Cold matters on a number of different levels. It has become a political instrument that helps to establish common ground for the cold regions of the globe. As a metaphor, it suggests an impassioned ...

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Cold Matters : Cultural perceptions of Snow, Ice and Cold

The Future Looks Awfully Familiar: Gendered Representations in Popular Dystopian Television

Exploring the role of gender in the depiction of Utopia in selected novels.

Under the Dome (UTD) was originally published by Stephen King in 2009. Several years after the release of this 1,000-page novel, the story was forged into a television series. Its premiere during primetime, on a major television network (CBS), was one of the most-watched dramas in history; the series attracted 11-million viewers on average. With upwards of one-million copies of the novel sold and a large multinational fanbase,UTD is undoubtedly successful and a salient work relevant to popular culture and specifically, science-fiction genres. In this article, I will investigate UTD as a totality that encompasses both King’s novel and its television adaptation. The latter was produced by Brian K. Vaughan and King himself, as well as such well-known producers as Steven Spielberg, Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, Neal Baer, Jack Bender, Tim Schlattmann, and Stacey Snider. Set sometime in the near future, the story begins when a small town in Maine (Chester’s Mill) is suddenly isolated by a “dome,” a spherical force field. A commercial airliner flying nearby Chester’s Mill collides with the force field and crashes into open farmland. Cars smash into the dome and explode. Initially, no one inside or outside the dome has any idea of what has occurred. Although the residents of Chester’s Mill can communicate (via the Internet) with civilians outside of the dome, they cannot leave the dome or hear anything that is going on outside of it. Soon the population realizes that they are trapped with no possibility of external help from the government or state authorities; questions of authority, resource management, and long-term survival loom. Over 100 different characters appear in UTD. The civilians who are trapped inside the town are representative of good and hardworking Americans and of not-so-good ones, such as those who are criminally motivated and have hidden agendas. The novel and the series are Socialism and Democracy, 2019 Vol. 33, No. 1, 166–185, https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2018.1509572

Tracing the State of Nature in Stephen King’s Under the Dome

In Ursula K. Le Guin’s science fiction novel The Left Hand of Darkness cold is used on both literal and metaphorical levels as the main character, sent to the planet of Gethen, or Winter, undertake ...

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"Hatred was also left outside" : Journeys into the Cold in Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness

The impulse to create images of utopian existence, and sometimes to pursue them actively, can be found in virtually every culture. Often, such visions are expressed within the realms of mythology a...

Dennis M. Lensing

Papers

The fecund androgyne: Gender and the utopian/dystopian imagination of the 1970s