Worlds Gone Awry

John J. Han is professor of English and creative writing and chair of the humanities division at Missouri Baptist University in St. Louis and is the author, editor, co-editor, compiler, or translator of 18 books. C. Clark Triplett is vice president for graduate studies and academic program review and professor of psychology/sociology at Missouri Baptist University in St. Louis. Ashley G. Anthony is an associate instructor of English at Maryville University, in St. Louis.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction (John J. Han, C. Clark Triplett and Ashley G. Anthony)Part One: Classical Dystopian FictionFeminine Subterfuge in Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last (Megan E. Cannella)“Forget sad things”: Kurt Vonnegut’s Dystopian Short Fiction as Social Critique (Ashley G. Anthony)“A secure but partly demented society”: Reconsidering Human Depravity in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (Natasha W. Vashisht)Streets of Spectrality: Kevin Barry’s Dystopian City of Bohane (Deirdre Flynn)Interrogating Utopia: On Colin MacInnes’ Absolute Beginners (Andrew Hammond)“What if I said that he’s a god?”: Messianism in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (Wes Yeary)“Maps and mazes”: Mapping as Metaphor in Postsecular America (Harold K. Bush)Part Two: Popular Dystopian Fiction Unmasking the Deception: The Hermeneutic of Suspicion in Lois Lowry’s The Giver(C. Clark Triplett and John J. Han)111Ending Dystopia: The Feminist Critique of Culture in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy (Jane Beal)Commodifying the Revolution: Dystopian Young Adult Literature and Cultural Critique (Jillian L. Canode)Dystopia, Competition and Reality Television Tropes in The Bachman Books: “The Long Walk” and “The Running Man” (Alissa Burger)Stranger Than Fiction: Locating the Digital Dystopia in Contemporary Fiction (Robyn N. Rowley)Disembodied Heads and Headless Philosophies: C.S. Lewis’ Aesthetic Rejoinder to Dystopian Utility in That Hideous Strength (Matthew Bardowell)The Creation of the Future from Remnants of the Past: Order from Disorder in William Gibson’s All Tomorrow’s Parties and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (Melanie A. Marotta)The Future Is White, the Future Is Undead: Reframing the American Vampire Dystopia in Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain Trilogy (Simon Bacon)Here’s Looking at You, Kids: The Urgency of Dystopian Texts in the Secondary Classroom (Michael A. Soares)About the ContributorsIndex

“A solid collection and is especially useful because of the range of authors and titles covered...an especially informative study...the quality of essays is high, and the editors deserve credit for producing a volume that appears to be scrupulously proofread”—Science Fiction Studies.