: a microcosm of global capital that has ravaged the unnamed town and surrounding countryside where Cipriano Algor lives with his daughter and her husband. No less than Saramago, Sánchez and Pita have scripted a novel that transforms an apocalyptic future into a locus of “utopian energy,” into a “space that makes other sorts of world imagination possible.”7 Set in the twenty-second century, Lunar Braceros contrasts the ecological and political havoc that the reckless “accumulation of capital” has wreaked on the Americas, the planet, and the moon with the potentially world-changing resistance of the novel’s principal characters: Lydia, one of the eponymous “lunar braceros,” and her teenage son Pedro.8 Sánchez, Pita, and Saramago [End Page 130] revitalize—in ways that accord with and build on Hurley’s and Sinykin’s call for a “revaluation of apocalypse”—the world-transforming and revelatory aesthetics of apocalypse in allegorical form.9 Foregrounding the allegorical dimensions of apocalyptic art allows for apocalypse as an aesthetic (and, in this essay, specifically as a literary genre) to be reconsidered in ways that emphasize its long history and contemporary development into a sociopolitical art form and hermeneutic of the present. A Caverna and Lunar Braceros engage that history at the same time as they exemplify the interpretive and literary significance of apocalyptic allegories in the twenty-first century. This essay develops its argument for the revitalization of allegorical critique as a means to uncover and decipher forms of utopian hope within apocalyptic sf through a contrapuntal reading of A Caverna and Lunar Braceros, a comparison that juxtaposes Latinx and Portuguese texts (emerging from literary traditions that historically have been underrepresented in studies of apocalypse) to emphasize the cross-cultural and multilingual dimensions of apocalyptic literature.10 Apocalypse, a...

Myth And Fantasy in Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam Trilogy

This paper discusses the use of myth and fantasy in Margaret Atwood’s apocalyptic science fiction trilogy Maddaddam. While the plot of the first novel in this trilogy unremittingly moves in a linear direction towards total destruction, the final novel reconnects the end with the beginning of human origins and as such, the trilogy reveals also a cyclic structure. It is especially in the connection between the apocalyptic future and the past of human origins that elements of myth and fantasy are foregrounded. Just like science, myth is a mode of understanding and making sense of the world and the way Atwood employs myth and fantasy underscores her engagement with the question pertaining to the nature of what it means to be human. Referring to Mircea Eliade’s concept of humanity as a species marked by a desire to distinguish the sacred from the profane, Atwood, in the last novel of her trilogy, Maddaddam, increasingly drawsparallels between biblical beginnings and her post-apocalyptic fictional world, as the narrative places the fate of the human survivors within the context of the Old Testament. Sharing postmodernism’s anti-humanist stance, mainly revealed in the relentless direction humanity takes towards total annihilation, Maddaddam simultaneously advocates humanist values such as self-determination and the ability to consciously opt for the good. The humanist ideals are significantly connected with elements of myth and fantasy and thus with transcendence. Through the use of myth and fantasy, Atwood advocates humanist values, because in view of increasing global violence and exploitation, responsible moral action becomes the only alternative to ward off the dangers of a disastrous future awaiting humanity

Côté punk: Marc Caro

Coming to comics and cinema culture in 1970s Paris, Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet brought their do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic to the screen with L’évasion (Jeunet, 1978), Le manège (Jeunet, 1980) and Le bunker de la dernière rafale (Caro and Jeunet,1981) – awarded shorts that would set the tone for Delicatessen (Caro and Jeunet, 1992) and La cité des enfants perdus (Caro and Jeunet, 1995). Acknowledged outsiders, the duo embraced a certain bricolage of early cinema, an interest in the carnival and apocalyptic science fiction applied to narrative and mise en scène. In this article, I argue for a reading of their cinema through the lens of DIY and punk. This is evident mostly in the works of Caro, who suggests that côté punk takes root in a passion for George Méliès coupled with adventurous explorations in sound and spectacle, a heightened intertextuality and a reclaimed retro-aesthetic, as foregrounded in Caro and Jeunet’s DIY ethic and Le bunker’s long-running double billing at the midnight movies with David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977). From this, I study imagery and influence in Caro’s comics, graphic novels, films and music over the years. The duo’s recent exhibits in Paris and Lyon and publications offering retrospectives of their cinema make this scholarly inquiry all the more timely.

'Another Generation Cometh': Apocalyptic Endings and New Beginnings in Science Fictional New London(s)

This article looks at the sub-genre of apocalyptic science fiction and explores the ways that a range of contemporary writers engage with natural, climatic disasters and the damage wrought to the planet in the Anthropocene era. The novels under discussion are Maggie Gee's The Flood and The Ice People, Adam Roberts's The Snow, Stephen Baxter's Flood and Stephen Jones's creative compilation Zombie Apocalypse. The novels are analysed as examples of revelatory eschatological and apocalyptic literature that implicitly borrow from canonical religious writings of the past. The article analyses the apocalyptic narratives as predictors of both the end of the world and the coming of a new age. It focuses primarily on the novels' relationship to apocalyptic discontinuity and to end-of-the-world scenarios that are predicated on the forces of nature.

Apocalissi e rovine: The Road di Cormac McCarthy e In the mood for love di Wong KarWai

This article aims to analyze Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, and Wong Kar-wai's film, In the Mood for Love, in an attempt to compare Eastern and Western societies. The comparison between the novel and the film – each a product (and a reflection) of Western and Eastern cultures, respectively – should also be traced to the dystopian element of the narrations, conceived as a study of the concept of otherness: namely, the hypothetical transcendence of one's own cultural limits. This comparative approach aims to connect two seemingly different plots: the novel is apocalyptic science fiction, the film a love story. The common ground between the two pieces and the connection point to dwell upon, however, is the contemplation of ruin: lingering on the contemplation of the downfall, in both works diverts from the core of their narrative. With the space-time continuum thus blocked, a parallel and split reality forms.

Terminating Samson: the Sarah Connor Chronicles and the Rise of New Biblical Meaning

The Terminator films (1984–2009) incorporate a number of theological and biblical themes, which are further developed in the franchise’s recent expansion into a television series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008–2009). This article explores how the series appropriates biblical material and motifs, terminating them from their original contexts and adjusting them to create new meanings. After a brief survey of the biblical subtext of the franchise, the article focuses on one episode of the series, Samson and Delilah, which echoes the story of Samson, to analyse its explicit and implicit retellings of the biblical narrative and to explore the wider implications of this appropriation in the context of apocalyptic science fiction.

On Not Winning the Nobel Prize

Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 nobel Prize in Literature, was born in 1919 to British parents in Persia. seeking better prospects, the family moved to a farm in southern rhodesia. Lessing ended her formal education at fourteen, schooling herself through avid reading. she moved to London in 1949. Her first novel, The Grass Is Singing (1950), recounts the relation between a white farmer’s wife and her black servant in Africa. Lessing became widely known for The Golden Notebook (1962), a formally complex exploration of a woman’s life. Her fiction takes a range of forms, including the bildungsroman (the series Children of Violence [1952–69]), investigations of the psyche (Briefing for a Descent into Hell [1971]), apocalyptic science fiction (the series Canopus in Argos: Archives [1979–83]), and political satire (The Good Terrorist [1985]). she has written two autobiographical volumes, Under My Skin (1994) and Walking in the Shade (1997). i Am stAnDing in A DoorwAy Looking tHrougH CLouDs of BLow-

Hemingway Meets Beckett: Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'

A review of Cormac McCarthy's The Road (Pulitzer Prize 2007), with a special focus on its Modernist rewriting of apocalyptic science fiction, its connections to Hemingway and Beckett's style and themes, and its autobiographical investment.

Letzte Welten: Deutschsprachige Gegenwartsliteratur diesseits und jenseits der Apokalypse by Heinz-Peter Preusser (review)

566 Reviews study, however, reconstructs a far more direct intervention in the genesis of Mann's text, the now famous discussions with Adorno about Schoenberg and twelve-tone music theory. For Adorno helped Mann understand how the dodecaphonic system could open up new musical possibilities, as well as running the risk of being a new form of musical totalitarianism. As a result, Mann, far from trying to construct his novel on twelve-tone principles, or offeringa postmodern pot-pourri, conceived it as something genuinely innovative: 'Die "konstruktiveMusik", von der er in Anbetracht der "Symphonie" seines Romanes spricht, kame demnach asthetisch einem "dritten Weg" gleich' (p. 219)?a 'third way', that is, which reconciles the 'Modernitat' he saw in Joyce and a 'verstandliche Zuganglichkeit', which means people actually bothered to read his books (p. 251). This reconciliatory position is reflected in the end of the novel, which neither damns Faust as in the medieval chap-book, nor saves him as does Goethe, but adopts an Adorno-like paradox as the form of its conclusion, as ambiguous as the light in the dark, in the final chords of the cantata Doctor Fausti Weheklag, of the 'hope against hope'?derived from Kierkegaard, via Adorno. As a consequence, the author argues, a proximity between the aesthetic and the religious in Mann's work is revealed, which was to become a central theme of Der Erwdhlte. Thomas Mann once described his stunning fusion of Germanic legend, syphilitic infection, and symphonie apocalypse as his 'gewagtestes and unheimlichstes Werk' (quoted p. 115). The final chapter's survey of the contemporary responses in the United States following the publication of Doktor Faustus and the vicissitudes of Mann's reception by Georg Lukacs (in whose wake a helpful distinction between 'modernist' and avantgarde was inaugurated by Peter Egri) leads Schmidt-Schiitz to the conclusion that the issue of 'traditionalism' or 'classicism' versus '(post)modernism ' is ultimately aufgehoben by the continuing cultural relevance of Mann's text. After all, as Mann himself put it in 'Deutsche Horer!', tradition means no more, but also no less, than '[a]uf eigene Art einem Beispiel folgen'. University of Glasgow Paul Bishop Letzte Welten: Deutschsprachige Gegenwartsliteratur diesseits und jenseits der Apokalypse . By Heinz-Peter Preusser. (Beitrage zur neueren Literaturgeschichte, 193) Heidelberg: Winter. 2003. 321pp. ?48. ISBN 3-8253-1475-8. It should come as no surprise to findpost-war German writers?and hence post-war German literature?particularly fascinated by,ifnot engrossed with, all things apoca? lyptic. The after-effectsof the Second World War and the Holocaust, as well as most Germans' deep-rooted anxieties resultingfrom their countries' precarious position on the frontlines of the great ideological divide, contributed to a seemingly impregnable sense of gloom concerning the future not just of Germany but of mankind in general, an uneasiness that carried over to their linguistic compatriots in Austria and Switzer? land. As Heinz-Peter Preusser demonstrates in this admirably encompassing and intellectually engaging volume of essays, authors of all shades and convictions in both East and West devoted considerable literary energy to parading their apprehensions and mapping out in their fiction, plays, and poetry the dangers inherent in technical progress, or what Preusser terms 'Modernisierungsschaden und Erwartungsangste, Verlustklagen und Untergangsphantasien' (p. 8). Preusser sees his two main tasks as contouring 'ein breites literarisches Spektrum an Apokalypsevorstellungen' and collating a 'Sammlung topologischer Muster und diskursiver Regularien' (p. 8) for the literary portrayal of mankind's undoing. In his illuminating opening chapter the author correctly points out that apocalyp? tic writing is not the exclusive preserve of German-language writers, nor have they MLR, 100.2, 2005 567 produced any of the seminal texts within this tradition. But due to their own (or their forefathers') complicity in heaping apocalyptic misery on twentieth-century mankind, German writers since 1945 have exhibited a strong partiality forthe theme and such generic offshoots as apocalyptic science fiction (here represented by Alban Nicolai Herbst). Owing to this intensity of preoccupation with apocalyptic modes of writing, the range ofauthors covered in this volume is quite astonishing: West German authors discussed include Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Giinter Grass, Botho Strauss, Marcel Beyer, Bernhard Schlink, Harald Mueller, and Juli Zeh; most prominent among East...