Race, ethnicity and nuclear war : representations of nuclear weapons and post-apocalyptic worlds / Paul Williams.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Williams, Paul, 1979-

Series:

Liverpool science fiction texts and studies ; 40.

Liverpool science fiction texts and studies ; 40

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nuclear warfare in literature.

Nuclear warfare in motion pictures.

Ethnicity in literature.

Ethnicity in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

ix, 278 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2011.

Summary:

Ranging across novels and poetry, critical theory and film, comics and speeches, Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War explores the ways in which writers, thinkers, and filmmakers have answered the following question: are nuclear weapons 'white'? Many texts respond in the affirmative, and arraign nuclear weapons for defending a racial order that privileges whiteness. They are seen as a reminder that the power enjoyed by the white Western world imperils the whole of the Earth. Furthermore, the struggle to survive during and after a putative nuclear attack is often cast as a contest between races and ethnic groups. This book listens to voices from around the Anglophone world and the debates followed do not take place only on the soil of the nuclear powers. Filmmakers and writers from the Caribbean, Australia, and India take up positions shaped by their specific place in the decolonizing world and their particular experience of nuclear weapons.

The texts considered, in Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War encompass the many guises of representations of nuclear weapons: the Manhattan, Project that developed the first atomic weapons, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear tests taking place around the world, and the anxiety surrounding the superpowers devastating arsenals. Of particular interest to SF scholars are the extensive analyses of film's, novels, and' 5 short stories depicting-nuclear war and its aftermath. New, thoughts are offered on the major texts that SF scholars often return to, such as Philip Wylie's Tomorrow! and Pat Frank's Alas Babylon, alongside analysis of a number of little known and under researched texts.

A good book, addressing itself to a neglected area of an important topic. Williams draws on an impressively broad and diverse range of nuclear texts for his study and has some intelligent observations to make. His readings of literary and filmic texts are detailed and enlightening. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Race, War and Apocalypse before 1945 25

2 Inverted Frontiers 49

3 Soft Places and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome 85

4 Fear of a Black Planet 105

5 White Rain and the Black Atlantic 147

6 Race and the Manhattan Project 180

7 'The Hindu Bomb': Nuclear Nationalism in The Last Jet-Engine Laugh 202

8 Third World Wars and Third-World Wars 224.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [251]-269) and index.

ISBN:

9781846317088

1846317088

OCLC:

754168749