Download or read book Global Dystopias written by Junot Diaz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-10-27 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories, essays, and interviews explore dystopias that may offer lessons for the present. As the recent success of Margaret Atwood's novel-turned-television hit Handmaid's Tale shows us, dystopia is more than minatory fantasy; it offers a critical lens upon the present. “It is not only a kind of vocabulary and idiom,” says bestselling author and volume editor Junot Diaz. “It is a useful arena in which to begin to think about who we are becoming.” Bringing together some of the most prominent writers of science fiction and introducing fresh talent, this collection of stories, essays, and interviews explores global dystopias in apocalyptic landscapes and tech futures, in robot sentience and forever war. Global Dystopias engages the familiar horrors of George Orwell's 1984 alongside new work by China Miéville, Tananarive Due, and Maria Dahvana Headley. In “Don't Press Charges, and I Won't Sue,” award-winning writer Charlie Jane Anders uses popularized stigmas toward transgender people to create a not-so-distant future in which conversion therapy is not only normalized, but funded by the government. Henry Farrell surveys the work of dystopian forebear Philip K. Dick and argues that distinctions between the present and the possible future aren't always that clear. Contributors also include Margaret Atwood and award-winning speculative writer, Nalo Hopkinson. In the era of Trump, resurgent populism, and climate denial, this collection poses vital questions about politics and civic responsibility and subjectivity itself. If we have, as Díaz says, reached peak dystopia, then Global Dystopias might just be the handbook we need to survive it. Contributors Charlie Jane Anders, Margaret Atwood, Adrienne Bernhard, Mark Bould, Thea Costantino, Tananarive Due, Henry Farrell, JR Fenn, Maria Dahvana Headley, Nalo Hopkinson, Mike McClelland, Maureen McHugh, China Miéville, Jordy Rosenberg, Peter Ross, Sumudu Samarwickrama

Download or read book Threatening Dystopias written by Kasia Paprocki and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bangladesh is currently ranked as one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world. In Threatening Dystopias, Kasia Paprocki investigates the politics of climate change adaptation throughout the South Asian nation. Drawing on ethnographic and archival fieldwork, she engages with developers, policy makers, scientists, farmers, and rural migrants to show how Bangladeshi and global elites ignore the history of landscape transformation and its attendant political conflicts. Paprocki looks at how groups craft economic narratives and strategies that redistribute power and resources away from peasant communities. Although these groups claim that increased production of export commodities will reframe the threat of climate change into an opportunity for economic development and growth, the reality is not so simple. For the country's rural poor, these promises ring hollow. As development dispossesses the poor from agrarian livelihoods, outmigration from peasant communities leads to precarious existences in urban centers. And a vision of development in which urbanization and export-led growth are both desirable and inevitable is not one the land and its people can sustain. Threatening Dystopias shows how a powerful rural movement, although hampered by an all-consuming climate emergency, is seeking climate justice in Bangladesh.

Download or read book The Story Grid written by Shawn Coyne and published by Black Irish Entertainment LLC. This book was released on 2015-05-02 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WHAT IS THE STORY GRID? The Story Grid is a tool developed by editor Shawn Coyne to analyze stories and provide helpful editorial comments. It's like a CT Scan that takes a photo of the global story and tells the editor or writer what is working, what is not, and what must be done to make what works better and fix what's not. The Story Grid breaks down the component parts of stories to identify the problems. And finding the problems in a story is almost as difficult as the writing of the story itself (maybe even more difficult). The Story Grid is a tool with many applications: 1. It will tell a writer if a Story ?works? or ?doesn't work. 2. It pinpoints story problems but does not emotionally abuse the writer, revealing exactly where a Story (not the person creating the Story'the Story) has failed. 3. It will tell the writer the specific work necessary to fix that Story's problems. 4. It is a tool to re-envision and resuscitate a seemingly irredeemable pile of paper stuck in an attic drawer. 5. It is a tool that can inspire an original creation.

Download or read book Modern Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought written by Adam Stock and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-26 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past few years, ‘dystopia’ has become a word with increasing cultural currency. This volume argues that we live in dystopian times, and more specifically that a genre of fiction called "dystopia" has, above others, achieved symbolic cultural value in representing fears and anxieties about the future. As such, dystopian fictions do not merely mirror what is happening in the world: in becoming such a ready referent for discussions about such varied topics as governance, popular culture, security, structural discrimination, environmental disasters and beyond, the narrative conventions and generic tropes of dystopian fiction affect the ways in which we grapple with contemporary political problems, economic anxieties and social fears. The volume addresses the development of the narrative methods and generic conventions of dystopian fiction as a mode of socio-political critique across the first half of the twentieth century. It examines how a series of texts from an age of political extremes contributed to political discourse and rhetoric both in its contemporary setting and in the terms in which we increasingly cast our cultural anxieties. Focusing on interactions between temporality, spatiality and narrative, the analysis unpicks how the dystopian interacts with social and political events, debates and ideas, Stock evaluates modern dystopian fiction as a historically responsive mode of political literature. He argues that amid the terrors and upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century, dystopian fiction provided a unique space for writers to engage with historical and contemporary political thought in a mode that had popular cultural appeal. Combining literary analysis informed by critical theory and the history of political thought with archival-based historical research, this volume works to shed new light on the intersection of popular culture and world politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars in literary studies, cultural and intellectual history, politics and international relations.

Download or read book The America Syndrome written by Betsy Hartmann and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Has apocalyptic thinking contributed to some of our nation's biggest problems—inequality, permanent war, and the despoiling of our natural resources? From the Puritans to the present, historian and public policy advocate Betsy Hartmann sheds light on a pervasive but—until now—invisible theme shaping the American mindset: apocalyptic thinking, or the belief that the end of the world is nigh. Hartmann makes a compelling case that apocalyptic fears are deeply intertwined with the American ethos, to our detriment. In The America Syndrome, she seeks to reclaim human agency and, in so doing, revise the national narrative. By changing the way we think, we just might change the world.

Download or read book Infinite Detail written by Tim Maughan and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL! The Guardian's Pick for Best Science Fiction Book of the Year! A timely and uncanny portrait of a world in the wake of fake news, diminished privacy, and a total shutdown of the Internet BEFORE: In Bristol’s center lies the Croft, a digital no-man’s-land cut off from the surveillance, Big Data dependence, and corporate-sponsored, globally hegemonic aspirations that have overrun the rest of the world. Ten years in, it’s become a center of creative counterculture. But it’s fraying at the edges, radicalizing from inside. How will it fare when its chief architect, Rushdi Mannan, takes off to meet his boyfriend in New York City—now the apotheosis of the new techno-utopian global metropolis? AFTER: An act of anonymous cyberterrorism has permanently switched off the Internet. Global trade, travel, and communication have collapsed. The luxuries that characterized modern life are scarce. In the Croft, Mary—who has visions of people presumed dead—is sought out by grieving families seeking connections to lost ones. But does Mary have a gift or is she just hustling to stay alive? Like Grids, who runs the Croft’s black market like personal turf. Or like Tyrone, who hoards music (culled from cassettes, the only medium to survive the crash) and tattered sneakers like treasure. The world of Infinite Detail is a small step shy of our own: utterly dependent on technology, constantly brokering autonomy and privacy for comfort and convenience. With Infinite Detail, Tim Maughan makes the hitherto-unimaginable come true: the End of the Internet, the End of the World as We Know It.

Download or read book After written by Ellen Datlow and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2012-10-09 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some of the biggest names in YA and adult literature explore the lives of teen protagonists raised in catastrophe''s wake—whether set soon after disaster or decades later. New York Times bestselling authors Gregory Maguire, Garth Nix, Susan Beth Pfeffer, Carrie Ryan, Beth Revis, and Jane Yolen are among the many popular and award-winning storytellers lending their talents to this original and spellbinding anthology.

Download or read book Sporting Dystopias written by Ralph C. Wilcox and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reaching beyond the popular celebration of commercial gains often associated with the proliferation of stadiums, events, and teams in the city, Sporting Dystopias explores the role of sport in the process of community building. Scholars from various fields, including anthropology, cultural studies, history, marketing, media studies, and sociology, examine the cultural, economic, and political interplay of sport and the city. The book systematically challenges the overwhelming claims of sport's benefit to the city as it scrutinizes the various tensions inherent in the relationship. Grounded in economic means, racial and ethnic affiliation, and the contestation for space, sport is seen as precipitating a broad range of human challenges.

Download or read book Dystopia and Economics written by Charity-Joy Revere Acchiardo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Government collapsing? Zombies hunting you down? Everyone you know killed by a global epidemic? Not to worry! Economics holds the keys to survival. Often known as "the dismal science", it is particularly equipped to reveal order in what seems like chaos. Economists observe human behaviour: what leads us to take action, and the subsequent consequences. However, the choices made by individuals are not made in isolation; they influence and are influenced by the actions of others. A set of rules, even if unwritten, guides human behaviour. Foundational economic principles stand firmly in place, even when society is breaking down, and an understanding of these basic tenets of societies is essential to surviving the end of the world as we know it. In this book, the authors draw from popular culture to show economic principles at work in the dystopian societies depicted in The Walking Dead, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Hunger Games, Divergent, A Clockwork Orange, and Last Man on Earth. In each society, its members face resource and social constraints that incentivize particular behaviours and lead to predictable outcomes. How does human behaviour change when resources are severely limited, the legal system breaks down, or individual freedom is stifled? The examples presented here shed an eerie light on the principles that guide our actions every day. Dystopia and Economics: A Guide to Surviving Everything from the Apocalypse to Zombies provides a user-friendly introduction to economics suitable for a general audience as well as devoted students of the discipline.

Download or read book Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults written by Balaka Basu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Children’s Literature Association Edited Book Award From the jaded, wired teenagers of M.T. Anderson's Feed to the spirited young rebels of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, the protagonists of Young Adult dystopias are introducing a new generation of readers to the pleasures and challenges of dystopian imaginings. As the dark universes of YA dystopias continue to flood the market,Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers offers a critical evaluation of the literary and political potentials of this widespread publishing phenomenon. With its capacity to frighten and warn, dystopian writing powerfully engages with our pressing global concerns: liberty and self-determination, environmental destruction and looming catastrophe, questions of identity and justice, and the increasingly fragile boundaries between technology and the self. When directed at young readers, these dystopian warnings are distilled into exciting adventures with gripping plots and accessible messages that may have the potential to motivate a generation on the cusp of adulthood. This collection enacts a lively debate about the goals and efficacy of YA dystopias, with three major areas of contention: do these texts reinscribe an old didacticism or offer an exciting new frontier in children's literature? Do their political critiques represent conservative or radical ideologies? And finally, are these novels high-minded attempts to educate the young or simply bids to cash in on a formula for commercial success? This collection represents a prismatic and evolving understanding of the genre, illuminating its relevance to children's literature and our wider culture.

Download or read book Nordic Utopias and Dystopias written by Pia Maria Ahlbäck and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2022-11-24 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nordic countries have long been subject to certain idealised, even utopian imaginaries, particularly with regard to images of pristine nature and the societal ideals of democracy, equality and education. On the other hand, such projections inevitably invite dissent, irony and intimations of the utopia’s dark underside. Things may yet take, or may have already taken, a dystopic course. The present volume offers twelve contributions on utopias and dystopias in Nordic literature and culture. Geographically, the articles cover the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as the autonomous area of Greenland. Through the articles’ varied subjects — ranging from avant-garde literature and long poems to noir TV-series, young adult fiction, popular historiography, and political discourse in literature outside of Norden — the volume brings forth a historically rich, multi-layered picture of social, cultural and environmental imagination in the Nordic countries. Nordic Utopias and Dystopias is thus of interest not only to specialists in dystopian and utopian research but more broadly to scholars of literature and culture, and the political and social sciences, especially but not exclusively in the Nordic context.

Download or read book Splinterlands written by John Feffer and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2016-11-28 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dystopian trilogy opener, an elderly scientist reminisces, wondering why both the planet and his family fell apart. Part Field Notes from a Catastrophe, part 1984, part World War Z, this striking dystopian novel takes us deep into the battered, shattered world of 2050. The European Union has broken apart. Multiethnic great powers like Russia and China have shriveled. America’s global military footprint has virtually disappeared, and the United States remains united in name only. Nationalism has proven the century’s most enduring force as ever-rising global temperatures have supercharged each-against-all competition and conflict among the now three hundred-plus members of an increasingly feeble United Nations. As he navigates the world of 2050, Julian West offers a roadmap for the path we’re already on, a chronicle of impending disaster, and a faint light of hope. He may be humanity’s last best chance to explain how the world unraveled—if he can survive the savage beauty of the Splinterlands. Praise for Splinterlands “In a chilling, thoughtful, and intuitive warning, foreign policy analyst Feffer . . . takes today’s woes of a politically fragmented, warming Earth and amplifies them into future catastrophe . . . . This novel is not for the emotionally squeamish or optimistic; Feffer’s confident recitation of world collapse is terrifyingly plausible, a short but encompassing look at world tragedy.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review “Feffer’s book is a wild ride through a bleak future, casting a harsh, thought-provoking light on that future’s modern-day roots.” —Foreword Reviews “A startling portrait of a post-apocalyptic tomorrow that is fast becoming a reality today. Fast-paced, yet strangely haunting, Feffer’s latest novel looks back from 2050 on the disintegration of world order told through the story of one broken family—and offers a disturbing vision of what might await us all if we don’t act quickly.” —Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times–bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed and Had I Known, and founder of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project

Download or read book New Perspectives on Dystopian Fiction in Literature and Other Media written by Saija Isomaa and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-27 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 volume’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.

Download or read book Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction written by Zachary Kendal and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-27 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction explores the ethical concerns and dimensions of representations of the future of global science fiction, focusing on the issues that dominate utopian, dystopian and science fiction literature. The essays examine recent visions of the future in science fiction and re-examine earlier texts through contemporary lenses. Across fourteen chapters, the collection considers authors from Algeria, Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Macedonia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the UK and USA. The volume delves into a range of ethical questions of immediate contemporary relevance, including environmental ethics, postcolonial ethics, social justice, animal ethics and the ethics of alterity.

Download or read book Lord of the World written by Robert Hugh Benson and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Wanting Seed written by Anthony Burgess and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1996-12-17 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in the near future, The Wanting Seed is a Malthusian comedy about the strange world overpopulation will produce. Tristram Foxe and his wife, Beatrice-Joanna, live in their skyscraper world where official family limitation glorifies homosexuality. Eventually, their world is transformed into a chaos of cannibalistic dining-clubs, fantastic fertility rituals, and wars without anger. It is a novel both extravagantly funny and grimly serious.

Download or read book All Rights Reserved written by Gregory Scott Katsoulis and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where every word and gesture is copyrighted, patented or trademarked, one girl elects to remain silent rather than pay to speak, and her defiant and unexpected silence threatens to unravel the very fabric of society. Speth Jime is anxious to deliver her Last Day speech and celebrate her transition into adulthood. The moment she turns fifteen, Speth must pay for every word she speaks (“Sorry” is a flat ten dollars and a legal admission of guilt), for every nod ($0.99/sec), for every scream ($0.99/sec) and even every gesture of affection. She’s been raised to know the consequences of falling into debt, and can’t begin to imagine the pain of having her eyes shocked for speaking words that she’s unable to afford. But when Speth’s friend Beecher commits suicide rather than work off his family’s crippling debt, she can’t express her shock and dismay without breaking her Last Day contract and sending her family into Collection. Backed into a corner, Speth finds a loophole: rather than read her speech—rather than say anything at all—she closes her mouth and vows never to speak again. Speth’s unexpected defiance of tradition sparks a media frenzy, inspiring others to follow in her footsteps, and threatens to destroy her, her family and the entire city around them.