I am Legend

Beginning with the claim that the interdisciplinary discussions herein are grounded on three basic observations, this collaborative volume has been, at its core, driven by a sense of timeliness and urgency tied to the shared conviction that media literacy is of the utmost importance today, as our lives are increasingly framed by all manner of screens and indeed ruled by optical codes generated and reified by these screens. The incredible advances seen in Zombie Studies in the last decade are still being measured, and as this introduction outlines, chapter by chapter, we here take advantage of this moment by examining the zombie phenomenon in context while incorporating, simultaneously, a good number of recent studies and popular works of literary and cinematic fiction.

Human beings are surviving creatures. They will do whatever it takes to survive. However, as much as they are hell-bent on surviving, humans are also strangely fascinated with the concept of the apocalypse-that the world hosting us will one day cease to exist. This strange fascination with the apocalypse goes way back in history when ancient civilizations expressed their remarkable views regarding the apocalypse. The Mayans, for instance, foresaw the apocalypse thousands of years ago, when their calendar ended in 2012. Agitatedly, many people were globally closely anticipating the event in 2012. The apocalypse did not occur in 2012; yet, many people still wait for it to happen anytime soon. People's fascination with the apocalypse was also reflected in their literature. Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954) is a good example of post-apocalyptic literature. In the current article, the author will start by setting the stage by discussing the philosophy of the post-apocalypse. Then, the author shall analyze the post-apocalyptic views in Richard Matheson's novel I am Legend. In the end, the author shall conclude with the feasibility of the post-apocalyptic scenario in the story, together with other possible scenarios in the world of literature. The present article aims to shed light on Matheson's scenario on the apocalypse, which significantly draws the reader's attention bearing in mind the COVID-19 scenario. So, to what extent does Matheson's apocalyptic scenario relate to our world today?

The present essay explores the way in which the main character in Richard Matheson's post-apocalyptic science fiction novel I Am Legend (1954) and its three main film adaptations so far-Ubaldo Ragona's and Sidney Salkow's The Last Man on Earth (1964), Boris Sagal's The Omega Man (1971), and Francis Lawrence's I Am Legend (2007)-is represented as the embodiment of a once hegemonic masculinity now on the verge of extinction. In particular, I contend that the four texts in question deliberately subvert expectations of triumphant male heroism in order to question the dominant western discourse which each successive version of the main character represents. This discourse seems to be clearly identified in each of the four texts with a middle-class, heterosexual, still traditionally patriarchal masculinity. Therefore, the differences in the literary or filmic construction of the protagonist's gendered identity can be read as differences in the way each author perceives and depicts contemporary mainstream socio-cultural forces as hegemonic. Not only does each version of the "legend" of the main character's heroic

Richard Matheson explores the demography of vampirism in a hybridic last human on earth and vampire apocalypse novella, I Am Legend (1954). The survivor Robert Neville explores the legend and science of vampirism, grappling with the rhizomatic ontology of the gothic creatures; in turn, Matheson offers a dual portrait of monstrosity of the predator vampires and of Neville as a gothic hunter and slayer of vampires. Narratively, imagistically, and thematically, Matheson presents a Malthusian demographic dynamic (and struggle) as Neville deepens his understanding of vampirism, allowing him to refine his vampireslaying techniques.

The present paper discusses dystopia in the genre of horror on the basis of George A. Romero's zombie fi lms. Dystopia seems to be inextricably linked with the vision of the world in which the very structure of the society has been destroyed along with moral codes and the only remaining thing is the will to survive. In the Living Dead Trilogy Romero skilfully used the zombie apocalypse motif to portray both vices as virtues characteristic to American way of life. Moreover, in his motion pictures, he envisages what may be the implications of possible dystopias arising from the ashes of destroyed human civilisation and, thus, gives the audiences, and the critics, an incredible resource for interpretation and further analysis. The methodology involves the paradigmatic analysis of the plots in order to show how the motif of zombie apocalypse is used to explore the notion of dystopia. Moreover, the mentioned analysis will also cover explicit, implicit and symptomatic meaning created by the analyzed fi lms.

Richard Matheson explores the demography of vampirism in a hybridic last human on earth and vampire apocalypse novella, I Am Legend (1954). The survivor Robert Neville explores the legend and science of vampirism, grappling with the rhizomatic ontology of the gothic creatures; in turn, Matheson offers a dual portrait of monstrosity of the predator vampires and of Neville as a gothic hunter and slayer of vampires. Narratively, imagistically, and thematically, Matheson presents a Malthusian demographic dynamic (and struggle) as Neville deepens his understanding of vampirism, allowing him to refine his vampire-slaying techniques.

Based on the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, a dialogue can necessarily take place only in a two-sided communication. But if a party creates a hierarchical situation for the domination of its voice in the context, the communication will no longer be dialogic. In I Am Legend, Richard Matheson depicts a post-apocalyptic world that is destroyed due to the spread of a disease which metamorphoses people into bugs. The bacterium of this disease is denotatively and symbolically the aftermath of a war in which every party attempts to suppress the other parties to establish a monologue to its own advantage. But Robert Neville, Matheson’s main character, tries to find a cure for this exasperation. As he kills the new creatures, his attempt is a measure to delete the factors which make the “other ” intolerable for him. When the new nonhuman race is ultimately at the threshold of creating another society, they look upon him in the same way he used to look upon them. However, the new society finall...

Based on a comparative reading of the officially released version and the director’s cut of Francis Lawrence’s movie I Am Legend (2007a; 2007b), the present contribution interrogates possible connections between the political economy of film production and aesthetic form. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks such as Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model and Artz’ critical study of global entertainment industries, and combining these with an analysis of Lawrence’s two versions, I argue that profit-oriented adaptations to implied market pressures are not neutral endeavours, but inherently political acts that shape aesthetic form to, often-tacitly, reiterate a received hegemonic status quo.

Vampires and other blood-sucking monstrous beings constitute some of the most famous myths, legends and stories that continue to haunt contemporary societies. This special issue examines the presence of these beings within cities and their rural surrounds. The contributions to this special issue reflect upon vampires and other monstrosities in relation to the tropical regions of the world from historical pasts to present-day manifestations, and imaginary tropical futures, including: the British colonial empire in the tropical east, New Orleans in the deep south of the United States, across the border to Mexico and Latin American communities, over to India and Southeast Asia, including Bangkok in Thailand, Singapore, and Sabah on the island of Borneo, and to the tropical east coast of Australia. However, the concept of the tropics is not simply a geographical construct, the imaginary of the tropics also emerges out of the spaces of mythology and oral storytelling, ethnographic report...

Richard Matheson explores the demography of vampirism in a hybridic last human on earth and vampire apocalypse novella, I Am Legend (1954). The survivor Robert Neville explores the legend and science of vampirism, grappling with the rhizomatic ontology of the gothic creatures; in turn, Matheson offers a dual portrait of monstrosity of the predator vampires and of Neville as a gothic hunter and slayer of vampires. Narratively, imagistically, and thematically, Matheson presents a Malthusian demographic dynamic (and struggle) as Neville deepens his understanding of vampirism, allowing him to refine his vampire-slaying techniques.

A tremendous amount of moral thinking and feeling is undertaken when reading literature or watching films. In fact it is not an exaggeration to say that for most people, this is the primary way in which they acquire ethical attitudes, especially within contemporary culture. Drawing on my Environmental Ethics and Film (2016) volume, this chapter seeks to explore how, both in scale and theme, mainstream popular films like I am Legend (2007) project a dystopic urban future, while The Revenant (2015) speaks through a mythic rural American past. Both films focus specifically on various aspects of survival through the lens of environmental ethics, while addressing our long-term future. As a relatively modern phenomenon, environmental ethics remains a totalising concept which is inclusive rather than exclusive, while trying to create and maintain strict guidelines and regulations. This chapter will draw on the growing literature around zombies and their surprising allegorical power to address environmental and ethical issues, which in turn is dovetailed with more conventional action-adventure and survivalist narratives.

Richard Matheson explores the demography of vampirism in a hybridic last human on earth and vampire apocalypse novella, I Am Legend (1954). The survivor Robert Neville explores the legend and science of vampirism, grappling with the rhizomatic ontology of the gothic creatures; in turn, Matheson offers a dual portrait of monstrosity of the predator vampires and of Neville as a gothic hunter and slayer of vampires. Narratively, imagistically, and thematically, Matheson presents a Malthusian demographic dynamic (and struggle) as Neville deepens his understanding of vampirism, allowing him to refine his vampireslaying techniques.

The present paper discusses dystopia in the genre of horror on the basis of George A. Romero's zombie fi lms. Dystopia seems to be inextricably linked with the vision of the world in which the very structure of the society has been destroyed along with moral codes and the only remaining thing is the will to survive. In the Living Dead Trilogy Romero skilfully used the zombie apocalypse motif to portray both vices as virtues characteristic to American way of life. Moreover, in his motion pictures, he envisages what may be the implications of possible dystopias arising from the ashes of destroyed human civilisation and, thus, gives the audiences, and the critics, an incredible resource for interpretation and further analysis. The methodology involves the paradigmatic analysis of the plots in order to show how the motif of zombie apocalypse is used to explore the notion of dystopia. Moreover, the mentioned analysis will also cover explicit, implicit and symptomatic meaning created by the analyzed fi lms.

The present paper discusses dystopia in the genre of horror on the basis of George A. Romero's zombie fi lms. Dystopia seems to be inextricably linked with the vision of the world in which the very structure of the society has been destroyed along with moral codes and the only remaining thing is the will to survive. In the Living Dead Trilogy Romero skilfully used the zombie apocalypse motif to portray both vices as virtues characteristic to American way of life. Moreover, in his motion pictures, he envisages what may be the implications of possible dystopias arising from the ashes of destroyed human civilisation and, thus, gives the audiences, and the critics, an incredible resource for interpretation and further analysis. The methodology involves the paradigmatic analysis of the plots in order to show how the motif of zombie apocalypse is used to explore the notion of dystopia. Moreover, the mentioned analysis will also cover explicit, implicit and symptomatic meaning created by the analyzed fi lms.

In this paper I explore the way everyday forms of creativity responded to the first wave of the coronavirus. I argue that these creative responses did two things. First, they demonstrated the rich agency that ordinary people have in shaping and sharing their experience of lonely isolation. Second, through the creative works generated and circulated, a critical lens was placed on the way that the pandemic carried forward the inequalities inherent in modern systems of governance. The article is divided into two main sections: the first looks at a range of creative works made by ordinary people to reconnect them to the social world. The second section looks at the creative works that were explicitly politicized and activist in nature, turning loneliness into a political project.

A planetary panic and almost deserted cities, fear of food shortages, and the growing threat of an invisible virus that does more damage day by day. In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, many believe that science fiction has now been overtaken by reality. In these times of adversity, what does it take to survive when the world comes crashing down? How do humans stay resilient, manage their growing stress, and somehow navigate through the crisis? More specifically, how do humans cope with isolation and loneliness in the light of a global outbreak? What does science fiction have to tell us about this? For the bewildered population, science fiction has been recognized as an ingredient to understand an unexpected reality. In this article I explain, through the philosophical eye of Francis Lawrence's movie I Am Legend (2007), how a coping skill such as imagination, in the age of pandemics and social distancing, can mutate into a "Second Reality" that fills the gap left by the former (pre-outbreak) reality.

The present paper discusses dystopia in the genre of horror on the basis of George A. Romero's zombie fi lms. Dystopia seems to be inextricably linked with the vision of the world in which the very structure of the society has been destroyed along with moral codes and the only remaining thing is the will to survive. In the Living Dead Trilogy Romero skilfully used the zombie apocalypse motif to portray both vices as virtues characteristic to American way of life. Moreover, in his motion pictures, he envisages what may be the implications of possible dystopias arising from the ashes of destroyed human civilisation and, thus, gives the audiences, and the critics, an incredible resource for interpretation and further analysis. The methodology involves the paradigmatic analysis of the plots in order to show how the motif of zombie apocalypse is used to explore the notion of dystopia. Moreover, the mentioned analysis will also cover explicit, implicit and symptomatic meaning created by the analyzed fi lms.

The present paper discusses dystopia in the genre of horror on the basis of George A. Romero's zombie fi lms. Dystopia seems to be inextricably linked with the vision of the world in which the very structure of the society has been destroyed along with moral codes and the only remaining thing is the will to survive. In the Living Dead Trilogy Romero skilfully used the zombie apocalypse motif to portray both vices as virtues characteristic to American way of life. Moreover, in his motion pictures, he envisages what may be the implications of possible dystopias arising from the ashes of destroyed human civilisation and, thus, gives the audiences, and the critics, an incredible resource for interpretation and further analysis. The methodology involves the paradigmatic analysis of the plots in order to show how the motif of zombie apocalypse is used to explore the notion of dystopia. Moreover, the mentioned analysis will also cover explicit, implicit and symptomatic meaning created by the analyzed fi lms.

Este ensayo examina la adaptación cinematográfica de la novela de ciencia ficción Bid Time Return (1975) de Richard Matheson. La película se titula Somewhere in Time (1980), con guión de Matheson, dirigida por Jeannot Szwarc y protagonizada por Christopher Reeve y Jane Seymour. Si bien Bid Time Return obtuvo el World Fantasy Award, muchos de los lectores de Matheson, como el mismo autor ha indicado, pensaron que no era su mejor obra, y ni la novela ni su adaptación cinematográfica tuvieron éxito comercial. Sin embargo, tanto el texto literario como la película cuentan con seguidores fieles. Somewhere in Time incluso ha generado su propio club de fans: la International Network of Somewhere in Time Enthusiasts. Además esta película es digna de atención como transformación crítica del texto original.

Based on a comparative reading of the officially released version and the director's cut of Francis Lawrence's movie I Am Legend (2007a; 2007b), the present contribution interrogates possible connections between the political economy of film production and aesthetic form. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks such as Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model and Artz' critical study of global entertainment industries, and combining these with an analysis of Lawrence's two versions, I argue that profit-oriented adaptations to implied market pressures are not neutral endeavours, but inherently political acts that shape aesthetic form to, often-tacitly, reiterate a received hegemonic status quo.

Richard Matheson explores the demography of vampirism in a hybridic last human on earth and vampire apocalypse novella, I Am Legend (1954). The survivor Robert Neville explores the legend and science of vampirism, grappling with the rhizomatic ontology of the gothic creatures; in turn, Matheson offers a dual portrait of monstrosity of the predator vampires and of Neville as a gothic hunter and slayer of vampires. Narratively, imagistically, and thematically, Matheson presents a Malthusian demographic dynamic (and struggle) as Neville deepens his understanding of vampirism, allowing him to refine his vampire-slaying techniques.

Life after People: Zombie Apocalypse and the Structures of the Post-Human Global Imaginary. The paper examines post-humanist representations in Anglo-American film productions from a perspective informed by global and hypermodern cultural theory. It is an enquiry into aspects of dystopian sensibility featuring in global cinema, which are seen as manifest in the prolific zombie genre of the post-apocalyptic strand. It is premised on the assumption that global society is endemically marred by a catastrophic horizon of expectation, whose most congenial form of expression is dystopia, a genre on the rise worldwide, especially productive in Anglo-American cinematic practice. Drawing on global cultural theory, I seek to narrow down the enquiry into dystopian modes and bring the zombie dominant to bear on what I construe as the post-apocalyptic imagination of globality.

The New Children of War. Considerations about the iconography of the zombie archetype in the context of the Vietnam War: The modern zombie emerged in 1967/68 under the influence of popular culture and the visual presence of the Vietnam War. As a complement to the recent state of research the text elaborates on zombie iconography as an anti-war allegory. Based on George A. Romero's archetypal NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (USA 1968), it is pointed out in which way the everyday images of war shaped the history and imagery of the film and influenced both the depiction and characteristics of the zombie. Using scene investigations of burning people, crisis reporting in the media, the Search and Destroy missions and the memorable image of the headshot, the impact of war is demonstrated and proven with a large number of parallels found in press photographs and war reports. On the one hand, this allows to classify the subtext of the film within the tradition of the anti-war film. On the other hand, the allegory of wars and crises can be seen as an inherent and iconographic part of that movie monster, which, in the genre, has been proven more often since Danny Boyle's 28 DAYS LATER (UK 2002).

The present paper discusses dystopia in the genre of horror on the basis of George A. Romero's zombie films. Dystopia seems to be inextricably linked with the vision of the world in which the very structure of the society has been destroyed along with moral codes and the only remaining thing is the will to survive. In the Living Dead Trilogy Romero skilfully used the zombie apocalypse motif to portray both vices as virtues characteristic to American way of life. Moreover, in his motion pictures, he envisages what may be the implications of possible dystopias arising from the ashes of destroyed human civilisation and, thus, gives the audiences, and the critics, an incredible resource for interpretation and further analysis. The methodology involves the paradigmatic analysis of the plots in order to show how the motif of zombie apocalypse is used to explore the notion of dystopia. Moreover, the mentioned analysis will also cover explicit, implicit and symptomatic meaning created by the analyzed fi lms.

Tribalism is at the forefront of public discussion across the political spectrum in America today. Zombie stories have also risen to unprecedented popularity. Amid present-day racial, political, and otherwise tribal tensions, the story I Am Legend has particular resonance. As the original inspiration behind the modern zombie trope, it was published as a novella in 1954 and has been remade as a film multiple times, in 1964, 1971, and 2007. Using grounded theory, I explore each film regarding what moral attitudes are portrayed concerning confrontation between rival milieus. My findings center on four themes: identification, compassion, ambivalence, and condemnation. Overall, in chronological order, the different renditions of the story exhibit decreasing compassion for the other and decreasing ambivalence about relations with the other. The most dramatic change is between the 1971 and 2007 remakes. Implications for what the changes in the morals presented in the story might reflect in terms of social changes in America are discussed.

Grande parte da carreira cinematográfica de Charlton Heston assemelha-se a uma biografia ideológica, onde os filmes e a expressão da pessoa pública do actor acompanham a constituição da sua personalidade privada e das suas ideias morais e políticas. Nessa progressão, podemos encontrar uma fase de referência, na passagem da década de 60 para a década de 70, quando Heston participa em Planet of the Apes (1968), The Omega Man (1971), e Soylent Green (1973), uma trilogia não premeditada de dramas de ficção científica com uma temática conservadora, republicana, e individualista.

Scholars have argued that geologic proposals for the Anthropocene are entangled with collective imaginaries and geopolitical anxieties. In this article, we analyze three prominent tropes of American apocalyptic films (the " Great Deluge, " the " Nuclear Catacalysm, " and " the Population Bomb ") and map them onto existing geological proposals for the Anthropocene. In staging this encounter, we illustrate how impending ecological disasters in American popular imagination temporally displace the apocalypse into the present or the future. These imaginings of apocalypse evade specific culpability when they imagine a universal human frailty, enacting a darkly ironic reversal of historical and ongoing apocalyptic realities. Drawing on insights from ecocriticism, political geography, postcolonial, decolonial and critical race studies, we argue that the global crisis heralded by the Anthropocene reveals deep-seated fears of racialized others taking over the planet and the decline of white civilization, and we suggest alternative openings for other futures.

Vampires, zombies, and phantoms – histories of horror stories. Review The second half of the year 2016 was generous for Polish fans of dreadful stories as two interesting books came along. The first, Wiedza potworna. Horror w badaniach kulturowych (The Monstrous Knowledge. Horror stories and cultural studies) published by the Nicolaus Copernicus University Press, contains seven essays by faculties and PhD candidates of the Cultural Studies Department of the same University. The essays cover a wide range of topics, from Polish folk tales to Japanese horror stories. The second book is an anthropological monograph of the horror film Upiór w kamerze. Zarys kulturowej historii kina grozy (Phantom of the camera. The cultural history of the horror film) by Magdalena Kamińska, published by Municipal Gallery Arsenał in Poznań, Poland. This book is the outcome of a series of lectures on the history of horror films conducted by Kamińska in the Gallery. These publications complement each other, providing the reader with a wide range of contexts and references of horror stories. The authors of the essays contained in the The Monstrous Knowledge, who work in the field of anthropology and cultural studies, deal with a wide range of issues from folk tales to video games. Each essay is devoted to a specific problem that may be genre, national context, or a figure such as a vampire or zombie. The opening essay by Dariusz Brzostek is somewhat out of the box; it takes up the figure of an anthropologist coming back from field research as a monstrous character and a source of threat for his/her people. The threat is based on the transition of the scientist from Western rationality to the savage (monstrous) knowledge of the people who were supposed to be the subject, not the source of wisdom. The anthropologist is presented as a double stranger: for both the researched community where he/she arrives and for his/her own people upon return. This initial essay is not only an self-referential game undertaken by a culture researcher, but also introduces the primary theme of the whole book: monstrous knowledge as a non-scientific, non-rational (in the academic, Western understanding) pattern of world interpretation and possible scenarios of action. It is knowledge that permits the supernatural as the actor in reality, as it dresses up the otherness in monstrousness.

Anne Rice and George Romero are two of the foremost transformative authors of vampire and zombie fiction in the United States. This reading of their work applies a psychotopological lens to the first two novels of Rice's Vampire Chronicles and the first three films of Romero's Living Dead series. It differs from numerous preceding analyses of monster fiction mostly in the theoretical apparatus it articulates to link the psychic fear vampires and zombies evoke with the topologies of space and power they evince. This intervention invokes a negative understanding of dialectical materialism to analyze human-monster thresholds as political sites. It builds this theorization primarily from the works of Slavoj Z ˇ ižek, Sara Ahmed, Julia Kristeva, Kojin Karatani, and to a lesser extent Joan Copjec. The result is a psychotopological analysis that challenges understandings of the monster as either timeless allegories for the systemic order or as endlessly interpretive contingencies. It also reads the topological forms of Rice's vampires and Romero's zombies in relation to each other. Understanding psychic space and topologies of power as integral to each other helps read the vampire and the zombie as myths which endure because of the fears of class exploitation and social collectivism they stoke.

Spatial imaginaries of the apocalypse are as commonplace as ever. Whereas many geographers have critiqued them as politically disabling and categorized them with the rise of postpolitical discourse, others have argued that they are potentially generative of new, progressive forms of politics. In this article I contribute to this discussion through a Gramscian reading of the apocalyptic imaginary of "the last man on Earth" as encapsulated in the novel I Am Legend 1995) and its three filmic adaptations, The Last Man on Earth (Ragona and Salkow 1964), The Omega Man (Sagal 1971), and I Am Legend (Lawrence 2007). Gramsci is useful here for his analytical method of situating political expression within the historical structure that enables and constrains it. Likewise, how the end of the world is imagined is not strictly something that politicizes or depoliticizes, but can also be seen as an effect of the established social order. I argue that this can be discerned both in terms of how the book and films are situated historically, and in terms of how they portray violent civilizational upheaval as a function of its own past. The meaning of the term legend, and its dialectical relationship with the conjunctural moment of the apocalypse changes drastically across all four iterations of the narrative.

Published in LinQ 41 Special Issue "Armageddon". This is not the journal's formatting.

World War Z (2006) produces a liberal utopian vision of a world in which many of the political problems of the early 2000s have been solved after an apocalyptic event, yet the underlying structures that created those problems are left unaddressed. This article thus argues that World War Z should be read for both its apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic dimensions. In analysing the contributing factors of the apocalyptic scenario as well as its post-apocalyptic aftermath, this reading shows how the novel highlights the limits of a progressive liberal imagination.

This essay attempts to place I Am Legend (2007) in the context of American nationalism and aggressive enforcement of the immigration laws after 9/11. The apocalyptic world of I Am Legend reflects the post-9/11 American society that is driven by the urge to make America “one nation” and haunted by the fear of people who might harm the “unity.” The film tries to draw a clear boundary between “us” and “them” by completely othering the infected, but in the context of American homeland security after 9/11, it becomes a complex issue to decide where to draw the line. The shifty boundary between “us” and “them” reflects the post-9/11 American dilemma: the United States has to close its border while maintaining its identity as a nation of immigrants. This essay also discusses how geographical markers, instead of racial markers, are utilized to symbolize the infected as the stateless people within the United States.

In this article I suggest that fantasies of apocalypse are both a product and a producer of the Anthropocene. Although images and narratives of contemporary environmental apocalypse have usually been understood as politically regressive and postpolitical distractions, I demonstrate that a more hopeful reading is possible. Apocalypse tells us that the human as currently configured in the Anthropocene—an ideal universal subject who is energized through fossil fuels and who has been elevated to a position of ecological mastery—cannot continue indefinitely. This article therefore considers what apocalyptic imaginaries reveal about the limits to being human and the future of human life after the Anthropocene. It does so by analyzing a critically acclaimed film, The Turin Horse (2011). In this film an old farm horse refuses to eat, drink, or leave its stall, while a daughter and her father struggle on through an unspecified disaster, gnawing on raw potatoes as their world slowly unravels. The Turin Horse discloses the earth forces that have made Anthropocene humans along three lines: the geological, the biological, and the temporal. The film also hints at three challenges to be overcome to make humans differently: the need to surpass carbon humanity, the need for nonhuman allies, and the need to affirm agency against the inevitability of deep time. I suggest that contemporary apocalyptic visions are a core aspect of how geographers should understand socioecological transformation, as they challenge those who view them to feel the condition of the Anthropocene, and pose the question of how to respond well to unruly earth forces.

Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend (1954) is most notably remembered as being among the first works of fiction to graft the vampire and zombie mythos with dystopian elements. However, two of the novel’s principal narratological features – namely, the fortified home or enclosure (i.e. the ‘survival space’) and infectious, undead millions, both of which have since remained staples in nearly every subsequent zombie narrative – have gone relatively unnoted. Thus, prompting this article are two things. First and foremost is the need to map out the structural principia upon which modern zombies have generally come to be defined. Second, and perhaps more crucial, is the need to resituate the (terato)genesis of the modern zombie cinemyth to Matheson’s novel, which has been obscured or devalued over time by the work of George Romero and an ever-increasing body of films and video games that, like Romero’s films, have appropriated these two essential elements of Matheson’s work. My contention, however, is not to diminish the significance of Romero’s filmic work and its impact on zombie cinema, but to recognize, rather, both Matheson’s and Romero’s respective configurations of the zombie mythos that have helped to institute the particular tropes with which film-makers and video game designers have embodied and continue to embody the figure of the zombie. For, it seems to me, and this shall be the chief position of this article, that the intricacies of the multi rather than singly defended ‘survival space’ that Romero introduces in Night of the Living Dead (1968) have not only afforded the zombie subgenre its longevity, but more crucially, offer us the most compelling conceptual tool with which to trace the zombie’s trajectory in popular culture and media.

A speculative examination of some manifestations of contemporary Horror through the lens of the Zombie; this article considers the relationship between Zombie Apocalypses, Zombies as agents (or not), and wider aspects of genre and theory including comic books and graphic novels, Science Fiction, and Fantasy.   

It surveys multimedia interest in zombies, mash-up novels, alternate universes, and the meetings of zombies with a range of other tropes in diverse narratives.

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