The concepts of utopia and dystopia have received much historical attention. Utopias have traditionally signified the ideal future: large-scale social, political, ethical, and religious spaces that have yet to be realized. Utopia/Dystopia offers a fresh approach to these ideas. Rather than locate utopias in grandiose programs of future totality, the book treats these concepts as historically grounded categories and examines how individuals and groups throughout time have interpreted utopian visions in their daily present, with an eye toward the future. From colonial and postcolonial Africa to pre-Marxist and Stalinist Eastern Europe, from the social life of fossil fuels to dreams of nuclear power, and from everyday politics in contemporary India to imagined architectures of postwar Britain, this interdisciplinary collection provides new understandings of the utopian/dystopian experience. The essays look at such issues as imaginary utopian perspectives leading to the 1856-57 Xhosa Cattle Killing in South Africa, the functioning racist utopia behind the Rhodesian independence movement, the utopia of the peaceful atom and its global dissemination in the mid-1950s, the possibilities for an everyday utopia in modern cities, and how the Stalinist purges of the 1930s served as an extension of the utopian/dystopian relationship. The contributors are Dipesh Chakrabarty, Igal Halfin, Fredric Jameson, John Krige, Timothy Mitchell, Aditya Nigam, David Pinder, Marci Shore, Jennifer Wenzel, and Luise White.

"Utopia/Dystopia investigates how artists from the late nineteenth century to the present have used photograpic fragments or techniques to represent political, social, or cultural states of utopia or dystopia. This catalogue is heavily illustrated with works from the accompanying exhibition"--

New Authors and collections. Following the great success of 2015's Gothic Fantasy, deluxe edition short story compilations, this latest in the series is packed with tales set in bleak and paradisiacal worlds of boundless imagination from classic authors and exciting budding contemporary writers. New and notable writers featured are: Kim Antieau, Steve Carr, Carolyn Charron, Megan Dorei, Sarah Lyn Eaton, Michelle Kaseler, Claude Lalumière, Gerri Leen, Konstantine Paradias, Jeff Parsons, Kelsey Shannahan, Nidhi Singh, Jeremy Szal, J.M. Templet, Russ Thorne, M. Darusha Wehm, and Andrew J. Wilson. These appear alongside classic stories by authors such as Edward Bellamy, Samuel Butler, Robert W. Chambers, Jack London and Mary Shelley.

Dystopian narrative is a product of the social ferment of the twentieth century. A hundred years of war, famine, disease, state terror, genocide, ecocide, and the depletion of humanity through the buying and selling of everyday life provided fertile ground for this fictive underside of the utopian imagination. From the classical works by E. M. Forster, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Margaret Atwood, through the new maps of hell in postwar science fiction, and most recently in the dystopian turn of the 1980s and 1990s, this narrative machine has produced challenging cognitive maps of the given historical situation by way of imaginary societies which are even worse than those that lie outside their authors' and readers' doors.In Scraps of the Untainted Sky , Tom Moylan offers a thorough investigation of the history and aesthetics of dystopia. To situate his study, Moylan sets out the methodological paradigm that developed within the interdisciplinary fields of science fiction studies and utopian studies as they grow out of the oppositional political culture of the 1960 and 1970s (the context that produced the project of cultural studies itself). He then presents a thorough account of the textual structure and formal operations of the dystopian text. From there, he focuses on the new science-fictional dystopias that emerged in the context of the economic, political, and cultural convulsions of the 1980s and 1990s, and he examines in detail three of these new "critical dystopias:" Kim Stanley Robinson's The Gold Coast, Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower , and Marge Piercy's He, She, and It .With its detailed, documented, and yet accessible presentation, Scraps of the Untainted Sky will be of interest to established scholars as well as students and general readers who are seeking an in-depth introduction to this important area of cultural production.

Utopia and Dystopia in the Age of Trump:Images from Literature and Visual Arts treats literature, film, television series, and comic books dealing with utopian and dystopian worlds reflecting on or anticipating our current age. From Henry James’s dreamlike utopia of “The Great Good Place” to the psychotic world of Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, from science fiction and recent horror films, television adaptations of books such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and new series such as Black Mirror to the repressive Hitlerian dystopia of Katherine Burdekin’s Swastika Night, the contributors examine the development of scenarios that either prefigure the rise of individuals such as Donald J. Trump or suggest alternatives to them. Ultimately, one might say of the worlds presented here, viewed from different social and political perspectives: one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia. This is the fifth in a series of books edited by Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan, and published by Rowman & Littlefield with Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend and Images of the Modern Vampire: The Hip and the Atavistic (both in 2013) focused on the vampire legend in traditional and modern thought. The Supernatural Revamped: From Timeworn Legends to Twenty-First-Century Chic (2016) examined a range of supernatural beings in literature, film, and other forms of popular culture. Apocalyptic Chic: Visions of the Apocalypse and Post-Apocalypse in Literature and Visual Arts (2017) dealt with legends and images of the apocalypse and post-apocalypse in film and graphic arts, literature and lore from early to modern times, and from peoples and cultures around the world.

Since the publication of Thomas More's genre-defining work Utopia in 1516, the field of utopian literature has evolved into an ever-expanding domain. This Companion presents an extensive historical survey of the development of utopianism, from the publication of Utopia to today's dark and despairing tendency towards dystopian pessimism, epitomised by works such as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Chapters address the difficult definition of the concept of utopia, and consider its relation to science fiction and other literary genres. The volume takes an innovative approach to the major themes predominating within the utopian and dystopian literary tradition, including feminism, romance and ecology, and explores in detail the vexed question of the purportedly 'western' nature of the concept of utopia. The reader is provided with a balanced overview of the evolution and current state of a long-standing, rich tradition of historical, political and literary scholarship.

Between Utopia and Dystopia offers a new interpretation of Erasmian humanism. It argues that Erasmian humanism created the identity of the universal and critical intellectual, but that this identity undermined the fundamental premises of humanist discourse. It closely reads several works of Erasmus and Thomas More, employing an interdisciplinary approach to the study of intellectual history, and adopting theoretical insights and methodological procedures from various disciplines.

A future society about to collapse. A reluctant hero alone in the world. When he suspects sabotage, will he abandon his newfound friend to save humanity? Samuel has grown accustomed to the mindless routine of the last human colony. Life is good for him and the other survivors: prefabricated meals three times a day, a freshly made bed each night, and hours in between with nothing to do but play and relax. But when the machines that regulate their community begin to malfunction, Samuel and the other colonists face a test for the first time in their existence. Aided by his determined new friend Penny, Samuel struggles to repair each breakdown. But when they discover a group of shadowy saboteurs behind the colony's mechanical failures, Samuel and Penny fear their idyllic community is not alone. Facing a treacherous journey to confront their attackers, can Samuel rescue the colony if it means leaving Penny behind? Our Dried Voices is a thought-provoking, instant classic dystopian novel. If you like false utopias, societies harboring dark secrets, and prophetic visions of humanity's future, then you'll love Greg Hickey's perfectly engineered new world. Buy Our Dried Voices and experience this unique dystopia today!