Maintenance Men: An Original Fiction Manuscript and Analysis of Anthropocene Fears in Post-Apocalyptic Literature and Comics

Abstract

This thesis consists of a critical foreword and an original manuscript of fiction. The foreword presents speculative fiction and comics as literary forms that explore social issues, particularly issues of labor and socioeconomic class and their relationship to environmental resources. The foreword examines several Anthropocene fears explored in the post-apocalyptic speculative fiction of Ursula LeGuin’s “Nine Lives” and Richard Bachman/Stephen King’s Running Man, noting that these same fears are also explored in the post-apocalyptic speculative comics of Jonathan Hickman’s East of West and Rick Remender’s Tokyo Ghost. The original fiction manuscript, “Maintenance Men,” is contextualized within this discussion as a postapocalyptic speculative text that engages in social critique.