As a scholar of zombie fiction, one tends to get hung up on one’s specific method of dealing with the shambling dead – prefer a gun, a baseball bat or rather a sword? Academically speaking that means that once you look at the hordes of undead roaming in popular culture with an eye for consumerism, you find anti-capitalist notions everywhere.
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At the heart of Heike Endter’s 2009 dissertation, published in 2011 as Ökonomische Utopien und ihre Bilder in Science-Fiction-Filmen, lies the assumption that art history, as a field and with its unique methodology, can provide an insight into film studies that has not yet been discovered and made accessible. Interestingly, Endter seeks to argue this unique insight as a benefit of art history, a discipline threatened by neoliberal ideals of employability, by analyzing a field of interconnected terms that directly address this threat: “utopias, the economy, the visual and science fiction film” (9). Read More
Farghaly, Nadine, ed. Unraveling Resident Evil: Essays on the Complex Universe of the Games and Films. Contributions to Zombie Studies. Vol. 10. Jefferson: McFarland, 2014. 240 pp. Paperback. ISBN 978-0-786-47291-8. $40.00.
Keetley, Dawn, ed. “We’re all Infected”: Essays on AMC’s The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human. Jefferson: McFarland, 2014. 245 pp. Paperback. ISBN 978-0-7864-7628-2. $35.00.Read More
Gözen, Jiré Emine. Cyberpunk Science Fiction: Literarische Fiktionen und Medientheorie. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012. 350 pp. Paperback. ISBN 978-3-8376-1701-6. EU 32.80.Read More
British Film Institute. BFI Film Classics Series. London: Palgrave, seit 1992.
Das bereits 1933 gegründete British Film Institute ist eine der weltweit ältesten Fördereinrichtungen für Film und besitzt mit dem BFI National Archive die weltweit größte Sammlung für Film und Fernsehen. Zu seinem 50. Geburtstag erhielt das Institut den Ehrenschlag der “Royal Charter” und steht seitdem somit quasi unter königlichem Schutz. Read More
Dying Light, the latest release of Polish developer Techland, is a zombie game that allows player to experience how they might behave when faced with a global crisis. Innovatively reimagining the zombie game, Dying Light opens up nuanced option for ideological interpretation Read More
Latham, Rob, Hg. The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014.
“[T]he world has grown into sf” (1), schreibt Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. und verweist damit auf eine veränderte Haltung gegenüber der Science Fiction (SF), die nicht vom Genre selbst ausgeht, sondern von der sich radikal wandelnden Welt selbst. Read More
Since their inception, video games as media have been closely entwined with the genre of science fiction, not only recognizable in the thematic proximity of early games such as Spacewar! (1962) but also in the technological development of the medium itself.
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Vincent Terrace. Internet Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy Television Series, 1998-2013. Jefferson: McFarland, 2014. Paperback, 284 pages, $39,95. ISBN 978-0-7864-7993-1
“A historicist criticism cannot be compared to a literary critical criticism, not because one is better than the other, but because they are apples and oranges” (89) writes Farah Mendelsohn in a piece about the theoretical aim of her work, which is based in her training as a historian, in comparison to literary criticism.
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Wolfenstein: The New Order. Dev. MachineGames. Pub. Bethesda Softworks. Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, Xbox One.
“It is hard to say what ranks lower on the artistic food chain than video games. Comic books? TV sit-coms? X-rated films? These ratlike vermin at the bottom scurry to avoid the thunderous footfalls of the towering behemoths of the art world.” (Robinett viii)
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