Fin-de-Siècle Fictions, 1890s-1990s Apocalypse, Technoscience, Empire

by Mousoutzanis, Aris

• ISBN13: 9781137263650
• ISBN10: 1137263652
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-05-23
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

H.G. Wells wanted his epitaph to be 'God damn you all, I told you so'. But how accurate were his predictions of industrial warfare and global conflict, especially as his descriptions of an aerial bombing of New York in War in the Air has been compared to the terrorist attacks of 9/11? Did the late Victorians really 'discover the future' or did the 1990s simply recycle the 1890s? At the aftermath of 2012, this book is 'looking backward' and identifies startling connections between the apocalyptic fantasies of the last two centuries' ends and traces intriguing links between Nietzsche and chaos theory, Dracula and The X-Files, the Borg Queen and H. Rider Haggard's Ayesha, among others.

Author Biography

Aris Mousoutzanis is Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies at University of Brighton, UK. He has published on apocalyptic literature, science fiction and the Gothic, as well as on new media and online communities. He is currently researching on the relations between trauma theory and media culture.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Apocalypse, Technoscience, Empire
1. When Time Shall Be No More: Entropy, Degeneration, History
2. The Eternal Return of Chaos
3. Dusk of the Nations: Century's End and Imperial Crisis
4. Terminal Bodies: New Men and Women for the '00s
Conclusion: Post-Millennial Apocalypse
Bibliography
Index