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BibliographyI think that there are three broad categories into which the vast majority of SF's ruined cities can be placed. The power of all of these comes from a subversion of a familiar landscape. Sobchack's remark about the vastness of alien landscapes in film can be applied in temporal terms:
Our civilization and its technological apparatus is at best a small town set on the edge of an abyss. Watching these films with their abundance of long shots in which human figures move like insects, their insistence on a fathomless landscape, we are forced to a pessimistic view of the worth of technological progress and of man's ability to control his destiny. We are shown human beings set uncomfortably against the vastness and agelessness of the desert and sea, are reminded by the contrast that land and water were here long before us and our cities and towns will be here long before us and our cities and towns and will be here long after we and are artefacts are gone.
{ADMIN: SOURCE? Presumably, Sobchack -- but from p119 too?}
It has also been pointed out that the moment of catastrophe is very different from detritus of the event, long grown over (Sobchack, 119). This certainly helps narrow down the field a bit, as there are many films and novels that describe this moment and its immediate aftermath.
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