ABSTRACT

First published in 2003. With essays by an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars, Dark Horizons focuses on the development of critical dystopia in science fiction at the end of the twentieth century. In these narratives of places more terrible than even the reality produced by the neo-conservative backlash of the 1980s and the neoliberal hegemony of the 1990s, utopian horizons stubbornly anticipate a different and more just world. The top-notch team of contributors explores this development in a variety of ways: by looking at questions of form, politics, the politics of form, and the form of politics. In a broader context, the essays connect their textual and theoretical analyses with historical developments such as September 11th, the rise and downturn of the global economy, and the growth of anti-capitalist movements.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

Dystopia and Histories

chapter |15 pages

Utopia in Dark Times

Optimism/Pessimism and Utopia/Dystopia

chapter |21 pages

The Writing of Utopia and the Feminist Critical Dystopia

Suzy McKee Charnas's Holdfast Series

chapter |20 pages

Cyberpunk and Dystopia

Pat Cadigan's Networks

chapter |22 pages

“A useful knowledge of the present is rooted in the past”

Memory and Historical Reconciliation in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Telling

chapter |19 pages

“The moment is here … and it's important”

State, Agency, and Dystopia in Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica and Ursula K. Le Guin's The Telling

chapter |19 pages

Where the Prospective Horizon Is Omitted

Naturalism and Dystopia in Fight Club and Ghost Dog

chapter |22 pages

Concrete Dystopia

Slavery and Its Others

chapter |7 pages

The Problem of the “Flawed Utopia”

A Note on the Costs of Eutopia

chapter |17 pages

Conclusion

Critical Dystopia and Possibilities