Remainders of the American Century

"Bellamy's analysis of post-apocalyptic fiction is insightful and necessary. As apocalyptic rhetoric dominates politics and culture, we must be mindful of what it does--and does not--target for change; as Bellamy expertly shows, both categories demand our attention."--Jason Haslam, author of Gender, Race, and American Science Fiction: Reflections on Fantastic Identities

"This is a gripping and timely history, appropriately narrated in the post-apocalyptic mode, that weaves together the decline of American geopolitical hegemony, the upheavals of the publishing industry, and transformations in post-apocalyptic fiction from 1945 to the 'remaindered' present."--Veronica Hollinger, Editor of Science Fiction Studies

"Conceptualizing post-apocalyptic fiction as a subtractive mode--who is missing, what is salvaged, how remnants are repurposed--this book offers a powerful theorization of how such narratives help us live in the wake of the ongoing apocalypse left by colonialism and capitalism."--Sherryl Vint, author of Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction

"Brent Ryan Bellamy weaves a rich and diverse tapestry of fictions, all of which navigate the changing valences of apocalypse, survival, and remainders during the rise and fall of the post-Second World War 'American Century.' Given the global post-apocalyptic reality we all currently inhabit, this is a timely and significant study."--Phillip E. Wegner, author of Invoking Hope: Reading and Theory in Dark Times

"In an era of economic, ecological, and virological catastrophe, Remainders of the American Century provides an urgent, bracing explanation of how the stories we tell about the future reveal the fears and fractures of our anxious present."--Gerry Canavan, author of Octavia E. Butler

"Brent Ryan Bellamy's Remainders of the American Century is a sustained and provocative engagement with the post-apocalyptic as a mode of expression. Beyond the categorizing imperative of the post-apocalyptic as a genre, the post-apocalyptic as a mode allows us to see its flexibility across time and its power in the world, its capacity to mediate different anxieties at different historical moments, and its ability to shape how people think about and respond to those anxieties. The post-apocalyptic genre is all too often considered to be post- or apolitical. Through the lens of the post-apocalyptic mode, however, Bellamy uncovers in the post-1945 literary archive 'a layered stratigraphy of cultural and political contests over the transforming meanings of apocalypse and survival'"--Jessica Hurley, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

"[Remainders of the American Century] balances depth with breadth to canvass seventy years of writing and history without being too general or abstract. Any scholar of the American hegemony would benefit from reading this work, but especially those interested in the post-apocalyptic mode."--Ezekiel Crago, Fantastika Review