Distributed for UCL Press
American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction
A fresh, provocative history of urban ruins in popular culture.
American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction traces the image of urban ruins across twentieth- and twenty-first-century American media. Surveying pulp magazines, radio dramas, films, video games, and the transmedia franchise, Robert Yeates explores how the synergy of technological innovation and artistic vision created an increasingly immersive space to reimagine the urban future. Through a series of medium-specific case studies, Yeates offers provocative new readings of familiar works such as Blade Runner and The Walking Dead situated against a fresh history of ruined cities in American literature.
American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction traces the image of urban ruins across twentieth- and twenty-first-century American media. Surveying pulp magazines, radio dramas, films, video games, and the transmedia franchise, Robert Yeates explores how the synergy of technological innovation and artistic vision created an increasingly immersive space to reimagine the urban future. Through a series of medium-specific case studies, Yeates offers provocative new readings of familiar works such as Blade Runner and The Walking Dead situated against a fresh history of ruined cities in American literature.
212 pages | 28 color plates | 6.14 x 9.21 | © 2021
Literature and Literary Criticism: American and Canadian Literature
Table of Contents
List of figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The Scarlet Plague and urban apocalypse in the magazines 2. Listening to ruins on the radio 3. Cinema and the aesthetics of destruction 4. Urban decay in the transmedia universe of Blade Runner 5. Playing in virtual ruins from Wasteland to Wasteland 2 6. Cities and sanctuary in The Walking Dead Bibliography Index