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MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT AND POLITICAL ECONOMY The feminist critique of commercial modernity CATHERINE PACKHAM 302pp. Cambridge University Press. 85 [pounds sterling] (US $110). Mary Wollstonecraft--an unmarried, middleclass Englishwoman without a formal [...]

The document is a letter to the editor written by Eileen M. Hunt, a political science professor, reflecting on her research on Mary Shelley's novel "The Last Man." Hunt discusses the relevance of the novel to contemporary debates on artificial life and intelligence, especially in the context of disasters. She explores the metaphorical and postapocalyptic readings of the novel, particularly in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. Hunt also delves into the philosophical themes of hope, redemption, and human responsibility portrayed in Shelley's work, emphasizing the novel's potential for inspiring bravery and resilience in the face of disaster. [Extracted from the article]

Beginning with a historical perspective on the long and short past of political theory, I argue for three priorities for the field's future: (1) theorizing why and how constitutional democracies corrode and die, and what might be done to stop rising authoritarianism and fascism, as well as racism and misogyny, in liberal egalitarian political systems; (2) the advancement of more predictive and future-oriented forms of political theory to address democratic corruption, democratic backsliding into authoritarianism, and other urgent political problems; and (3) the need to diversify the field and the wider discipline of political science by advancing women and people of color. To stay true to its own history, political theory should lend a helping hand to politics and society when democracy is in crisis., Author(s): Eileen M. Hunt [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.131063.6, 0000 0001 2168 0066, University of Notre Dame, , Notre Dame, IN, USA Introduction > In 1999, I took my first [...]

Oliver Lewis's letter (September 8) about my review of new books on Orwell--including his own, The Orwell Tour--unwittingly proves my point that Orwell studies has a long way to go [...]

THE MODERN MYTHS Adventures in the machinery of the popular imagination PHILIP BALL 368pp. University of Chicago Press. 20 [pounds sterling] (US $30). THE PRODUCTIONS OF TIME A study of [...]

Mary Shelley mined the ideas of international thought to help develop three new subgenres of modern political science fiction ('poliscifi'): post-apocalyptic, existential, and dystopian. Her two great works of poliscifi, Frankenstein (1818), and The Last Man (1826) – confront the social problems that arise from humanity's technological and cultural interventions in the wider environment. This article recovers The Last Man not only as the first modern post-apocalyptic pandemic novel, but also as an important source for the existentialist tradition, dystopian literature, and their intersections with what I call 'Literary IR'. Comparing The Last Man with its probable sources and influences – from Thucydides and Vattel to Orwell and Camus – reveals Shelley's ethical and political concerns with the overlapping problems of interpersonal and international conflict. The Last Man dramatises how interpersonal conflict, if left unchecked, can spiral into the wider sociopolitical injustices of violence, war, and other human-made disasters such as species extinction, pandemics, and more metaphorical 'existential' plagues like loneliness and despair. Despite these dark themes and legacies, Shelley's authorship of the great plague novel of the nineteenth century also inspired a truly hopeful post-apocalyptic existential response to crisis and conflict in feminist poliscifi by Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, and Emily St. John Mandel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE BRIGHT BOOK OF LIFE Novels to read and reread HAROLD BLOOM 537pp. Knopf. $35. TAKE ARMS AGAINST A SEA OF TROUBLES The power of the reader's mind over a [...]

FOR THE CHRISTMAS OF 1919, the future George Orwell gave his sweetheart a copy of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. That is, Eric Blair, a sixteen-year-old Eton boy, acquired a copy [...]

This author-meets-critics book symposium engages with Eileen M. Hunt’s concluding book in her trilogy on Mary Shelley and political philosophy, The First Last Man: Mary Shelley and the Postapocalyptic Imagination (2024). It brings together some of the leading scholars of apocalyptic political thought (Nomi Lazar, Alison McQueen, Ben Jones) alongside philosophers and political theorists (David Gunkel, Samuel Piccolo, Eileen Hunt) concerned with the question of the ethical relationship between human artifice and the plagues, real and metaphorical, that beset humanity and the world at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]