Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Acknowledgments xii
Preface
Amanda Firestone 1
Introduction (Mary F. Pharr, Leisa A. Clark and Amanda Firestone) 4
Prelude—We Don’t Want to Miss a Thing: Millennial
Technologies of Participation and Intimacy (Andrew McAlister) 25
I: Culture, Values and Anxiety
The South Will Rise Again: Contagion, War and Reconstruction in The Walking Dead, Seasons One Through Five (Angela Tenga) 37
The Recuperation of Wounded Hegemonic Masculinity
on Doomsday Preppers (Tiffany A. Christian) 48
The Last ­Non-Judgment: Postmodern Apocalypse
in Battlestar Galactica (Stephen Joyce) 60
The Emergence of the Lost Apocalypse from 28 Days Later to Snowpiercer (Mark McCarthy) 69
II. Globalization, Corporate Power and Class Struggles
Going Viral in a World Gone Global: How Contagion Reinvents the Outbreak Narrative (Dahlia Schweitzer) 79
The Second Coming of Left Behind and the Deglobalization
of Christian Apocalypse (Tim Bryant) 90
Corporate Abuse and Social Inequality in RoboCop and Fido
(Bill Clemente) 101
We Go Forward: An Inquiry into The Hunger Games
and Other ­Class-Based Dystopias in Millennial Cinema
(Lennart Soberon) 112
III. Memory and Identity
Determined About Determinism: Genetic Manipulation, Memory and Identity in Shaping the Postapocalyptic Self in Dark Angel and Divergent (Max Despain) 123
The Apocalyptic Mental Time Travel Film: Erasing Disaster in Edge of Tomorrow and ­X-Men: Days of Future Past (Ryan Lizardi) 134
In the Flesh: The Politics of Apocalyptic Memory (Frances Auld) 144
In Search of a New Paradise and the Construction of Hell
in The 100 (Ceren Mert and Amanda Firestone) 154
IV. Simulation, Psychology and Inevitability
The Apocalypse Will Not Take Place: Megamonster Films
(Cloverfield, Pacific Rim, Godzilla) in the Postmodern Age (Sharon Diane King) 165
Psychological Significance Within Postapocalyptic Film: Two Unique Approaches to Adaptation (Patrick L. Smith) 174
“To Err Is Human”: The Human Species and the Inevitable
Apocalypse in The World’s End (Mary F. Pharr) 185
V. Being Human in a ­Techno-Universe
More Man Than Machine: The Construction of Body
and Identity in Battlestar Galactica and Terminator: The
Sarah Connor Chronicles (Leisa A. Clark) 195
­Techno-Apocalypse: Technology, Religion and Ideology
in Bryan Singer’s H+ (Eddie Brennan) 206
Technoscience as Alien Invasion in XCOM: Enemy Within (Bjarke Liboriussen) 216
Running for My Life: Convergence Culture, Transmedia
Storytelling and Community Building in the Smartphone Application Zombies, Run! (Amanda Firestone) 226
Appendix: Apocalyptic Criticism, Films, Television Series
and Video Games (Leisa A. Clark, Mary F. Pharr and Amanda Firestone) 237
About the Contributors 247
Index 251