Dead Neon: Tales of Near-Future Las Vegas (Western Literature and Fiction Series) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0874178282 ISBN 13: 9780874178289

Publisher: University of Nevada Press, 2010

Synopsis

Las Vegas is considered a modern icon of excess. It offers every imaginable extreme of greed, pleasure, and despair, all supported by technology that enhances fantasy and allows residents and visitors alike to forget reality and responsibility. The authors of the fourteen stories in Dead Neon imagine Sin City in the near future, when excess has led to social, environmental, or economic collapse. Their stories range from futuristic casinos to the seared post-apocalyptic desert, from the struggle to survive in a repressive theocracy to the madness of living in a world where most life forms and all moral codes have vanished. Dead Neon explores the possible future of America by examining the near future of Las Vegas. The authors, all either Vegas-based or intimately familiar with the city, capture its unique rhythms and flavor and probe its potential for evoking the fullest range of the human spirit in settings of magic, horror, and despair.

About this title

About the Author

Todd James Pierce is associate professor of English and creative writing at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Jarret Keene has taught creative writing and literature courses at University of Nevada,
Las Vegas, and is currently communications manager at the Mandalay Bay
Casino Resort in Las Vegas.

From Publishers Weekly

The 14 contributors to this insubstantial anthology, most of whom lack science fiction publishing credentials, bypass focused extrapolation in favor of satire, surrealism, and vaguely hinted catastrophes. The best of the lot is Chris Niles's "Sin's Last Stand," in which Las Vegas is finally overwhelmed by the tyranny of the religious right, sort of like The Handmaid's Tale condensed to 12 pages. Felicia Campbell's "4/18" destroys Vegas with a mysterious toxin that freezes gamblers, revelers, and debauchees in place forever. Vu Tran's "Kubla Khan" is genuinely haunting, and there is even a parody of Harlan Ellison in C.J. Mosher's "A Girl and Her Cat," but longtime SF readers looking for a richness of ideas won't find it here.
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About this edition

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0874178282
• ISBN 13: 9780874178289
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200
• Editor: Pierce Todd, Keene Jarret