Apocalyptic California
Title | Apocalyptic California PDF eBook |
Author | MaryKate Messimer |
Publisher | Springer Nature |
Pages | 120 |
Release | 2023-04-25 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 3031299205 |
This book explores concepts of environmentalism and feminism in science fiction novels written by women. By extrapolating the future of climate change, the authors of these texts model how readers can apply utopian feminist and environmental theories in their own lives. Chapter One establishes an understanding of ecofeminist environmental thinking through original research conducted at the Ursula K. Le Guin archive at the University of Oregon. Chapter Two shows an example of climate change dystopia set in California in Claire Vaye Watkins’ novel Gold Fame Citrus. The final chapters explore utopian visions of queer ecologies in books by Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemisin. Because climate change is so difficult for individuals to grapple with, a new perspective is needed to survive it. The queer ecological philosophy in these novels points to a way of life that can reduce environmental harm in an era of climate change.
California
Title | California PDF eBook |
Author | Edan Lepucki |
Publisher | Little, Brown |
Pages | 340 |
Release | 2014-07-08 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0316250821 |
The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable in the face of hardship and isolation. Mourning a past they can't reclaim, they seek solace in each other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant. Terrified of the unknown and unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realize this community poses dangers of its own. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust. A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent, California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind's dark nature and deep-seated resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love. "In her arresting debut novel, Edan Lepucki conjures a lush, intricate, deeply disturbing vision of the future, then masterfully exploits its dramatic possibilities."-Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
California
Title | California PDF eBook |
Author | Edan Lepucki |
Publisher | Orbit Books |
Pages | 400 |
Release | 2014-07-01 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 9781408704707 |
The sunshine state lies in darkness. Los Angeles is in ruins, left to the angels now. And the world Cal and Frida have always known is gone. Cal and Frida have left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable despite the isolation and hardships they face. Consumed by fear of the future and mourning for a past they can't reclaim, they seek comfort and solace in one other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant. Terrified of the unknown but unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realise this community poses its own dangers. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust. A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent, California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind's dark nature and irrepressible resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love.
Utopian Dreams, Apocalyptic Nightmares
Title | Utopian Dreams, Apocalyptic Nightmares PDF eBook |
Author | Miguel López-Lozano |
Publisher | Purdue University Press |
Pages | 308 |
Release | 2008 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 9781557534842 |
Utopian Dreams, Apocalyptic Nightmares traces the history of utopian representations of the Americas, first on the part of the colonizers, who idealized the New World as an earthly paradise, and later by Latin American modernizing elites, who imagined Western industrialization, cosmopolitanism and consumption as a utopian dream for their independent societies. Carlos Fuentes, Homero Aridjis, Carmen Boullosa, and Alejandro Morales utilize the literary genre of dystopian science fiction to elaborate on how globalization has resulted in the alienation of indigenous peoples and the deterioration of the ecology. This book concludes that Mexican and Chicano perspectives on the past and the future of their societies constitute a key site for the analysis of the problems of underdevelopment, social injustice, and ecological decay that plague today's world. Whereas utopian discourse was once used to justify colonization, Mexican and Chicano writers now deploy dystopian rhetoric to interrogate projects of modernization, contributing to the current debate on the global expansion of capitalism. The narratives coincide in expressing confidence in the ability of Latin American and U.S. Latino popular sectors to claim a decisive role in the implementation of enhanced measures to guarantee an ecologically sound, ethnically diverse, and just society for the future of the Americas.
Gender in Apocalyptic California
Title | Gender in Apocalyptic California PDF eBook |
Author | MaryKate Eileen Messimer |
Publisher | |
Pages | 344 |
Release | 2019 |
Genre | California |
ISBN |
Climate change is the consequence of ideologies that promote human reproduction and resource consumption by sacrificing human justice, nonhuman species, and the land. Both biology and queer ecologies resist this notion of human separation and supremacy by showing that no body is a singular, impermeable entity, that all beings are biologically and inexorably connected. My dissertation demonstrates that fiction writers use this knowledge to locate a utopian vision that can counteract the dystopian impotence of living within climate change. This argument is founded on novels written by women and set in California, a state that uniquely inhabits a utopian and dystopian place in the American cultural imagination. Early ecofeminist utopias depict environmentally sustainable and socially egalitarian communities that arise after apocalypse, but they are ultimately modeled on pastoral and primitivist idealizations of Indigenous societies. Contemporary dystopias reject the early model to show that pastoral fantasies are impossible in a world that has been so altered by climate change. By embracing queer ecologies to empathize more deeply with the rest of the world, characters in novels by Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemisin give readers a way to reconceptualize methods of ecological justice that could combat climate change. These visions of a queer ecological utopia respond to the ideological stagnation caused by climate change to provide an innovative environmental ethic that could guide humanity into surviving responsibly within and alongside the world.
American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction
Title | American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction PDF eBook |
Author | Robert Yeates |
Publisher | UCL Press |
Pages | 212 |
Release | 2021-11-15 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1800080980 |
Visions of the American city in post-apocalyptic ruin permeate literary and popular fiction, across print, visual, audio and digital media. American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction explores the prevalence of these representations in American culture, drawing from a wide range of primary and critical works from the early-twentieth century to today. Beginning with science fiction in literary magazines, before taking in radio dramas, film, video games and expansive transmedia franchises, Robert Yeates argues that post-apocalyptic representations of the American city are uniquely suited for explorations of contemporary urban issues. Examining how the post-apocalyptic American city has been repeatedly adapted and repurposed to new and developing media over the last century, this book reveals that the content and form of such texts work together to create vivid and immersive fictional spaces in ways that would otherwise not be possible. Chapters present media-specific analyses of these texts, situating them within their historical contexts and the broader history of representations of urban ruins in American fiction. Original in its scope and cross-media approach, American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction both illuminates little-studied texts and provides provocative new readings of familiar works such as Blade Runner and The Walking Dead, placing them within the larger historical context of imaginings of the American city in ruins.
Apocalyptic Narratives
Title | Apocalyptic Narratives PDF eBook |
Author | Hauke Riesch |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 186 |
Release | 2021-04-30 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 1000390462 |
Linking literature from the sociological study of the apocalyptic with the sociology and philosophy of science, Apocalyptic Narratives explores how the apocalyptic narrative frames and provides meaning to contemporary, secular and scientific crises focussing on nuclear war, general environmental crisis and climate change in both English- and German-speaking cultural contexts. In particular, the book will use social identity and representation theories, the sociologies of risk and Lakatos’ philosophy of science to trace how our cultural background and apocalyptic tradition shape our wider interpretation, communication and response to contemporary global crisis. The set of environmental and other challenges that the world is facing is often framed in terms of apocalyptic or existential crisis. Yet apocalyptic fears about the near future are nothing new. This book looks at the narrative connections between our current sense of crisis and the apocalyptic. The book will be of interest to readers interested in environmental crisis and communication, the sociology and philosophy of science, and existential risk, but also to readers interested in the apocalyptic and its contemporary relevance.