This text presents essays on the dystopian turn of late 20th-century science fiction. Leading scholars discuss major dystopian traditions including cyberpunk and feminist utopian/dystopian narratives as seen in works such as Octavia Butler's novel Xenogenesis and the film Fight Club. These essays draw out the ways in which contemporary science fiction literature and film has served as a prophetic vehicle for writers with ethical and political concerns.

This text presents essays on the dystopian turn of late 20th-century science fiction. Leading scholars discuss major dystopian traditions including cyberpunk and feminist utopian/dystopian narratives as seen in works such as Octavia Butler's novel Xenogenesis and the film Fight Club. These essays draw out the ways in which contemporary science fiction literature and film has served as a prophetic vehicle for writers with ethical and political concerns.

In the mid-seventies, both gender studies and humor studies emerged as new disciplines, with scholars from various fields undertaking research in these areas. The first publications that emerged in the field of gender studies came out of disciplines such as philosophy, history, and literature, while early works in the area of humor studies initially concentrated on language, linguistics, and psychology. Since then, both fields have flourished, but largely independently. This book draws together and focuses the work of scholars from diverse disciplines on intersections of gender and humor,...