New Perspectives on Dystopian Fiction in Literature and Other...

This collection of essays examines various forms of dystopian fiction in literature, television, and digital games. It frames the timely trend of dystopian fiction as a thematic field that accommodates several genres from societal dystopia to apocalyptic narratives and climate fiction, many of them examining the hazards of science and technology to human societies and the ecosystem. These are genres of the Anthropocene par excellence, capturing the dilemmas of the human condition in the current, increasingly precarious epoch. The essays offer new interpretations of classical and contemporary works, including the canonised prose of Orwell, Atwood and Cormac McCarthy, modern pop culture classics like Battlestar Galactica, Fallout and Hunger Games, and the work of Johanna Sinisalo, a pioneer of Finnish speculative fiction. From Thomas Pynchon to Watership Down, the volume’s multifaceted approach offers fresh perspectives to those already familiar with existing research, but it is no less accessible for newcomers to the ever-expanding field of dystopian studies.

About the Author

Saija Isomaa is Senior Lecturer of Finnish Literature at Tampere University and Docent (Adjunct Professor) at the University of Helsinki. She has published over 20 articles on genre theory, genres and emotions, history of Finnish literature, and dystopian fiction, and co-edited nine books and special issues of journals. Jyrki Korpua is a University Teacher at University of Turku, Finland. He is the author of two books in Finnish, namely Bible and Literature (2016) and Kalevala and Literature (2017). He has also edited over 20 special issues of journals and published more than 20 articles on literature, video games, graphic novels, and film studies. Jouni Teittinen received his MA from the University of Turku, Finland, and is a comparatist whose expertise lies in the fields of post-apocalyptic literature, ecocriticism, and human-animal studies. His doctoral research is focused on issues of temporality in recent post-apocalyptic literature, on which he has published in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma (2020).

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